Mutations are as you know a double-edged sword. On the one hand mutations are the stuff of evolution; neutral changes on the molecular or phenotypic level are the result of from mutations, as are changes which enhance fitness and so are driven to fixation by positive selection. On the other hand mutations also tend to cause problems. In fact, mutations which are deleterious far outnumber those which are positive. It is much easier to break complex systems which are near a fitness optimum than it is to improve upon them through random chance. In fact a Fisherian geometric analogy of the affect of genes on fitness implies that once a genetic configuration nears an optimum mutations of larger effect have a tendency to decrease fitness. Sometimes environments and selection pressures change radically, and large effect mutations may become needful. But despite their short term necessity these mutations still cause major problems because they disrupt many phenotypes due to pleiotropy.

But much of the playing out of evolutionary dynamics is not so dramatic. Instead of very costly mutations for good or ill, most mutations may be of only minimal negative effect, especially if they are masked because of recessive expression patterns. That is, only when two copies of the mutation are present does all hell break loose. And yet even mutations which exhibit recessive expression tend to generate some drag on the fitness of heterozygotes. And if you sum small values together you can obtain a larger value. This gentle rain of small negative effect mutations can be balanced by natural selection, which weeds does not smile upon less fit individuals who have a higher mutational load. Presumably those with “good genes,” fewer deleterious mutations, will have more offspring than those with “bad genes.” Because mutations accrue from one generation to the next, and, there is sampling variance of deleterious alleles, a certain set of offspring will always be gifted with fewer deleterious mutations than their siblings. This is a genetics of chance. And so the mutation-selection balance is maintained over time, the latter rising to the fore if the former comes to greater prominence.

The above has been a set of logic inferences from premises. Evolution is about the logic of life’s process, but as a natural science its beauty is that it is testable through empirical means. A short report in Science explores mutational load and fitness, and connects it with the ever popular topic of sexual selection, Additive Genetic Breeding Values Correlate with the Load of Partially Deleterious Mutations:

The mutation-selection–balance model predicts most additive genetic variation to arise from numerous mildly deleterious mutations of small effect. Correspondingly, “good genes” models of sexual selection and recent models for the evolution of sex are built on the assumption that mutational loads and breeding values for fitness-related traits are correlated. In support of this concept, inbreeding depression was negatively genetically correlated with breeding values for traits under natural and sexual selection in the weevil Callosobruchus maculatus. The correlations were stronger in males and strongest for condition. These results confirm the role of existing, partially recessive mutations in maintaining additive genetic variation in outbred populations, reveal the nature of good genes under sexual selection, and show how sexual selection can offset the cost of sex.

Additive genetic variance just refers to the variation of genes which affect the phenotype by independent and usually small effects which sum together to produce the range of variation of the trait. Imagine for example that the range of variation in height within the population was 10 inches, and that there were 10 genes which varied, and that each gene exhibited co-dominance. One could construct a model where every gene pair could add 0, 0.5 or 1 inch to the height independently, so that the maximum height could be constructed by adding 10 inches to the baseline and 1 inch per locus, and the minimum height by adding no inches to the baseline when each locus is homozygous for null alleles.

Mutations can be conceived of in the same manner, with each mutation being a new variant which changes trait value. Even if most of the impact of a mutation is masked there is a small effect in the heterozygote state, and this may serve as a fitness drag. The range in mutational load can then naturally be analogized to additive genetic variance, in this case the trait under consideration ultimately being fitness, mediated through life history and morphological phenotypes.

In this report they focused primarily on the weevil’s ability to obtain resources and transform those resources into size, which correlates with greater sexual access for males and fecundity for females (ergo, greater fitness). They bred various outbred and inbred lineages across families of these weevils, because these sorts of crosses gauge the impact of masked deleterious alleles, which will manifest in homozygote state more often between related pairs who share mutations than unrelated ones. They found a correlation of -0.24 between inbreeding and breeding value; in other words the more inbred the pair the fewer offspring. The impact of these recessively expressed alleles is mitigated in heterozygous individuals, but because of the non-trivial impact the number of these alleles within an individual will determine its fitness all things equal.

