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Comments of the Week #79: from inflation and dark energy to the Higgs

“Today we have touched Mars. There is life on Mars, and it is us—extensions of our eyes in all directions, extensions of our mind, extensions of our heart and soul have touched Mars today. That's the message to look for there: We are on Mars. We are the Martians!” -Ray Bradbury It was a busy week, from science to politics to the simple question of Earth’s color here at Starts With A Bang. As always, you didn’t disappoint, with plenty to say about it all, and I’m stoked to continue the conversation. Just in case you missed anything: Are inflation and dark energy connected? (for Ask Ethan),…

Comments of the Week #45: From the elements to Hubble's greatest

“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.” -Eckhart Tolle It's been an amazing week here at Starts With A Bang, and you've been given plenty to think about. In particular, here's what the past seven days have seen: Heavy planets, light Sun? (for Ask Ethan), Revenge of the sparkles (for our Weekend Diversion), Genesis episode 6, the Moon (for Mini-Movie Monday), The slow dance that made you, Science by democracy doesn't work, and The camera that changed the Universe (for Throwback Thursday).…

Comments of the Week #97: from the Multiverse to astronomy's future

“Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.” -Henry David Thoreau With more stories of the Universe having been told this past week at Starts With A Bang, it's always a thrill to look back, see what we've covered and see what thoughts and ideas they've inspired in you. In the unlikely event you missed any of them, here's what we talked about: The Multiverse and the road less traveled (for Ask Ethan), How to catch a speeding star (for Mostly Mute Monday), Why does blowing on your hot drink cool it down?, The science of Hillary Clinton'…

Richard Dawkins Goes to Heaven

Here is the last of Anthony Horvath's ghastly morality tales. This one is the easiest to summarize, because there isn't much to say about it: Richard Dawkins dies, goes to heaven, is judged, and sent to hell. It's short, only seven pages long, and five of them are spent in loving description of the disintegration of Dawkins. It's nothing but a horror story for Christians in which the bad guy meets a grisly end. The blurb for the book declares that "these stories draw from what is known publicly to imagine what would happen in this most private of moments." Yet there is essentially nothing…

Are restaurants responsible for the obesity epidemic?

It has become almost the conventional wisdom that the obesity epidemic is at least partially attributable to people eating out. I for one really try and avoid eating out because I always feel like I end up eating junk food. But does this really matter? Do people actually eat more overall when they eat out more? Economists Michael Anderson and David A. Matsa from UC Berkeley and Northwestern University respectively say no. In a working paper published last year, they argue that when people eat out they eat less at home -- resulting in only a tiny net gain in caloric intake. To analyze the…

Of Stem Cells and Neanderthals

Last October, word leaked out that something might be seriously amiss with the embryonic stem cell lines approved by President Bush for federally funded research. Today, the full details were published on line in Nature Medicine. It's an important paper, and not only because it points out a grave problem with the current state of stem cell research. It also shows how scientists who do cutting-edge medical research are looking back at two million years of human evolution to make sense of their work. At a time when antievolutionists are trying hard to wedge creationist nonsense into science…

Patch Hunky, PhD

Alice recently told her ethnic story over at Sciencewomen, and asked others to join in the attempt to "displace white from the default position". Of course lots of comments ensued; her follow-up is here, and well worth reading. In the follow up you can find links to others who took up Alice's challenge. I've been lying around with headaches most of last week and this one, thinking about what kind of post I might write as part of Alice's challenge. I have to admit I find the task quite daunting, which gives me some new insight as to why some of my fellow Sciencebloggers were loathe to…

All bacteria are bad?

