Love is in the air at NCBI ROFL! Tuesday-Friday this week, we will feature research articles about love in its most physical form (okay, we just mean plain ol’ sex). Enjoy!

Degrading and non-degrading sex in popular music: a content analysis.

“OBJECTIVES: Those exposed to more degrading sexual references in popular music are more likely to initiate intercourse at a younger age. The purpose of this study was to perform a content analysis of contemporary popular music with particular attention paid to the prevalence of degrading and non-degrading sexual references. We also aimed to determine if sexual references of each subtype were associated with other song characteristics and/or content. METHODS: We used Billboard magazine to identify the top popular songs in 2005. Two independent coders each analyzed all of these songs (n = 279) for degrading and non-degrading sexual references… … RESULTIS: Of the 279 songs identified, 103 (36.9%) contained references to sexual activity. Songs with references to degrading sex were more common than songs with references to non-degrading sex (67 [65.0%] vs. 36 [35.0%], p < 0.001). Songs with degrading sex were most commonly Rap (64.2%), whereas songs with non-degrading sex were most likely Country (44.5%) or Rhythm & Blues/Hip-Hop (27.8%). Compared with songs that had no mention of sexual activity, songs with degrading sex were more likely to contain references to substance use, violence, and weapon carrying. Songs with non-degrading sex were no more likely to mention these other risk behaviors.”

Photo: Wikimedia/Nicholas Ballasy

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Opera makes me want to kill myself.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Want your rat to get it on while high on ecstasy? Play loud music.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Flatufonia–or the musical anus

You may have learned of the line of cells known as the HeLa strain in a biology class, where a teacher explained the “virtually immortal” nature of these rapidly multiplying cells, and how they played a defining role in science. Over the last six decades, the prolific HeLa cells have been used to develop the first polio vaccines, test chemotherapy drugs, and develop techniques for in vitro fertilization. With their amazing capacity to multiply, the cells are an endless bounty to scientists. HeLa has helped build thousands of careers, not to mention more than 60,000 scientific studies, with nearly 10 more being published every day, revealing the secrets of everything from aging and cancer to mosquito mating and the cellular effects of working in sewers [The New York Times].

But for all that research, little was known about the origin of the cells or about the unwitting donor who supplied them–Henrietta Lacks (The “He” in HeLa stands for Henrietta and “La,” for Lacks). Lacks was a 30-year old black tobacco worker who died of cervical cancer nearly 60 years ago. She died in a public ward for “coloreds” at the then-segregated Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore.

In a new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, author Rebecca Skloot explores Henrietta Lacks’s impoverished background and raises troubling ethical questions. She notes that Lacks’s cells are still used to this day, but the family never received a penny and was largely unaware of the fate of the cells. Over the course of 10 years, Skloot worked with Lacks’s daughter Deborah to uncover the real story behind the HeLa cells.

Henrietta had no idea when she died that her tissue was being used for research, still less that it had such miraculous properties; indeed, only in 1973 was she publicly confirmed as the source of the wonder-cells [The Independent]. Bu the cells taken from her cancerous cervix were special: Unlike the human cells that researchers had worked with until then, HeLa cells divided easily and multiplied rapidly, meaning that the self-perpetuating cells essentially became immortal. Since then, thousands of scientists have used Lacks’s cells for research and some biotech companies have reportedly made millions of dollars off them, raising important questions about tissue culture.

In the 1980s a doctor who had removed the cancer-ridden spleen of a man named John Moore patented some of the cells to create a cell line then valued at more than $3 billion, without Moore’s knowledge. Moore sued, and on appeal the court ruled that patients had the right to control their tissues, but soon that was struck down by the California Supreme Court, which said that tissue removed from the body had been abandoned as medical waste. The cell line created by the doctor had been “transformed” via his “inventive effort,” and to say otherwise would “destroy the economic incentive to conduct important medical research” [The New York Times].

In Henrietta’s case, however, the ethical dilemma wasn’t just about using tissue without consent; it also brings to mind the shameful history of using African Americans for medical research. During slavery, doctors tested drugs and operated on black people to develop new treatments and surgical techniques. In the 1900s, black corpses were routinely exhumed and shipped to medical schools for research. Black men died unnecessary deaths in Alabama so scientists could study the effects of their untreated disease in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study [The Chicago Tribune].

Skloot’s book has been described as a thriller combined with Erin Brockovich, but ultimately it pays tribute to the incredible life and death of an unknown African-American woman, and throws light on cancer, racism, scientific ethics and crippling poverty [The New York Times]. Henrietta Lacks was not just a collection of cells. She was a walnut-eyed, square-jawed beauty who favored polished red fingernails and toenails. And sadly, she lived a hard, short life [The Chicago Tribune].