Interestingly when background variables were controlled males tended to show the greatest fitness drag due to inbreeding depression. This would comport with models of sexual selection where males justify their expense (because they can not bear offspring) within the population by serving as the perishable dumping grounds of bad genes. In particular in a polygynous population a few healthy males with good genes could give rise to most of the next generation, and so providing the balance of selection to the background mutational rate.

Of course mating patterns vary between taxa. The more reproductive skew there is, in particular for males, the more recourse selection has every generation to dump deleterious alleles via selection. In contrast monogamous populations will have less power to expunge mutations in this fashion because there is more genetic equality across males, the bad will reproduce along with the good, more or less. Therefore a breeding experiment of weevils may have more limited insight than these authors may wish to admit. Geoffrey Miller’s The Mating Mind attempted to take the insights of sexual selection and develop a model of human evolutionary history, but it does not seem that this theory has swept all before it. Only time will tell, but until then more breeding experiments can’t help but clarify where theory goes wrong or right.

Citation: Tomkins, J., Penrose, M., Greeff, J., & LeBas, N. (2010). Additive Genetic Breeding Values Correlate with the Load of Partially Deleterious Mutations Science, 328 (5980), 892-894 DOI: 10.1126/science.1188013

UPDATE:  SOLVED at 12:18 CDT by Sean

Is everybody up and huddled over your cup of caffeine?  Got at least one eye open?  Well, get that cortex cerebri up and perky, turn off the auto pilot, shake out the cobwebs (but don’t scare the spider), and come play “riddle” with me.

Today’s riddle answer is a “thing”, not an event.

It is composed of many different parts, but we often think of it as a whole.

It was not known per se to ancient man.

When the existence of today’s answer was proposed, it caused quite a storm of controversy even though…

… the idea of its existence was kicked around since the 2nd millennium BCE.

Study of today’s answer has attracted many of the greatest minds since antiquity.

You’ll see this, in whole or in part, referenced in literature quite often.

While the overwhelming majority of the mass of today’s answer is visible to the unaided eye, only a small percentage of its individual pieces can be seen without a telescope.

Today’s answer is home to a beloved diva.
..

The more we learn, the larger and more complex today’s object becomes.

We continue, even in this decade, to make important discoveries about today’s answer.

BY GEORGE, I THINK YOU'VE GOT IT!

..
There!  That should do it.  I put up a lot of clues today, but remember; a clue can confuse as easily as it can clarify.  You know where I’m hiding, so come lurk with me.

..

(you know I had to include a spider!)

Having come down to Washington this weekend to give a talk, I knew I had to get over to the Smithsonian’s new Hall of Human Origins. The Smithsonian’s Briana Posiner was kind enough to take me around and tell me about what went into its creation. I suppose I could pretend to be a professional museum reviewer and present a lengthy description of the hall, tell you what I liked, give the obligatory “But nothing is ever perfect,” indulge in some musings on the state of museumology, and on and on.

But I’m the sort of person who stops reading a review of a movie or a book as soon as I realize that it sounds fantastic. I don’t want to diminish the experience with rehashed details. So let me just say that if you find yourself on the Mall, just go. It’s got a collection of casts and original fossils on a scale I’ve never seen before. It’s got lifelike sculptures by John Gurche that helped me envision hominids more clearly than ever before. It’s got elegant computer interfaces and movies. It’s got casts of tiny 70,000-year-old snail shells pierced through to serve as jewelry. I’ll shut up now. Just go.

(The assortment of pictures here are from Chip Clark [the really good ones] and me and my Iphone [the really blurry ones])

My friend Deric Hughes tipped me off to a new urban legend spreading around: rainbow clouds appearing in the sky shortly before earthquakes. Lots of folks are buzzing over this on Twitter, for example.

I’ll cut to the chase: these clouds are not physically related to earthquakes in any way. But how I know this will take a wee bit of explanation.

First, what’s a rainbow cloud? As you can see in the picture, it’s a cloud with the colors of the rainbow splashed across it. Sometimes these are called fire clouds, if the shape of the cloud resembles a fire (like in the picture above).