Remember Robert O. Young? He's the purveyor of only the finest quackery. Note that, by "finest," I mean the most highly entertaining, the sort of utter twaddle that makes me laugh out loud when I read it. Whether it's his claim that alkalinization is the cure for basically all disease, his characterizing sepsis as not being due to bacterial infection, his description of cancer as a mechanism to protect the body from "rotten cells" spoiled by acid and liquified, or his nonsensical attacks on Andrew Weil (his being one of the only men who can make Weil look reasonable by comparison), Robrt O.…

Human hybridization - the good & the bad

Update: Over at Genetics and Health: Last month, 12-year-old Bobby Stephens, Jr. died after football practice in Florida. This week, his family learned that he carried genes for both Hemoglobin S and Hemoglobin E. There have only been 27 documented cases world-wide of people who've died as a result of the combination of both of these two genetic mutations. ... Hemoglobin S. This the predominant hemoglobin in people with sickle cell disease. ... Hemoglobin E trait is benign. Hemoglobin E is extremely common in S.E. Asia and in some areas equals hemoglobin A in frequency. ... Bobby had a…

Who's protecting the children?

The hubbub over the Republican congressional leadership's blatant failure to protect the minors under their custodial care in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal should be (but isn't) just the opening shot in a larger story of the hypocrisy of right wing (aka, conservative) politicians about "protecting our children." At any moment, state inspectors can step uninvited into one of the three child care centers that Ethel White runs in Auburn, Ala., to make sure they meet state requirements intended to ensure that the children are safe. There must be continuing training for the staff. Her…

It's not the heat

It's not news the nation is having a heat wave although it is making the news, as temperatures in the nineties and above were reported in city after city, from one coast to the other and in between. Good opportunity to talk physics and physiology. Your body is a prodigious producer of heat, which you can see just by thinking about the food you consume. To be charitable to you and your lack of gluttony, let's say you consume 2500 Calories a day. A Calorie is a measure of the chemical energy released in the form of heat when the organic material in the food is burned. These are large calories (…

Arrival, Eschatology, and Philip K. Dick

The new film Arrival, based on a story by Ted Chiang, is unlike most any science fiction blockbuster at the box office these days. It's a tense, thoughtful, somber meditation on the human condition and the nature of a higher reality. In many ways, it is a religious film that deals with eschatology (the end times or judgment day). Unlike Chad Orzel, I haven't read the source material, so I experienced the film with fresh eyes. I was immediately reminded of Philip K. Dick and his real-life experience of being 'touched by an angel.' Dick, both a life-long Christian and prolific author of…

U.S. Census: 2013 poverty rates lower than previous year, but not significantly different

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau finds that the U.S. poverty rate declined slightly between 2012 and 2013, however the numbers of people living at or below the poverty level in 2013 didn’t represent a real statistical change. Yesterday, the Census Bureau released two annual reports: “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013” and “Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2013.” The agency found that between 2012 and 2013, the nation’s poverty rate declined from 15 percent to 14.5 percent. But the 45.3 million people living in poverty as of 2013 was not a “statistically…

What'd we know without Andrew Schneider?

Or is it: what wouldn't we know without investigative journalist Andrew Schneider???  Would the town Libby, Montana mean anything?  How about the words Zonolite, Diacetyl, or GRAS?  These terms and places are familiar because of Andy Schneider, the Pulitzer Prize (and other) award winning reporter, who's an integral part of our public health community.  Schneider's worked recently for papers in Seattle, St. Louis, Baltimore and back to Seattle, but no matter where his feet land, stellar investigations follow.          Right now, it appears that Schneider is staked out…

Treatment of Chronic Otitis Media: Guidelines versus Practice

First of five student guest posts by Kristen Coleman Every morning as I prepare for class, I go through the same internal dialogue, “to wear or not to wear my hearing aide.” I am forced to do this because when I was a child I, like most American children (about 80% by age 3 as estimated by the American Academy of Family Practitioners, AAFP), suffered from otitis media and my treatment resulted in hearing loss. The treatment I underwent was called tympanostomy with ventilation tube insertion, which has rapidly become the most common reason for general anesthesia in children in the United…

Holocaust Denial from the White House

The White House in its statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day engaged in Holocaust denial. Then they doubled down on the action and via Reince Priebus on Meet the Press expressed no regret about the wording which had no mention of the Jews in their supposed "remembrance". This has been criticized from both ends of the political spectrum, from John Podhoretz in Commentary Magazine (a Reagan speechwriter and conservative columnist) to Tim Kaine characterizing it, correctly, as Holocaust denial. You may ask, why is this denial? Is this hyperbole? You may even find the administration excuse…