Related Content:
DISCOVER: No Longer Human
The Intersection: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Loom: Henrietta Lacks and the Future of Science Books

Image: Random House

I was pleasantly surprised to see my old friend Kevin Grazier — planetary scientist with Cassini, and science advisor for Battlestar Galactica and Eureka — highlighted in a Eureka Unscripted blog post. It’s a two-parter, with the second one going up sometimes soon.

At the same time, it was cool to see another friend, Jennifer Ouellette, talking about the science of Eureka as well! I like the show, and while the science is sometimes warped a bit (or a lot) for story-telling, I know for a fact the executive producer and writers try to get as much right as they can. The EP, Jaime Paglia, is a smart and funny guy; I was on a panel with him at Comic Con a couple of years ago (with Kevin, too!) and moderated one that he was on as well. His role is not that of a science teacher, but a story teller. But even so, he and his team, strive to base what they do on solid science.

Plus? It’s just a fun show. That’s why I like Fringe, too. Look: I am the biggest hard case you’ll find when it comes to accuracy in science fiction, but even I know when to hang it up if the story is fun. That way I can actually sit back and enjoy stuff like Doctor Who and Star Trek without getting all twisted up into a pseudo-Riemannian 11-dimensional manifold.

See what I did there? Yeah, if you did, you’re a dork too.

100 gigahertz of processing power—not bad for a single sheet of atoms.

In a paper in Science, researchers at IBM say they have created the fastest-ever graphene transistor, with a cut-off frequency (the highest it can go without significant signal degradation) that at 100 GHz is nearly four times higher than their previous attempt. Similar silicon-based transistors have only been able to reach a turtle-like clock rate of about 40 GHz, or 40 billion cycles per second.

Graphene is a sheet of carbon one atom thick, and electrons move through it extremely fast. This is because they behave like relativistic particles with no rest mass. This, and other unusual physical and mechanical properties, means that the “wonder material” could replace silicon as the electronic material of choice and might be used to make faster transistors than any that exist today [Physics World]. But there are down sides for application: Graphene lacks what’s called a “band gap,” which conventional semiconductors need to turn on and off. And it tends to degrade rather easily during production.

The IBM team crafted a layer of polymer only 10 nanometers thick to protect the graphene from harm. And regarding the band gap issue, researcher Yu–Ming Lin suggested that graphene not be used for the discrete digital signals modern semiconductors deal with. Instead, graphene is better suited for making analog transistors, such as signal processors and amplifiers. Today, such circuitry is largely made from GaAs (gallium arsenide), though GaAs offers nowhere near the same electron mobility [PC World].

Then again, the same IBM research group may have very recently discovered how to create a band gap in graphene. So maybe silicon’s days are numbered, after all.

Related Content:
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80beats: To Cool Computer Chips, Tiny Water Pipes
DISCOVER: Life After Silicon—How Graphene Could Revolutionize Electronics
DISCOVER: The Graphene Revolution

Image: Jannik Meyer

I was recently interviewed on EarthSky about Obama’s budget and future plans for NASA. I talked about some of the things I covered in my earlier blog post, but I also added some thoughts about where I see NASA going and what I see its role is.

I’ll have more to say about this soon; I’ve been thinking about it more and I’m scratching my head over some of it.

Anyway, EarthSky is a site filled with interviews from scientists, and has a lot of great content. They cut my interview into two versions; a short 90 second one, and a longer 8-minute on. Both are recorded and on that page. They put up a transcript for the shorter version, but I suggest you listen to the 8-minute version instead.

I say that because whenever I read a transcript of an interview I’ve done, it reads like I’m on some sort of drug. But then I read transcripts from other people who are speaking extemporaneously, and they all sound that way. It’s funny how we parse information we read differently than that we hear. I swear it made sense when I said it– and I’m glad they have the interview recorded on that page as well. So again I’ll urge you to listen to the full 8-minute recording, since there’s more there than on the transcript anyway.

Oh, you. You think you’re pretty fancy, don’t you, with your matching pair of eyeballs, your precious optic nerve, your oh-so-sophisticated visual cortex. You think you’re so evolved.

The sea urchins are not impressed.

Though the round, spiny marine creatures have no actual visual organs, they do have light-sensitive proteins that help them “see” well enough to move around, find shelter and avoid predators (well, at least the slow ones). Biologists now think that a sea urchin’s entire body functions as one big compound eye, where photosensitive tissue inside the exoskeleton picks up light that’s filtered by the radiating spines. And the denser an urchin’s spines, the sharper its perception of its surroundings, a new study suggests. So who’s fancy now?

