Over 100 million children in the developing world need–but lack access to–vision correction. Today Dow Corning and the Centre for Vision in the Developing World announced that they have teamed up to do something about it. Through the use of silicones, a new initiative called Child ViSion will provide 100 million self-adjustable eyeglasses to children by 2020, which reportedly correct nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, and age-related difficulty focusing:

The Child ViSion initiative will design, manufacture and distribute a child-specific version of self-adjustable eyeglasses to children in the developing world. The aim is to increase the effectiveness of classroom-based education by improving children’s ability to see the blackboard from which they are being taught.

Read more about this terrific program here.

The disaster is still unfolding in Japan. The earthquake, the flood, the cyclical escalating and abating of the radioactive threat from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant… it seems that everyone wants to help, but many are unsure how (I have a list of charities to which you can donate if you want to help financially). But one thing I can be pretty sure of is that not all advice is as good as others, and some is downright dangerous.

My friend, the Australian skeptic Richard Saunders, sent me a note letting me know that if I am worried about radiation poisoning or radiation induced cancers, homeopathy has me covered. The group Homeopathy Plus in Australia has sent out a note telling people they can use homeopathic "remedies" to alleviate radiation sickness, including such things as strontium-carbonicum, phosphorus, and, bizarrely, X-rays.

X-rays? Seriously? Since X-rays are a form of light, it seems weird, even for homeopathy, to claim they can make a diluted solution based on them. If you expose water to X-rays, the molecules of H2O will shatter, but then recombine, leaving… water. Of course, that’s ...

Richard Carrier (author of Sense and Goodness Without God) has a longish blog post up about moral ontology, well worth reading if you’re into that sort of thing. (Via Russell Blackford.) Carrier is a secular materialist, but a moral realist: he thinks there are such things as “moral facts” that are “true independent of your opinion or culture.”

Carrier goes to great lengths to explain that these moral facts are not simply “out there” in the same sense that the laws of physics arguably are, but rather that they express relationships between the desires of particular humans and external reality. (The useful analogy is: “bears are scary” is a true fact if you are talking about you or me, but not if you are talking about Superman.)

I don’t buy it. Not to be tiresome, but I have to keep insisting that you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip. You can’t use logic to derive moral commandments solely from facts about the world, even if those facts include human desires. Of course, you can derive moral commandments if you sneak in some moral premise; all I’m trying to say here is that we should be upfront about what those moral premises are, and not try to hide them underneath a pile of unobjectionable-sounding statements.

As a warm-up, here is an example of logic in action:

• All men are mortal.
• Socrates is a man.
• Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The first two statements are the premises, the last one is the conclusion. (Obviously there are logical forms other than syllogisms, but this is a good paradigmatic example.) Notice the crucial feature: all of the important terms in the conclusion (“Socrates,” “mortal”) actually appeared somewhere in the premises. That’s why you can’t derive “ought” from “is” — you can’t reach a conclusion containing the word “ought” if that word (or something equivalent) doesn’t appear in your premises.

This doesn’t stop people from trying. Carrier uses the following example (slightly, but not unfairly, paraphrased):

• Your car is running low on oil.
• If your car runs out of oil, the engine will seize up.
• You don’t want your car’s engine to seize up.
• Therefore, you ought to change the oil in your car.

At the level of everyday practical reasoning, there’s nothing wrong with this. But if we’re trying to set up a careful foundation for moral philosophy, we should be honest and admit that the logic here is obviously incomplete. There is a missing premise, which should be spelled out explicitly:

• We ought to do that which would bring about what we want.

Crucially, this is a different kind of premise than the other three in this argument; they are facts about the world that could in principle be tested experimentally, while this new one is not.

Someone might suggest that this is isn’t a premise at all, it’s simply the definition of “ought.” The problem there is that it isn’t true. You can’t claim that Wilt Chamberlain was the greatest basketball player of all time, and then defend your claim by defining “greatest basketball player of all time” to be Wilt Chamberlain. When it comes to changing your oil, you might get away with defining “ought” in this way, but when it comes to more contentious issues of moral obligation, you’re going to have to do better.