CALL TO ACTION: Ask your Representative to oppose the H.R. 801 - The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act

From The Alliance for Taxpayer Access: CALL TO ACTION: Ask your Representative to oppose the H.R. 801 - The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act February 11, 2009 Last week, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (Rep. John Conyers, D-MI) re-introduced a bill that would reverse the NIH Public Access Policy and make it impossible for other federal agencies to put similar policies into place. The legislation is H.R. 801: the "Fair Copyright in Research Works Act" (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.801:). All supporters of public access - researchers, libraries, campus…

Memories of War, Part IV (guest post by Mom)

Many of you have been moved by my Mom's five-part guest-blogging on Holocaust Children (part I, part II, part III, part IV and part V), so I asked her to let me reproduce here her wartime story, as it appeared in the first volume in the series We Survived published by the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade. It will appear here in five installments starting Monday and going throughout the week at the same time of day so please come back and you can ask her questions in the comments. Proceed under the fold: Left: Rea in Osijek, in 1941 or 1942. After she left Djakovo, this photograph was…

Seattle Visit: University of Washington's GreenHouse, Part Two

tags: Seattle Washington, Biology Department Greenhouse, University of Washington, poison dart frogs, Dendrobates, Dendrobatidae Captive-bred Dyeing Poison Dart frog, Dendrobates tinctorius, from the Guianas of northeastern South America. Image: GrrlScientist 29 September 2008 [larger view]. This is part two of my UW Biology Department greenhouse photoessay. In part one, I showed you seedpods and a lot of flowers (some of which need to be identified), but in this, the second and last part, I am focusing on The Surprise I kept telling you about. As you can see, the surprise discovery I…

This is a very boring post about very boring creationists doing the same old boring thing. Again.

I knew this was going to happen, but I'm no prophet — it's just what the creationists always do. Frank Pastore follows the lead of our national news media and declares evolution debunked because of recent discoveries in paleontology. You can probably guess which ones. The first is Chororapithecus, the ten million year old jaw fragment with gorilla-like dentition, which suggests that the split between the gorilla-human lineages might have occurred farther back than was believed. There are reasons to be skeptical — the similarities might be an example of convergence — but even if the discovery…

Study: High levels of endocrine-disrupting activity found downstream from fracking disposal site

Lead isn’t the only toxin threatening the safety of community drinking water. A recent study on water located downstream from a West Virginia fracking disposal site uncovered levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals high enough to adversely impact the aquatic animals living there. And that means human health could be at risk too. “We can’t make any direct (human health) assumptions about this particular water,” said study co-author Susan Nagel, an associate professor in the University of Missouri School of Medicine’s Division of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health. “But we certainly…

I get email

Here's an odd correlation for you: whenever I take a swipe at the foolishness of Scott Adams, I get a major uptick in the usual trickle of Christian email. I don't quite see Adams as a friend to Christianity, although he does seem to foster the kind of shallow thinking on which religiosity thrives. Anyway, for your delectation, I've put a couple of samples below. First, here's something we can expect to see lots of in the next year. I'm no fan of Obama myself, but this kind of silly slander is contemptible. Who is Barack Obama? Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was…

Ask Ethan #2: Meet the Oort Cloud

"The great oak of Astronomy has been felled, and we are lost without its shadow." -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, on the passing of Jan Oort In our new semi-regular series, readers from all over the world (and in low-Earth orbit, too, because why not!) are invited to send in their questions and suggestions for a chance to have them answered here on this blog! Today, our question comes from Robert Meegan, who asks, Have any Oort Cloud objects been detected in situ, as opposed to when they whipped through the inner solar system as comets? I would presume that any detection would need to be…

The Last 100 Years: The 2000s and WMAP

The last 100 years have brought us from a Universe no bigger than the Milky Way ruled by Newton's gravity to a vast, expanding one with hundreds of billions of galaxies, covered in dark matter, beginning with the big bang, which was likely caused by inflation, and which will end in a freezing cold death as the galaxies accelerate away from one another, off into infinity. We gained and confirmed a new theory of gravity; we learned how all the elements in the Universe were made. We detected neutrinos from an exploding star hundreds of thousands of light years away. And we walked on the Moon.…

