Lstrblg

Here’s something to pay attention to: Biofortified, a pro-science group blog that takes on some of the hysteria surrounding GMO food.

Good stuff to know if you are interested in the course of science under the Obama administration at ScienceInsider.

This is the first I’ve heard about asking the Chinese to shuttle our astronauts to space. I wonder where this came from…or if Holdren was just speaking off the top of his head. But why the Chinese when we have a number of home grown outfits, like SpaceX, looking to do the job? Why the Chinese over the Russians, who are particularly good at getting people safely to orbit?

The other question I have is about nukes. I don’t believe we necessarily need new nuclear weapons, but is that the job of the science advisor to decide and not, say, the military? Of course, as Holdren points out, our national labs have a broad research portfolio, not just nukes.

But that’s just one bit of the interview, its fairly in-depth and well worth the read.

And, in other Holdren news, AP is reporting that he has an interest in geoengineering .

I’m a little nervous about fiddling with the global climate, especially before we know exactly how everything plays out. What if we make matters worse? Why not wait until the damage is done? I don’t believe in irreversibility, that just doesn’t make sense…not on a geological scale, at least, but maybe that’s only irreversible on a human scale.

Here’s my plan, millions of acres of space solar panels. We’ll block out a fraction of the sunlight reaching Earth and generate safe, clean power. Sure, you say, we’d never be able to build the x gazillion solar panels we’d need to block the sun. Maybe they don’t have to all be solar panels, maybe its just a few gazillion acres of some sort of dimming fabric…in addition to the solar panels. Think of all the stimulus money that could be spent on the solar/space industry!

If the ISS-near miss last week was any indication, space debris is becoming more of a hazard to orbital navigation. If it isn’t the Chinese blowing up satellites, its the Americans blowing up satellites, or the Russians crashing into satellite*s (“crashing” for the cynically-minded).

The latter event — where a Russian satellite took out an Iridium satellite — is what supposedly caused the debris that made for a dramatic Friday morning for twitterers and ISS crew alike. Especially the crew, of course.

So, this article in Russia Today, says that the Japanese are developing microsatellites to grab debris, presumably, some of the medium-sized pieces, and fall back to earth. The tether idea sounds neat (but the headline sounds vaguely inappropriate).

Japan’s space agency (JAXA) is planning to use microsatellites to clear orbits from space junk. The robotic cleaner grabs debris with a robotic arm and then lunges down to force the dangerous pieces back into atmosphere.

The 140-kilogram device uses electrodynamics tethers to drag down the debris. The tethers are conductive wires with lengths of up to several kilometres, which can be used to generate propulsion.

The Japanese cleaner approaches debris, attaches itself to it with a robotic arm, and then moves to a lower orbit, unwinding the tether from a reel. An electric current is generated in the tether, which interacts with Earth’s magnetic field to create drag, which slows down the debris making it re-enter the atmosphere and subsequently burn up. The satellite, of course, is destroyed in the process as well.

*OK, how cool is it that Iridium had backups parked in orbit already?

Stop. Wait, reverse that. OK…

Another neat Eurekalert! feed story, one that offers tips for catching flies:

Caltech scientists discover mechanism for wind detection in fruit flies

Tiny, lightweight fruit flies need to know when it’s windy out so they can steady themselves and avoid being knocked off their feet or blown off course. But how do they figure out that it’s time to hunker down? According to a team led by California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists reporting in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, the flies have evolved a specialized population of neurons in their antennae that let them know not only when the wind is blowing, but also the direction from which it is coming.

The behavior of fruit flies in the face of a stiff breeze is remarkable in and of itself, notes David J. Anderson, the Roger W. Sperry Professor of Biology at Caltech, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. “We discovered that you can stop a fly dead in its tracks by blowing a gentle stream of air over it,” he explains, adding that the flies’ immobility is so complete, you could pick one up with a pair of chopsticks as long as a steady stream of wind was passing over the insect. Once the wind stops blowing, however, the flies immediately start walking around again.

Here’s a link to the video.

Here’s a nifty flash journey into inner space, reminiscent of Powers of Ten: Nanoreisen.de (via information aesthetics)

Well done bit of animation, but it makes you wonder how much of visionary James Cameron was when he came up with the whole Terminator-POV shot. Its become shorthand for how people/machines of the future will see the world, complete with annotations.

Interesting press release in my morning Eurekalert! feed

In an article published in the April 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers found that teenagers who preferred popular songs with degrading sexual references were more likely to engage in intercourse or in pre-coital activities.

Already, with the euphemisms. What are pre-coital activities? Heavy petting? Badminton?