Alternatively, you’re free to say that this premise is just so obviously true that no reasonable person could possibly disagree. Perhaps so, and that’s an argument we could have. But it’s still a premise. And again, when we get to issues more contentious than keeping your engine going, it will be necessary to make those premises explicit if we want to have a productive conversation. Once our premises start distinguishing between the well-being of individuals and the well-being of groups, you will inevitably find that they begin to seem a bit less self-evident.

Observe the world all you like; you won’t get morality off the ground until you settle on some independent moral assumptions. (And don’t tell me that “science makes assumptions, too” — that’s obviously correct, but the point here is that morality requires assumptions in addition to the assumptions we need to get science off the ground.) We can have a productive conversation about what those assumptions should be once we all admit that they exist.

Unfortunately, not a single Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee seems to agree. The Hill reports that all 31 House Republicans rejected amendments calling for “Congress to accept the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring, it is caused in large part by human activity and it is a threat to human health.”

H/T Political Wire

Steve DeGroof over at MadArtLabs (who brought us Felicia Day as a counterexample to homeopathy) has knocked another one out of the park: Astronom Os!

My love for geeky breakfast cereal is a matter of record, so it’s no surprise that I would totally eat Astronom Os. And I would do the connect-the-dots game on the back too; the Big Dipper would be helpful in pouring the milk.

I would also be happy to help market these. As for a slogan, that’s easy: "Astonom Os: breakfast of the stars!"

Or, "Contains elements forged in the fires of a supernova!"

Or, "Get your RDA of the most stable nuclide!"

Or, "Not Taurus, Torus!"

Or, "Retains low ductility for statistically significant durations even when submersed in lactic liquids!"

That last one will sell 106s of boxes.

Today, at 23:21 UT (19:21 p.m. Eastern US time), the Sun’s odometer resets, and it once again finds itself at the celestial coordinates of 0h0m0s Right Ascension, 0°0m0s declination.

Or, in other words, it’s the vernal equinox!

A lot of folks will say this is the first day of spring. I think it makes more sense to call this the mid-point of spring — as do many countries — but I’m less inclined to argue about it as much as I used to. What the heck; it’s getting warmer in the northern hemisphere after quite a long and adventurous winter, and I went biking in the sunshine yesterday. It’s sure starting to feel like spring. Good enough for me!

In real terms, the equinox means a few things, too:

Day and night are about the same length (12 hours each)… although the Earth’s non-circular orbit and atmospheric distortion mess that up a bit.

The Sun rises pretty much due east and sets due west.

In the northern hemisphere the length of daylight is increasing the fastest. That sounds funny, but it’s not too hard to understand. In the northern hemisphere, just after the winter solstice, ...

You know what? Super or not, the full Moon rising into a thin cloud bank is always going to be cool.

I just took this from the end of my driveway, with my camera on a cheap tripod and a few seconds exposure. No tricks, no Photoshopping (except to crop it a bit). You can almost hear the werewolf howling, can’t you?

What’s the News: Japan has finally called in the robots to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, dispatching this red AKA Monirobo that is equipped with radiation detectors, temperature and humidity sensors, and a 3-D camera. What’s the Olds: This particular robot is one of a suite of earthquake rescue bots that Japan has at its disposal.
80beats has covered Japanese robotic wonders such as the first robot marathon runners and catwalk-strutting robots as well. (If you’re wondering why such a tech-savvy, robot-friendly country didn’t deploy robots earlier, Reuters has a couple of guesses: old, robot-unfriendly reactor design, and a surprisingly anachronistic tendency to leave humans in charge of some easily automated tasks, “such as operating elevators and warning motorists of road construction.”)
Japanese engineers have also created robots that express emotion.
And one nuclear facility is mere parsley on the fish compared to Japan’s big goal of launching a robot to the moon. Not So Fast: It isn’t clear how much work (if any) the AKA Monirobo is accomplishing thus far.