Weekend Diversion: What they never tell you about Teaching

"I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit." -John Steinbeck One of the great joys I've gotten to experience from my life has gotten to come not only from teaching, but from watching what my students do long after they've left my classroom for good. It's not a joy (with its ups-and-downs) exclusive to me, as Musiq Soulchild would sing you with his song, Teachme. Yes, I've had former students who are currently…

Oppy Surveys the Work of Atheist Philosophers

Philosopher Graham Oppy, whose book Arguing About Gods is well worth reading, has written an interesting survey of work by atheist philosophers over the last sixty years. Here's a taste: The last sixty years have been a very fertile period for academic atheist philosopher critiques of theistic arguments. Among large-scale works that have attempted to establish that theistic arguments are unsuccessful—i.e. not such as ought to persuade non-believers to change their minds—we should certainly mention: The Existence of God (Wallace Matson, 1967), The Miracle of Theism (John Mackie, 1982),…

Links Dump Backlog: 7/24/09

The del.icio.us automatic blog posting that usually produces the daily links dump posts here has been broken during the recent ScienceBlogs upgrade. The links dump posts from last Thursday on didn't happen, but we've kludged up a way to get that material back. These are the links that should've posted on Friday the 24th: Scientists capitalize on extended solar eclipse Jay Pasachoff leads another eclipse expedition taking students to China. And manages not to mention any of them by name in the press release. (tags: science astronomy education academia) Diary of Trade Book (Newton and the…

This is why I blog: gratitude from stellar student, recovering addict seeking grad school advice

[This 23rd July entry is being reposted today under the ScienceBlogs "Education" channel as its original categorization there fell victim to gremlins in the upgraded Movable Type script.] At the outset, let me say that I have immense respect and admiration for a special commenter. In last week's Friday Fermentable post, we took the 40th anniversary of the Apollo XI mission as an opportunity to draw attention to Buzz Aldrin's newly-released autobiography, Magnificent Desolation. In it, Aldrin describes his lifelong battle with depression and alcoholism and how he has managed both challenges.…

It's always good to go straight to the source

I tell other scientists all the time that their work is being appropriated by creationists who barely understand it, and that it is getting distorted to support bogus pseudoscience. Whenever you see a creationist quote a genuine science paper, you can pretty much trust that it is going to be mangled beyond recognition. For instance, Jonathan MacLatchie raised a peculiar collection of questions to grill me with; here's one of them. 9) If, as is often claimed by Darwinists, the pharyngeal pouches and ridges are indeed accurately thought of as vestigial gill slits (thus demonstrating our shared…

Rubber hand feels real for amputees

One of the bigger challenges facing researchers who are developing artificial limbs is to create prostheses that not only act but also feel like real limbs. This is especially true for the hand, which is one of the most sensitive parts of the human body, and although advanced prosthetic hands with fully articulated digits which move independently of one another are now available, they would be far more useful if they provided the user with sensory feedback. Last year, surgeons from the Rehabilitation Center of Chicago made some progress towards this goal: they fitted amputee Claudia Mitchell…

From Galileo to Cassini -- 400 Years of Saturn's Rings

By Dr. Mark R. Showalter Planetary Astronomer at the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute In 1609, Galileo introduced to the world his new invention, the astronomical telescope. It opened up new opportunities to explore a territory that all prior generations had regarded as familiar--the night sky. In short order, he was making major discoveries. But the sky is very big and Galileo's telescope was very small. He had to choose his targets carefully. In that context, Saturn was nothing special, the least of the known planets, just a bright point in a black…

Scientist VERY hard at work: Great interview with CDC's head virologist

Wanted to draw attention to this wonderful interview with CDC virologist Ruben Donis, chief of the molecular virology and vaccines branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from ScienceInsider. It's echoes nicely some of the themes I and others have been trying to hit in this swine flu coverage: the mystery about where this virus came from and where it is going; its weird novelty  — and the temptations and difficulties in trying to explain that novelty; the huge advantage we have in spotting and studying it because of the "false alarms" from SARS and avian flu; and the…

Can Copyright Evolve With The Internet?