Second, what causes this effect? It’s pretty simple, actually. Ice crystals in the cloud act as little prisms, breaking up the sunlight into its component colors and spreading them out. It’s essentially the same thing that causes "real" rainbows, except with ice and not water droplets. The angle between the Sun, the cloud, and you is important as well, but the essential ingredients needed for this effect are icy clouds and sunlight. That’s it.

Clouds with ice crystals happen all the time, and these rainbow effects (like sundogs, halos, and many others) are really common. In fact, for me it’s rare not to see something like this at least once a week, and more often in the winter. Even in the summer, high clouds can create these pretty events.

So what does this have to do with earthquakes?

Here’s a hint: nothing. What’s going on here is that people are seeing these clouds, and then within a day or two experience an earthquake. This links the two things in people’s minds. This isn’t surprising, since there’s a strong human tendency to link events together even if they’re unrelated; if one thing happens after another then we tend to think it was caused by (or is at least related to) that earlier event.

But this is a logical fallacy, which even has a wonderful Latin name: post hoc, ergo propter hoc, which means after this, therefore because of this. Sometimes two events which happen close together in time are related, but most of the time they aren’t. The hard part is telling the difference.

In the case of these clouds, I can be nearly 100% certain they are unrelated to earthquakes. Why? Because these clouds are super common, so you could tie them to anything. I saw a rainbow cloud, and then stepped in dog poop! I saw a rainbow cloud, and then found a dollar in the street! I saw a rainbow cloud, and then there was an earthquake!

And remember, earthquakes are common as well. Even big ones happen all the time; magnitude 6 or greater earthquakes happen three times a week on average somewhere in the world. And, of course, small earthquakes are even more common; in just the United States alone there are more than 50 noticeable earthquakes every single day!

That ups the odds considerably.

That’s why urban legends like this one persist; someone gets this idea, and it’s quickly "confirmed" because someone sees a cloud and feels an earthquake. But they’re totally unrelated. It’s a natural and understandable tendency, but like an optical illusion you have to understand it’s your brain playing tricks on you.

Misconceptions like this never die; I know this for a fact because I wrote about this very topic almost exactly two years ago, in fact. As I said in that article:

I see things like this all the time, because I do something a lot of folks don’t do: I look up. Seriously, it’s that simple. When you do that, you get to see halos, sundogs, and arcs quite often. It’s usually in the winter, but it doesn’t have to be. You just need high, icy clouds.

In most cases, I think the antidote for legends like this one is simply paying attention. Don’t just go along for the ride! Look up! Look around! The world really is actually a really cool place, and it does pretty well without us needing to add any artificial connections to it.

Well, what can I say about this?

That’s me! Kinda. Pixbymaia on Flickr posted this along with Lego doppelgangers of several other scientists. Pretty cool! But in real life I’m even less well-rounded.

David writes, “My tattoos each mark–although in rather oblique and coded ways–life events, or at least transitions that are important to me (several are a rebus for my 1999 dissertation in post-structuralist political philosophy). This 10th tattoo, of Hemoglobin A, perhaps requires less decoding than many. Over the last couple years, I have had the opportunity to work with some amazing people, on the computer science side of things, who have built the world’s fastest supercomputer–called Anton, after so-called ‘father of microbiology’ Antonie van Leeuwenhoek–which is highly specialized for computing molecular dynamics. As a gesture to this opportunity, I commemorate it with a molecular rendering (of the PDB chemical 2W6V, using VMD and the NewCartoon rendering style) of the sort that the chemist who do the actual MD often look at. Of course, Hemoglobin is a well-known molecule to laypersons, and it is one that is easy enough to give a metaphorical or mimetic sense to; the molecule is inscribed above my heart, whose function is largely to pump around oxygen-carrying Hemoglobin (hence giving my body life, vitality, energy, etc).”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.

[Update (17:00 MT): I did it! Just saw Venus, with the Sun still more than 34° above the horizon. It was very faint and difficult, but once I spotted it I had it nailed. Persistence pays off, me droogs.]