Image: Asahi Shimbun

UPDATE:  SOLVED by Patrick at 12:17 CDT

Welcome to another scintillating riddle.  Okay, maybe “scintillating” isn’t the correct word, but I feel like patting myself on the back today.

On this day in 1915 Pluto was photographed for the first time.  Of course, nobody realized they had photographed the dwarf planet, and it was officially discovered 15 years later.

Ready now for your riddle?  I have a nice one lined up for you today.  Get your neurons fired up; you’re looking for something in the real world.

Found on a constellation card published in London in 1825

This is a modern discovery.

You’re looking for a different kind of Diva…

…and she’s not alone.

Some people say this is like a smoking chimney.

Others say it’s a ticking bomb.

It’s also been likened to a gun barrel pointed right at Earth.

NASA/Swift/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith and John Jones

It contributes to the formation of a shape very common in nature.

We are watching this Diva’s violent death throes, and the death throes of its companion.

In astronomical terms, this object is in our back yard.

Yves Grosdidier (University of Montreal and Observatoire de Strasbourg), Anthony Moffat (Universitie de Montreal), Gilles Joncas (Universite Laval), Agnes Acker (Observatoire de Strasbourg), and NASA

That should do it.  You know where to find me, so come on and talk to me.

Top ten picks

For obvious reasons, this week’s picks will take a slightly different format. First up is a list of my favourite coverage of the Japanese crisis, followed by five other top picks.

Explainers

Maggie Koerth-Baker wrote the best “explainer”, heads and shoulders above the rest in terms of clarity. Is everything you know about nuclear power plants out of the Simpsons? Start here.
Other good explainers: John Timmer at Ars Technica, The Economist, and an excellent, unique video explainer from the Guardian, featuring Ian Sample looking over at the week’s events.
Andrew Maynard was one of the first with a good guide on the health effects of radiation. Also have a look at this Knight Tracker post for links to other good (and very bad) explainers on how radiation is measured and what it does to you.
Chris Rowan wrote a great explainer about the earthquake and tsunami at Scientific American
Cristine Russell compares the Fukushima situation to Three Mile Island, which she reported on, and suggests some good sources

Reporting

Geoff Brumfiel and David Cyranoski absolutely killed with their reporting over at Nature. Their landing page on the situation would probably be my first port of call ...

On Thursday, March 10, the Space Shuttle Endeavour began its last 5 km trek to the launch pad.

When it launches on April 19 (scheduled at 19:48 EDT), Endeavour will bring parts and supplies to the International Space Station, as usual, but it will also be carrying the 7 ton the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, a scientific instrument that, among many goals, will try to detect antimatter (to solve a long-standing puzzle of why so little exists in our Universe) and look for the subatomic signature of dark matter.

This will be Endeavour’s final scheduled flight.

Image Credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann

This is so cool!  If you’re on NASA’s mailing list, you’ve already seen this:

From NASA's website - available from NASA as a wallpaper

Jupiter Spacecraft Nearing Completion

NASA’s fully assembled Juno spacecraft is currently undergoing testing at Lockheed Martin Space Systems near Denver. Technicians are inspecting some of the spacecraft’s components. All three solar array wings can be seen installed and stowed, and the spacecraft’s large high-gain antenna in place on top. Juno is scheduled to ship from Lockheed Martin’s facility to Kennedy Space Center in April, where it will undergo final preparations for launch in August 2011. The solar-powered spacecraft will orbit Jupiter’s poles to find out more about the gas giant’s origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

Here’s a link to NASA’s Juno information.  I’d highly recommend spending some time at the website.

I’ve just had the pleasure of reviewing National Geographic’s latest on the Kids list, 13 Planets by David A. Aguilar.