Today seems like a really good day to try and start a conversation about the complex relationship between copyright and the internet. This morning, the New York Times website posted an article about concerns that for-profit publications have when it comes to other websites excerpting their writing. Late last week, Creative Commons officially launched their CC0 license, which is designed to make it easier for content creators to officially place their work in the public domain. Brian Stelter's New York Times article notes that a number of traditional publishers are starting to worry about…

Linnaeus on evolution by hybridism

It is often stated in the literature that Linnaeus late in life turned to an evolutionary view based on hybridisation (e.g., Clausen, Keck and Hiesey 1939). I myself have repeated this, but as always it's worth looking at the actual text. Unfortunately I have so little Latin that I can't even use pig Latin, so it is great to find, yet again, that archive.org has it in an English edition published in 1783. I love archive.org. Deeply. It's in the context of what he bases his system on, the "fructification" of the plants; i.e., the reproductive organs: 26. The PRINCIPLE of Fructification, the…

Santo 2006 - indexing Vanuatu's biodiversity

The Museum of Natural History in Paris (where I drank cognac at 2am when I visited) is coordinating an extensive indexing of the species biodiversity of the island of Santo in Vanuatu, with 170 researchers attempting since September to identify and describe all the species in its rainforest and coral reefs before global warming destroys them. Tierramérica has the report, below the fold. Pacific Island Gives Clues to Tropical Biodiversity By Julio Godoy* Around 100 new species have been classified in just a month on the island of Espiritu Santo island in the South Pacific, which faces…

Report from the Waxman Hearing

Well, I got off jury duty and managed to get over to the Hill after all. As I write this, the Waxman hearing is still ongoing, and you can watch it here. I have it on good authority from three people that in the opening statements, Rep. Jim Cooper, a Democrat, actually waved a copy of The Republican War on Science around. I'll be looking for that on the replay. [Never mind, here's an image of it. - ed] As I rode cabs to and from the hearing, I heard radio news coverage both times talking about it--and that itself is a big achievement, it seems to me. Finally, Democrats can set the agenda,…

New study names a Titanoboa menu item

A restoration of Titanoboa (foreground) in its natural setting. (By Jason Bourque, image from Wikipedia.) When I was growing up I used to spend hours poring over the Time/Life series of nature books in my little library, absolutely enthralled by images of strange creatures from all over the world, but one photograph was particularly arresting. A grainy black-and-white double-page spread showed an anaconda that had wrapped its crushing coils around a caiman and a tree, slowly squeezing the life out of the crocodylian. Without any frame of reference for size it was easy to envision the two…

Friday Sprog Blogging: where's the top?

Walking across the field to school the other morning: Younger offspring: How come the earth is round but when you're walking on it, it looks flat? Dr. Free-Ride: The earth is pretty big. We're so tiny compared to the earth that the curvature isn't something we notice. Elder offspring: This field would barely be a speck on even a really big globe. Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah, so it's not a big enough chunk of globe that you appreciate the roundness. Younger offspring: OK. And where's the top? Elder offspring: Huh? Younger offspring: Is the North Pole the top of the earth, or is the South Pole really…

'Chronic' Lyme disease article in Journal of Medical Ethics called unethical.

You may recall my examination earlier this month of a paper by Johnson and Stricker published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. In my view, it was not a terribly well-argued or coherent example of a paper on medical ethics. Now, judging from an eLetter to the journal from Anne Gershon, the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), there is reason to question the factual accuracy of that paper, too. The Johnson and Stricker paper promised an exploration of ethical issues around an antitrust investigation launched by the Connecticut Attorney General examining the IDSA's…

What if science were like sports?