On Twitter last night I mentioned that the thin crescent Moon was near Venus at sunset, and I got a lot of replies from people who ran outside to see. That was pretty nice!

But that was just after the Sun had set for me here in Boulder, when the sky was getting darker and Venus was easy to spot. But Venus can be seen in broad daylight, if you know where to look! Today is a good day to try, because the Moon is still near the planet, and the Moon is slightly easier to find.

My advice is to try sometime after local noon. Go outside and find the Sun. Duh, that should be easy enough. At about 1:00 local time for you it should be in high in the south. This will put Venus and the Moon about 30° to the left (if you are in the northern hemisphere; reverse all this for the southern). When I make a fist with my arm fully outstretched, it spans about 10°. I have a big hand, so YMMV. But something like three fist-spans away from the Sun, parallel with the horizon, you should be able to see a very thin crescent Moon. It won’t be easy to spot; binoculars might help. Be careful not to look at the Sun though! [Edited to add: don't let kids or people inexperienced with binoculars try this; if they look at the Sun through the binocs Bad Things can happen. Looking at the sky won't hurt, but looking right at the Sun will potentially damage your eye. In fact, your best bet is to put the Sun behind a roof or a building of some sort, which not only prevents you from hurting yourself, but also makes it easier to spot the Moon.]

Once you spot the Moon, Venus will be easier. It’s just about 7-8 degrees to the right of and slightly above the Moon, between the Moon and the Sun, but much closer to the Moon (most standard binoculars have a 6° field of view, so Venus will be a little more than one FOV away from the Moon). The diagram above shows the configuration as I’ll see it here in Boulder, Colorado at about 1:30 p.m. local time. Hopefully that’ll help you find it.

Finding Venus in the daytime isn’t all that easy, and can be frustrating. If you can’t find it, don’t sweat it. But if you do, I think you’ll be amazed. I still remember the first time I did, when I was about 15. It’s weird to see something that looks like a star when the Sun is blazing away, so it’s worth the effort.

By tomorrow (Monday) the Moon will have moved farther to the east (left), so it’ll be farther from Venus, making this harder to do. So try for it today!

Have you heard about orbs? In a long line of silly paranormal claims, orbs are in the pantheon, the top shelf, the upper ethereal reaches of silliness.

The idea is that when you take a picture, you’ll sometimes see little fuzzy circles in it. The obvious conclusion is that these are the souls of the dead.

I mean, c’mon! What else would they be? Out of focus dust grains that are floating in your field of view? Don’t be silly!

Image from soulsoep’s Flickr photostream.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Atlantis does the R-Bar Pitch this morning just before docking.  I was hoping to see a plume from the volcano as the maneuver took place I didn’t happen to catch it.

Current Status: GO

Launch Date: Friday, 2:20 pm ET (10 minute window)

Odds of Launch: 70 percent

Shuttle: Atlantis (OV-104) – Sad to say this is the final scheduled flight for Atlantis.

Mission: STS-132

Mission Length: 12 days

EVA’s: 3 (on flight days: 4,6,8)

Primary Objectives: deliver an Integrated Cargo Carrier and a Russian-built Mini Research Module to the
International Space Station.

Commander: Ken Ham

Pilot: Tony Antonelli

Mission Specialists: Garrett Reisman, Michael Good, Piers Sellers and Steve Bowen

Launch Pad 39A — Webcam Image courtesy: NASA/Kennedy Space Center

NOAA’s Forecast:

Tomorrow: Sunny, with a high near 83. East southeast wind between 10 and 15 mph.

To keep current with the news about the launch, I recommend you go to NASA’s Launch Blog which should be live around 9:00 am ET. You will need to refresh your browser to get the latest from that site, but it’s THE place to get the up to the minute stuff especially if you can’t watch NASA TV.