Image shamelessly lifted from National Geographic Kids website

Stuffed full of amazing, photo-realistic artwork, images, and up-to-the-minute facts, this book presents our solar system in an interesting, engaging manner that manages to completely escape patronization.  Including a look at the Sun, comets, and how the solar system formed (among other related topics), 13 Planets is a brilliantly balanced work.  Included in each planet’s information is the mythology behind its namesake, and there’s even a bit on fun astronomy-related activities you can enjoy with your children (without having to take out a loan or risk blowing up the house).

David Aguilar is the author of three other children’s astronomy books, including Superstars and Planets, Stars, and Galaxies.  His artwork has been featured on The History Channel and CNN along with magazines such as Time, USA Today, and our beloved National Geographic.

I have to admit, I have never been more impressed with a children’s book.

National Geographic is one of the world’s largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions.  Inspiring us since 1888, NatGeo is a leader in exploration, conservation, and discovery.

National Geographic Kids – great site for the kids.

UPDATE: Deorbit burn has been completed on time.  Discovery is on her way home.

Discovery is home safely and this puts an end to an amazing spacecraft. WELCOME HOME!

It is a pity the mission was marred by the comments from a high political figure but I guess we should be used to that by now.

Click here to view the embedded video.

STS-133 Landing (Discovery)

Current Status (1st opportunity): Orbit 202 11:57 EST @ KSC with a deorbit burn at about 10:52

Next Attempt if necessary: Orbit 203 (~Orbit 202 + 90 mins)

Landing on Runway 15 Note: winds are an issue but are within limits at this time.

View the ground tracks.

NASA TV Stills reload page to refresh image Webcam Image courtesy: NASA/Kennedy Space Center

NOAA’s Forecast:

Today: Mostly sunny, with a high near 77. Windy, with a southeast wind between 10 and 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph.

To keep current with the news about the landing, I recommend you go to NASA-TV.  The Landing Blog will be live at about 8:30 am EST.

Image Credits: NASA / NOAA

ISS and Shuttle paired up in the night sky. Click for larger. Image by Dr. Marco Langbroek Location: Leiden, Netherlands SatTrackCam Leiden station (b)log

Ok folks this is your last chance to see the ISS and Discovery fly through the night sky.

Discovery is scheduled to land tomorrow ending a magnificent run for science.  NASA  doesn’t even have to double-count the accomplishments to pretend they did a great stroke of business, because Discovery’s accomplishments are indeed real and outstanding.

I hope to have clear skies and hope you do as well to be able to see the pair pass over head, quite a sight.

To find out when a pass will occur at your location you have a few options (don’t forget to enter your location as necessary!):

Heavens Above

Spaceweather.com

NASA

Want to see more pictures from SatTrackCam Leiden station (b)log?  Click here.

When we think of space exploration, many of us think about interstellar travel.  That’s travel from one star to another.  The logical choice for a first try would be to send a manned probe to the Alpha Centauri system, or to Proxima Centauri, since these are the closest stars to ours.  After all, Proxima Centauri is only 4.24 light years from the sun, and when you’re used to dealing with distances in the millions of light years, 4.24 sounds doable.  It sounds easy.

NOAA image, Alpha Centauri

Let’s stop a minute and think about that.  We’re currently at the stage of sending unmanned probes into space for interplanetary exploration, and if we were to continue with it, we might be ready to send a manned probe to Mars in a few years.  We know that we are approaching the level where that will be possible, so why not interstellar travel?

First off, because of the distance to be covered, a manned interstellar craft would have to be generational.  That means that YOU won’t make it to the next star, but your descendants (born on the trip) might get there.  We’re no where near capable of traveling at, or close to, the speed of light.  Just the fuel needed to make the trip is unbelievable.  In fact, at our current technology (even projecting a bit into the future), it would take 100 times the energy output of the entire planet to fuel a voyage to Proxima Centauri.  We just don’t have the resources available on this planet.  But let’s pretend we’ve discovered a great, new source of energy which allows us to make the trip, plus maintain life on the ship, plus lets us slow down as we reach our target.  Are we getting there?