Writing in the article, Brian A. Primack, MD, EdM, MS, Center for Research on Health Care at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, states, “This study demonstrates that, among this sample of young adolescents, high exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex in popular music was independently associated with higher levels of sexual behavior. In fact, exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex was one of the strongest associations with sexual activity…These results provide further support for the need for additional research and educational intervention in this area.”

If I had known this then, I would have taken extra care in putting together mix tapes for the girls I fancied.

Surveys were completed by 711 ninth-grade students at three large urban high schools. These participants were exposed to over 14 hours each week of lyrics describing degrading sex. About one third had previously been sexually active. Compared to those with the least exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex, those with the most exposure were more than twice as likely to have had sexual intercourse. The relationship between exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex and sexual experience held equally for both young men and women.

Similarly, among those who had not had sexual intercourse, those in the highest third of exposure to lyrics describing degrading sex were nearly twice as likely to have progressed along a noncoital sexual continuum compared to those in the lowest third. Finally, the relationships between exposure to lyrics describing non-degrading sex and sexual outcomes were not significant.

Students reported the number of hours per day that they listen to music and their favorite musical artists. Through a detailed content analysis, the percentage was calculated of each artist’s most popular songs containing lyrics describing degrading sex. An exposure score for lyrics describing degrading sex was then computed by multiplying each student’s hours of music exposure by the percentage of his or her favorite artists’ songs that contain lyrics describing degrading sex.

Oh, OK, I think I found the problem here. They surveyed “711 ninth-grade students at three large urban high schools”…now, I’m no expert on youth culture, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find a song popular among urban high schoolers that wasn’t about degrading sex. Of course kids listen to songs about sex.

When I was a kid, I’d hover over any material, in print, on video or sketched by a 17th c. Dutch Master in the often vain hopes that there would be some sort of sexual content in it. A kid would no sooner pass up a song about deviant sex than they would a Trader Joe’s Vanilla Joe-Joe (Crom, I love them). On the surface, there seems to be some correlation/causation confusion.

And that’s the danger of it. For all I know, this is probably good, legitimate science and there are factors here that just aren’t coming across in a press release. Mark my words, this press release will picked up unedited and regurgitated in news outlets across the land.

It doesn’t help to use phrases like “noncoital sexual continuum” as if that’s a normal everyday figure of speech. What does that mean? It sounds like the leading cause of blindness in teenage Borg. I’m assuming “noncoital sexual continuum” is how we round the bases in science-speak. Does that make it degrading? If so, I don’t know what’s normal.

How do you quantify degrading sexual lyrics, anyway?

“I’m sorry, son, that hip-hop song rates a 6.5 on the Ludacris scale and, well, that’s logarithmic and the logarithm is going to get you. Your mother and I don’t want that sort of thing in the house. You understand? Good, now here’s $20, go see American Pie 7 while your mother and I get our freak on…Gladys, where’s the butter and the Lil Wayne?”

As I mentioned before, I’m not a huge fan of politics…and I’m not a huge fan of when politics gets involved in the sciences. What I am a fan of is government doing its duty to support our infrastructure. That’s why I am…dare I say…hopeful when Obama included this paragraph in his speech:

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act – not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

I come from a family full of engineers — including my wife — so I will instinctively applaud the use of government money to fix our ailing roads, bridges and highways.  Same too, with energy, provided he includes nuclear and (please) space solar power in the mix (a long shot, for sure).

Continue Reading Holding him to it…

That’s Nature‘s take on the topic — and I don’t necessarily doubt it’s accuracy — but I am a hair skeptical.  That is, Nature says NIH will get about $2 billion, but if you read the committee report of the The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009, it comes to $3.5 billion.  $1.5 billion for research, $1.5 billion for facilities and $500k for construction on the NIH campus in Bethesda.

There’s a website Readthestimulus.org that is decidedly partisan, but has the actual bill up, nonetheless…searchable too.

NSF gets an infusion of $2.5 billion, according to the report, which is huge given that NSF has always been something of a small fish. (I wonder if I should apply for a grant for a radio show idea…)

[rant]

Now, politically, I’m not a “big government” guy, so I’m sure there’s a lot in the bill I won’t love. In fact, I don’t talk politics much because I don’t care for them. I think government should be there for defense, infrastructure (which is where I put research funding) and justice. Everything else is bread and circuses. My problem with social funding is that the social sciences aren’t like physics and engineering. Things like the “War on Poverty” or the public housing projects decades past end up as well-meaning experiments on the poor. I don’t want people starving on the streets, either, but an elaborate, self-sustaining welfare system isn’t really the answer, either.

That said, if  someone can come up with a healthcare system as good as the interstate system, I’m all for it.

[/rant]