I will be watching the launch itself on NASA-TV

Image Credits: NASA / NOAA

"This study investigated the physiological and psychological effects of sanitary napkins (SN) on women in hemorrhage treatment during the menstrual phase. Mesh and non-woven napkins were employed, and the effects were studied during the follicular and menstrual phases; mesh SN presented a higher textural surface-roughness. In both phases, the increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure were significantly dependent on the application intervals. The low-frequency component of systolic blood pressure variability significantly increased, while the salivary secretion rate decreased with the use of mesh SN during the follicular phase compared with non-woven SN. In addition, the heart rate during the menstrual phase significantly increased in subjects after the replacement of mesh SN compared with non-woven SN. In cases of wearing the unpleasant mesh SN, electroencephalography (EEG) manifested bilateral enhancements in beta and alpha2 waves in the frontal areas increased arousal level during both phases. From the above findings, napkin use increased physiological loading and wearing napkins with higher textural surface-roughness tended to increase activities of the autonomic nervous system and brain arousal level." Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Uh, no. Aunt Flo means no ho, bro!
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Best materials and methods ever.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: analysis taken too far WTF is NCBI ROFL? ...

Mythologist of Our Age: Why Ray Bradbury’s stories have seeped into the culture:

Science fiction dates as quickly as any genre, and Bradbury is not entirely immune to this. The futuristic rocket ships he wrote about in 1950 look a lot like the first-generation NASA rockets; the music of the future is Rachmaninoff and Duke Ellington; and in the terrifying “Mars is Heaven,” the planet bears an eerie resemblance to Green Bluff, Ill., right down to Victorian houses “covered with scrolls and rococo.” But the reason Bradbury’s stories still sing on the page is that, despite all his humanoid robots, automated houses, and rocket men, his interest is not in future technologies but in people as they live now—and how the proliferation of convenient technology alters the way we think and the way we treat each other.

One of the aspects of science fiction as a genre is that the masters of the field when viewed from outside of the core science fiction reading audience are often not necessarily dominant within the subculture. The core science fiction readership, those who immerse themselves in the genre, and might actually show up at a science fiction convention, are not the typical casual readers who might pick something up at the airport bookstore. They’re disproportionately male, disproportionately virgin, disproportionately young, and disproportionately nerdy, with a strong technical bent. For a quantitative overview of the reality of the demographic assertions I’m making, I point you to William Sims Bainbridge’s Dimensions of Science Fiction. For a more impressionistic “insider” view, you might check out Isaac Asimov’s memoirs. For examples of the “literature” which confirm that the audience for science fiction is really peculiar, I point you to Hal Clement’s oeuvre. His stories and novels would simply be unpublishable outside of the confines of the genre, they’re difficult to read for the typical person. Certainly there is action-packed space opera galore, socially conscious works of Ursula K. Le Guin, and authors who can be called literary stylists, such as Gene Wolfe. But these are in some ways deviations from type (notably, Le Guin and Wolfe are more fantasists than science fiction authors).

The heart of science fiction as a genre is “hard science fiction,” the other variants are to a great extent dilutions or modifications on the elements which you find within hard sf, with its outward focus on space, future orientation, and its embeddedness in a world where engineering is paramount. It is also notable that authors who become prominent outside of science fiction are not necessarily thought of as science fiction authors once they’ve achieved mainstream success. Sometimes this is due to the author’s own wishes, case in point being Kurt Vonnegut, who in his early years published in genre pulp magazines before becoming a literary sensation. Vonnegut pulled off the equivalent of going from working in porn to being a mainstream actor.

This weirdness of science fiction is due, I think, to the psychological diversity of mankind. Socially awkward teenage men with minimal interpersonal skills and no sexual experience with the opposite or same sex, but great fluency in the language of technology and science, are going to produce fiction which reflects their experiences, priorities and biases. They will consume fiction which reflects their experiences, priorities and biases. One reason that science fiction has traditionally been weak on character development is that many of the writers and readers are themselves tone deaf to the textured reality of most human social experiences (reading Isaac Asimov’s memoirs it seems clear that many of the early science fiction writers and fans were nerdy types who lacked social skills but made up for it with their raw intelligence).