Sönke Johnsen and his team at Duke University in Durham, N.C., tested the visual responses of Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, a large, purple Pacific urchin with an especially spiny exoskeleton. They placed individual urchins in the center of a tank with a dark target on one side, and they lit the tank from above.

In under a minute, the urchins began to move relative to the target. Some inched toward the dark spot and others scooted away from it, but their trajectories were definitely deliberate—each urchin was tested four times with the spot in different parts of the tank, and each repeated its behavior every time.

“Even though the group as a whole did not choose one direction relative to the target, they obviously responded to it,” the researchers wrote in The Journal of Experimental Biology. “This is analogous to a group of people each using their own compass to go a different direction.”

According to Johnsen’s team, it’s possible that urchins who were attracted to the spot interpreted it as a cave to hide in, while the ones who fled treated it as a predator like an eel or a sea star.

S. purpuratus could detect smaller targets than a previously tested species with sparser spines, suggesting to the researchers that the additional spines give it greater visual resolution. They say they’d need to test additional species to be sure.

Okay, so they still can’t recognize faces or appreciate the subtleties of a Van Gogh, but Johnsen and his colleagues say the urchins can see about as well as a horseshoe crab or chambered nautilus — and those guys have actual eyes. Not bad, right?

At least one urchin species, by the way, can live up to 200 years, so don’t even think that you’ll win in a stare down.

By Mara Grunbaum. This article is provided by Scienceline, a project of New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

There’s your chronological age, the number that creeps depressingly upward with each passing birthday, and then there’s your biological age, associated with the condition of your body. In a study this week in Nature Genetics, a British team discovered a link between a particular genetic variation and people being several years older in their biological age.

Says study leader Nilesh Samani: “What we studied are structures called telomeres which are parts of one’s chromosomes. Individuals are born with telomeres of certain length and in many cells telomeres shorten as the cells divide and age” [Press Association]. Some people, however, are born with shorter telomeres to begin with, which sets them up to age faster, biologically speaking, and could put them at greater risk for age-related diseases.

Samani’s team studied 500,000 genetic variations, and they keyed on one near a gene called TERC. In a study of nearly 3,000 people, around 38% inherited one copy of the gene variant and were biologically three to four years older than those who did not carry the sequence [The Guardian]. An smaller minority, about 7 percent, had two copies of the gene variant, and the researchers say those people were biologically six or seven years older than people without the variant.

Coauthor Tim Spector says, “What our study suggests is that some people are genetically programmed to age at a faster rate” [BBC News]. The reason, they surmise, could be that the sequence hinders TERC. Normally the gene makes an enzyme called telomerase to repair one’s telomeres, but if this genetic variation causes people to make less of the enzyme while in the womb, they could be born with shorter telomeres.

So what now? Even if Spector and Samani are correct, they say that you can’t just boost telomerase to fix the problem because it carries the risking of causing cancer. However, the genetic sequence could be caught sooner rather than later. The work is expected to pave the way for screening programmes to spot people who are likely to age fast and be more susceptible to heart problems and other conditions early in life [The Guardian].

Related Content:
80beats: The Mutations That Kill: 1st Cancer Genomes Sequenced
DISCOVER: A Modest Proposal: How To Stop Aging Entirely
DISCOVER: Can Turtles Live Forever?
The Loom: Nobel For Telomeres
80beats: And the Nobel Prize for Medicine Goes to…

Image: iStockphoto

Here’s a message from the Department of the Obvious–overuse of the new iPad could lead to bad posture.

If we were handed Apple’s latest sleek and shiny gadget offering, we’d find it hard not to gaze lovingly at it for extended periods of time. And given that the tablet is Wi-Fi and (in some models) 3G compatible, it will be all the harder to resist spend hours jabbing at the shiny glass screen, typing out emails or playing online games.

Now, scientists have declared that prolonged usage of the iPad could lead to bad posture, and that those hunched shoulders could cause neck and upper back problems.

Anthony Andre, the founder of Interface Analysis Associates (IAA), observed that people’s current crummy posture while working on mobile devices like laptops is a result of an inherent design flaw in the machines. Pointing out the “co-location” of the keyboard and the monitor, Andre told TechNews Daily that two things that belong in different places have been thrown together. Hence the aches and pains. LiveScience reports:

Andre calls this position – which typically involves sitting hunched over, with rounded shoulders, laptop on lap, and arms held close to the body – the “airport posture.”

“The thinner and more mobile the device, the worse it is, because you end up in more situations where you normally wouldn’t even use a laptop,” Andre said.

He added that the negative side of the increased mobility offered by the iPad tablet is that the device crosses the final frontier; now people can snuggle with a iPad in bed or bring it to the toilet.