No.  Look at Voyager I for a minute; it’s currently traveling the fastest of any space craft out there, and it wouldn’t even reach Proxima Centauri for another 72,000 years.  Granted, we could do better than Voyager now, with our current technology; but not so you would really notice a difference.  If we could build a generational ship capable of making the trip (and manage to solve the other myriad physical, social, and psychological problems), think of how many generations it would take to make the trip.  With that much time in space, and the unfortunately restricted gene pool, would we even recognize what would eventually crawl off that ship?  Let’s face it; that would cause some definite speciation… and speciation is the process by which new species are formed.  You can’t argue with that; it’s just the way it works.

Many scientists now believe that we will be forever restricted to our own solar system.  That interstellar travel will be forever beyond our reach.  Somehow, I don’t think so.  The entire history of our species has been spent beating our heads aggressively against brick walls.  I think we’ll get there some day.  Our species never has known when to quit.  If we stopped picking at a problem just because it was “impossible”, we’d still be floating around in the primordial ooze.

We’ll get there.

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. This reminds me so much of Homo sapiens

Effects of Solicitor Sex and Attractiveness on Receptivity to Sexual Offers: A Field Study.

“Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers have been found in previous studies conducted in the United States. However, this effect has never been replicated in another culture, and the impact of the attractiveness of the solicitor remains in question. An experiment was conducted in France in which male and female confederates of average versus high attractiveness approached potential partners of the opposite sex (120 males and 120 females) and asked them: “Will you come to my apartment to have a drink?” or “Would you go to bed with me?” The great majority of the men were willing to have a sexual liaison with a woman, especially when she was physically attractive. Women were more disinclined to have a drink, and none but one accepted the male’s sexual request. Such results confirm that men are apparently more eager for sexual activity than women are.”

Photo: flickr/jbcurio

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One more video from TEDxCaltech. Danny Hillis is the founder of Thinking Machines, the Long Now Foundation, and Applied Minds. Touching and inspirational.

See also Lenny Susskind’s reminiscences.

The magnitude 8.9 earthquake that hit Japan last night has done a vast amount of damage. I’m seeing lots of information scattered around the web, and figured a post listing them might help.

First, if you need info about the quake, CNET has a long list of links for finding lost loved ones, information on the quake in general, and more.

Second, our own Discover Magazine has an excellent article with the science behind what happened. The article notes that science and engineering prevented this disaster from being a lot worse.

There are many charitable, non-profit organizations that may or will be providing aid and relief. I asked on Twitter which ones people liked, and here are a few. I do not necessarily endorse these groups, but provide this for your information.

Oxfam
The Red Cross has info, and also a page where you can contribute directly to quake relief
Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)
Red Cross through WePay
Global Giving
ShelterBox

Before you donate, please watch this video of the tsunami crashing through Japan:

Yes, those are buildings on fire as they are being swept ...

Oil refineries aflame. Train tracks twisted like string. Buildings ripped from their foundations. Japan’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake has left its mark, especially in the expected death toll of over 1,000 people. This video roundup shows the science behind what happened today in Japan.

Why (Most) Buildings Didn’t Crumble

The death toll is estimated around 1,000, which is bad enough, but it would have been much higher without good engineering, mandated by strict building codes. But these codes haven’t been strict for long. In the 7.3-magnitude Kobe earthquake in 1995, 6,500 Japanese people died, and engineers looked on in horror as many buildings came crashing down; the most deadly ones were built before 1981, when building standards were still lower.

The Kobe tragedy, says The Telegraph‘s Peter Foster, compelled Japanese officials to tighten building regulations for residential offices and transportation infrastructure. Engineers made buildings “earthquake proof” by outfitting them with “deep foundation and massive shock absorbers that dampen seismic energy,” and by enabling the bases of buildings to move “semi-independently to its superstructure, reducing the shaking caused by a quake.” Skyscrapers now sway during an earthquake but don’t collapse, Foster says, ...