All this makes it comprehensible why Ray Bradbury’s work has seeped into our culture; his works are only superficially science fiction. They have the exterior of science fiction, but at their heart they speak to the typical man on the street, not the nerds who form the genre’s core. Bradbury shrugged off his technical blunders without much self-consciousness. His errors were so numerous and blatant that fans, editors and critics such as Damon Knight took to mocking him in print. This is not to say that most science fiction is very technically coherent or thought out. Obviously it isn’t, else the authors wouldn’t be writers, they’d be NASA engineers designing FTL space ships. But Bradbury’s errors were often embarrassing howlers which went beyond the pale. But that’s fine for the general public, their focus would be on Bradbury’s abilities to write compelling characters and weave narrative which speaks to non-scientific issues. Which is why Ray Bradbury matters to the general public, and Larry Niven does not, and someone who considers themself a “crunchy conservative” and traditionalist Christian was intrigued by the possibilities in his fiction. Reality check: if someone who is enamored with St. Benedict and the Church Fathers thinks your literature might speak to him, you probably aren’t producing very good science fiction (as opposed to fiction).

Note: I’m focusing here on people who have read science fiction in book form. Not people who like Star Trek films. Science fiction films are generally space opera for obvious reasons, and some such as Star Wars really have more fantasy than science fiction elements (though there is good evidence that Star Wars took many of its ideas from 1930s space opera, especially E. E. Smith’s stories).

Image Credit: IMDB

Check out the #bg2010 hash-tag on twitter. There’s a lot of interesting tidbits. Here are some tweets from the presentation on the Neandertal genome in relation to the Denisova hominin (a.k.a. “X-woman”):

lukejostins SP: The Denisova finger is from the Neanderthal line, but didn’t interbreed with humans, hence looking like an outgroup
…
dgmacarthur: SP claims that Neanderthals and Denisova archaics are more closely related than either are to humans; intriguing.
…
dgmacarthur: SP: next steps: generate 10-20X coverage of Neanderthal, sequence other archaic humans (e.g. Denisova).

I hope Dr. Daniel MacAthur and Luke Jostins will say more when they get back to Perfidious Albion.

I’ll be at SETIcon, a celebration of 50 years of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, August 13 – 15. It’ll be a lot of fun, featuring some famous scientists and actors from Star Trek.

Part of the festivities will be a night of Rock Band hosted by me. If people pander enough, then I might take the stage as well. Can I sing or play drums? Come and find out.

They’ve also announced some new guests, including my friends Robert Sawyer (who wrote the novel Flash Forward) and astronomer Gibor Basri, who was a panelist on the recent Quest for a Living World event I moderated last month. Gibor is actively involved in the Kepler mission, which is looking for new Earths orbiting other stars.

Also — and this is very cool — there will be a copy of the novel Contact signed by Carl Sagan, Jodie Foster, and Jill Tarter auctioned at the event. Cripes, I may bid on that myself.

I plan on having a blast. I wind up working hard at these meetings a lot of the time, but for this one I think there will be some kicking back and actually enjoying it. You should come, too.

Tibetans not only occupy one of the most extreme locations on Earth, they’ve been doing it for thousands of years. This week in a study in the journal Science, scientists have for the first time picked out the particular genetic features that allow these people to survive in the low oxygen levels of the Tibetan Plateau, which is around 15,000 feet above sea level. Curiously, the way they have evolved to survive is unlike that of other high-altitude dwellers around the world.

The American and Chinese researchers doing the study started by keying on 247 genes that looked like good candidates—they tended to change across populations, and seemed to play a role in controlling a person’s blood oxygen level.

Then they analyzed segments of DNA that include those 247 genes in 31 unrelated Tibetans, 45 Chinese, and 45 Japanese lowland people whose DNA was genotyped in the HapMap Project. By identifying regions that had a characteristic signature of being strongly altered by natural selection, they were able to identify relatively new gene variants that had swept through highland Tibetans, but not Chinese or Japanese lowlanders [ScienceNOW].

Ten of the genes turned out to be particularly promising, with two, called EGLN1 and PPARA, showing up in the Tibetans who had the lowest levels of oxygen in their bloodstream.