Christina Agapakis joins us from the ever-inspired Oscillator, her synthetic biology blog at ScienceBlogs. When she’s not reshuffling DNA sequences in her lab at Harvard, she’s usually there making Lady Gaga video spoofs, or something obvious like that. I'm almost embarrassed for eleven year old me, in my pink leggings, so enthusiastically raising my hand when Mrs. Foster visited our 6th grade class and asked if any of us wanted to be part of the Science Olympiad team. But then I get mad at myself for being embarrassed; first of all pink leggings are adorable, and second of all the chance to…

The History of Tubulin Detyrosination

(OK folks I'll be back this afternoon, this post is the last in serries of entries from my old blogs ... and this one is a hard core science entry from about 1 year ago ... enjoy) Late last week I posted an entry on tubulin modification ... an area of research that one well respected cytoskeletal researcher described as "a cottage industry based on antibodies" ... Due to increased interest in the field, I'll recount here the tale of how tubulin modifications were first discovered. In 1973 group of researchers (a team from Argentina!) decided to test whether proteins were repaired in neurons…

A Dichotomous Key to Circus of the Spineless #32

Welcome to the 32nd edition of the Circus of the Spineless. It our distinguished pleasure to be host here at Deep Sea News. To make it easier for you to navigate through 95%+ of the diversity of animal life, I've developed a dichotomous key to help you work through it. Naturalists will undoubtedly be familiar with such a tool, but for the beginner I provide a brief overview. Read both parts of the number and follow path that best describes the post you are looking for. If there is a number at the end, go to that number and repeat until you come to a post you are attempting to identify. Simple…

Where is the accelerometer in an ipod touch?

There are several free iPhone-iPod Touch apps that let you look at the acceleration of the device using the built in accelerometer. I was planning on reviewing some of these free apps, but I didn't. When I started playing around with them, it was clear that I needed some way to make a constant acceleration. There are two simple ways to do this - drop it, or spin it in a circle. I decided to go with the circular motion option because I like my iPod and because Steve Jobs told me to. While playing with this, I realized that the acceleration depends on the distance of the sensor from the…

DWFTTW - The saga continues.

Wow. I wrote a post about Directly Down Wind Faster Than The Wind (DWFTTW) vehicles. At the time of this post, there are 37 comments for the original post. That is way more than I expected. This is very popular topic. Clearly, it brings a lot attention to Dot Physics. The first question - is this the kind of attention a naked person running through campus gets or is it a different kind of attention? I really don't mind either way. I am going to try to look through all the posted material and see if I can add or subtract anything for the discussion. First - the parameters of the…

Time never forgot the land

Modern civilization has extremely deleterious consequences in regards to species richness, primarily through destruction of habitat. Because of these negative aspects of modernity hunter-gatherers have been idealized as a model of humanity at equilibrium with their ecology. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus lays out the revisionist, and to some extent now mainstream, argument that the American wilderness which European settlers encountered was actually an instance of "re-wilding" in the wake of native demographic collapse due to disease. But setting this case aside, what…

Comments of the Week #141: Christmas edition

"I think that Walter Schirra aboard Mercury 8 was the first of the astronauts to use the code name 'Santa Claus' to indicate the presence of flying saucers next to space capsules." -Maurice Chatelain Well, here we are: December 25th, Christmas day, here at Starts With A Bang! Whether you're a Santa, a Scrooge or anywhere in between when it comes to the generosity of your holiday spirit, I've got some good things for you. First, there's a brand new Starts With A Bang podcast for you to enjoy, on whether our Universe itself could be the inside of a black hole. And second, as usual, there's a…

Question for the Day

If you decry the practice of "legislating from the bench," then why is it OK to legislate from the corporate boardroom?

If reason and science won't work, let's tug the heartstrings

I lifted this from the fourth in a series on "why we vaccinate" from Elyse the Skepchick's blog. The first one is here.

Darwin's Universe: Evolution from A to Z (a free excerpt)

... from the National Center for Science Education. Click the picture to get the PDF of Darwin's Universe: Evolution from A to Z .

DOJ Argues That Patenting the Sun Is a Bad Idea

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an amicus brief which argued that naturally-occurring DNA sequences can't be patented: Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature.... "We acknowledge that this conclusion is contrary to the longstanding practice of the Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the practice of the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies that have in the past sought and obtained patents for isolated genomic DNA," the brief…