That sounds strange at first. Typically, people who visit high-altitude locales tend to develop higher red blood cell counts and high concentrations of hemoglobin—which carries oxygen from the lungs—as their bodies try to adapt to the decreased oxygen in the atmosphere. Even some permanent mountain dwellers, like people in the Andes Mountains of South America, show this pattern. They’ve adopted high hemoglobin concentrations to survive there.

But not so the Tibetans. Increasing one’s hemoglobin can make blood too viscous, which is part of the reason people who visit Tibet often end up suffering health problems. Instead, over the presumably many thousands of years in Tibet, the people evolved to live with relatively low concentrations of hemoglobin, which must then act with great efficiency to keep enough oxygen in their blood. Scientists had seen this before, but now that they have pinned down some of the genes responsible, they can begin to investigate how exactly the Tibetans’ systems pull this off.

“What’s unique about Tibetans is they don’t develop high red blood cells counts,” Dr. Josef T. Prchal, study co-author and a hematologist and professor of internal medicine at the University of Utah, said in a news release. “If we can understand this, we can develop therapies for human disease” [BusinessWeek].

Related Content:
80beats: Tiny Soot Particles May Be Melting Mighty Himalayan Glaciers
DISCOVER: High-Altitude Determines Who Survives in Tibet
Bad Astronomy: From Tibet to Infinity And Back Again
Gene Expression: Tibet & Tibetans, Not Coterminus

Image: Wikimedia Commons

We mentioned on Monday that Bill Gates was giving $300,000 to a geoengineering scheme that would shoot seawater skyward to seed clouds. But the billionaire doesn’t just wanted to save the planet and stop the AIDS crisis—he would also like to improve your sex life.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded 78 promising but offbeat projects this week, one of those gifts being $100,000 to James Tsuruta and Paul Dayton of the University of North Carolina to pursue their idea of using ultrasound as a temporary and reversible male contraceptive.

Ultrasound produces a mild heating that appears to disable sperm cells and deplete the supply of stem cells that are required to replenish sperm reserves in the testes. Post-treatment images of the rat testes showed the tubules inside the testes completely lacking in sperm with almost no immature stem cells [The Times].

The scientists have already tried the test on male rats, with promising results. With the Gates’ money and more success in animal trials, they could extend this to human tests by next year, Tsuruta says.

“Our long-term goal is to use ultrasound from therapeutic instruments that are commonly found in sports medicine or physical therapy clinics as an inexpensive, long-term, reversible male contraceptive suitable for use in developing to first world countries” [BBC News].

First, however, they have to fully understand the process. It’s not clear exactly how the mechanism works—we know sperm don’t like excessive heat, but the scientists say it could be heating and shaking working in combination. The Times says that tests have show no long-term damage to the cells that produce sperm. But that doesn’t mean men will line up for this treatment when and if it’s approved.

Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: “There is certainly a place for an effective non-hormonal contraceptive in men, but whether men would find it acceptable to have their testicles scanned regularly remains to be seen” [The Times].

Related Content:
80beats: Bill Gates Funds Seawater Cloud Seeding, “The Most Benign Form of Geoengineering”
80beats: With $4.5 Million of Pocket Change, Bill Gates Funds Geoengineering Research
80beats: Bill Gates Patents a Device Aimed at Halting Hurricanes
Discoblog: Warning All Male Competitive Cyclists: Less Than 5% of Your Sperm May Be Normal

Image: iStockphoto

I really, really don’t like using epithets. The worst you’ll almost ever hear me say is that someone is a goofball or a knucklehead. But sometimes, just sometimes, I have to call ‘em like I see ‘em. And when someone like Glenn Beck puts themselves out in the public eye pushing complete and utterly hypocritical malarkey under the guise of them knowing what they’re talking about, well, sometimes you just have to use an epithet. And since he decided to call the rest of us idiots…

So, besides being racist, wrong on climate change, wrong about taxes, and really pretty much everything else between here and the edge of the Universe, I want to point out something else Beck did.

His book, the über-ironically titled Arguing With Idiots, has blurbs on the back. The publisher decided to go with some, ah, negative comments. Here is a picture of the back of the book:

See the blurb right above my thumb? It says, "Glenn Beck is an idiot." True enough, but it’s the attribution I’m unhappy with: they say it’s from Discover Magazine. But it’s not really: I said it. Right here, on this very blog.

When I wrote that, I was talking specifically about his making stuff up about global warming and the then-raging southern California wildfires. I was a bit concerned about litigation, but having the blurb used on his own book mollifies that quite a bit.

But anyway, I just wanted to clear the air here. Discover Magazine, as an institution, has no opinion on Beck, I’m quite sure. However, I’m not the magazine. And I certainly do have an opinion, and as I have made clear, I can back that opinion up with objective facts.

Others agree, obviously. For example, Apple recently pulled its ads with Fox News because of Beck. So did BMW, and many, many more. His appalling behavior is rapidly depleting the number of companies willing to do business with Fox. I applaud them.

So anyway, I’ll leave you with this video of the fantabulous Lewis Black, raking Beck over the coals. With his ravings, Beck has managed to somehow merge the laws of both Godwin and Poe into some sort of hellish mix of insanity. Black shows that sometimes, the best way to point that out is pure satirical mockery.

If the frustrations of daily life are getting to be too much for you, don't keep your feelings bottled up--throw bottles! That's the philosophy behind New York City developer David Belt's newest project. "Glassphemy!" entails throwing used glass bottles in a 20-by-30-foot glass box in Brooklyn. Participants stand on one of two platforms in the box, hurling glass at the other end and watching it shatter, according to The New York Times:
""The bottles smash fantastically, artfully designed lights flash, and no one is harmed. “Recycling’s so boring,” Mr. Belt said. “We tried to make it a little bit more exciting. He added, “People just want to smash things.”"
The bottles are donated by local bars and provide more than a chance to get out some aggression; they also show the versatility of discarded glass. That's because instead of being thrown out, the glass fragments will be collected and recycled, taking into account suggestions submitted by readers to the DIY magazine, ReadyMade. One possible use is grinding the glass and using it as sand in the beer garden that will eventually make its home on Glassphemy!'s site.
"[Another possible recycling method entails a] DIY glass polisher out of a cement mixer that is ...

UVA is filing an extension in response to Cuccinelli's egregious request--but it should be fighting back in court, writes the paper:
Mr. Cuccinelli, apparently, speculates that Mr. Mann defrauded taxpayers by obtaining research grants to study global temperatures. It's clear from his statements that the "Climategate" controversy -- in which hackers stole records of e-mails between climate researchers that global warming skeptics then distorted -- inspired his witch hunt. Is there any doubt that the attorney general is trying to restoke that row with a fresh batch of e-mails?
In the process, he would deal grave harm to scientific inquiry throughout Virginia's public higher education system. Science progresses when researchers can propose ideas freely, differ in their methods and argue about the interpretations of their results. The commonwealth should nurture that process, not make scientists fear that they will be subject to investigation if a politician dislikes their conclusions. There comes a time when one has to stand up to bullying tactics--not to mention fundamental assaults on the ability of scientists to do their work. This is one of those times. UVA needs to stand up and be counted in defense of reason.

What is garbage to one is gold to another. The juicy new title by Blast Books, “Another Science Fiction” is proof. Incredibly, most of the images in this book came from discards from several libraries that were rescued by author and space history buff Megan Prelinger for her library in San Fransico, Prelinger Library. When Prelinger came across these images in magazines (like Aviation Week and Missiles and Rockets) that the Houston public library was throwing away, she was smitten. The book featuring these advertisements from the early space-race years followed.

Prelinger told me how she found featured artist Willi Baum: “He signed his paintings “W. Baum” and for three years I couldn’t find him because I didn’t know his first name. I finally found a reference to him in a commercial art annual from ‘62 that listed his full name. I then found that he lives just five miles away from me. I wrote to him, he wrote back the next day, and we became good friends. That’s quite a contrast to my searches for every other artist. Most were not contractually permitted to put signatures on paintings. So they have vanished from the record. Others were deceased.”