For those iPad fans who know that this is a real danger, the swamis of ergonomics suggest you minimize “musculoskeletal problems” by limiting usage of the device (one hour is OK, eight hours is not). If you must spend eight hours on your device, say the docs, don’t forget to take micro breaks and stretch. Finally, don’t forget that other forms of communication do still exist. You don’t have to resort to smoke signals, but from time to time you could try a trusty old corded telephone.

Related Content:
80beats: Apple’s “iPad” Tablet: It’s Here, It’s Cool, and It’s Slightly Cheaper Than Expected
80beats: 5 Buzz-Worthy Storylines from the Consumer Electronics Show
80beats: Steve Jobs Received a Liver Transplant to Treat Resurgent Cancer
80beats: Sorry, Australian iPhone Users: You’ve Been Rickrolled
80beats: Amazon’s New Kindle E-Reader Aims to Shake Up Academia and Journalism
Discoblog: Weird iPhone Apps (our growing compendium of the oddest apps out there)

Image: Apple

Well this is encouraging and I’ll be very interested to hear your reactions…

Straight from my inbox:

New office would target nation’s fast-accelerating climate information needs
NOAA launches http://www.climate.gov as portal for climate science and services

Individuals and decision-makers across widely diverse sectors – from agriculture to energy to transportation – increasingly are asking NOAA for information about climate change in order to make the best choices for their families, communities and businesses. To meet the rising tide of these requests, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced the intent to create a NOAA Climate Service line office dedicated to bringing together the agency’s strong climate science and service delivery capabilities.

More and more, Americans are witnessing the impacts of climate change in their own backyards, including sea-level rise, longer growing seasons, changes in river flows, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters. People are searching for relevant and timely information about these changes to inform decision-making about virtually all aspects of their lives.

“By providing critical planning information that our businesses and our communities need, NOAA Climate Service will help tackle head-on the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change,” said Secretary Locke. “In the process, we’ll discover new technologies, build new businesses and create new jobs.”

“Working closely with federal, regional, academic and other state and local government and private sector partners, the new NOAA Climate Service will build on our success transforming science into useable climate services,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “NOAA is committed to scientific integrity and transparency; we seek to advance science and strengthen product development and delivery through user engagement.”

Leaders from numerous public and private sector entities support the creation of NOAA Climate Service:

“Addressing climate change is one of our most pressing environmental challenges. Making climate science more easily accessible to all Americans will help us gain the consensus we need to move forward,” said Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy. “The new NOAA Climate Service is a welcome addition. It will help bring people together so we can also bring about an economic recovery by more rapidly modernizing our nation’s energy infrastructure.”

“NOAA has consistently led the world in climate research and observation,” said Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change. “Businesses, communities and governments will rely even more on its expertise and the critical information it provides to make informed decisions based on the best science available. Through NOAA’s improved climate services we will be better able to confront climate change, and the many challenges it presents for our environment, security, and economy.”

“The establishment of NOAA Climate Service will be an important step forward in helping the nation better understand and forecast the changing climate. The Navy’s Task Force Climate Change looks forward to working closely with NOAA Climate Service to ensure that both the nation and the Navy are best prepared for the future challenges posed by climate change,” said RADM Dave Titley, oceanographer of the Navy and director of the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change.

“NOAA’s reorganization to consolidate its formidable capabilities relating to climate science and services in a single office is an important step forward in the larger effort of harnessing relevant capabilities across all the executive branch agencies to help citizens and businesses plan for and cope with climate change,” said Shere Abbott, associate director for environment and energy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

To see what other leaders from government, business, science and environment are saying about NOAA Climate Service, and to get additional information, visit http://www.noaa.gov/climate.

Unifying NOAA’s climate capabilities under a single climate office will integrate the agency’s climate science and services and make them more accessible to NOAA partners and other users. Planning has been, and continues to be, shaped by input from NOAA employees and stakeholders across the country, with close consideration given to the recommendations of the NOAA Science Advisory Board, National Academies and National Academy of Public Administration.

NOAA Climate Service will encompass a core set of longstanding NOAA capabilities with proven success. The climate research, observations, modeling, predictions and assessments generated by NOAA’s top scientists – including Nobel Peace Prize award-winners – will continue to provide the scientific foundation for extensive on-the-ground climate services that respond to millions of requests annually for data and other critical information.

Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, will serve as transitional director of NOAA Climate Service. New positions for six NOAA Regional Climate Services Directors will be announced soon and will provide regional leadership for integrating user engagement and on-the-ground service delivery within the Climate Service.

NOAA Launches Landmark Climate.gov Portal

NOAA is also unveiling today a new Web site – http://www.climate.gov – that serves as a single point-of-entry for NOAA’s extensive climate information, data, products and services. Known as the NOAA Climate Portal, the site addresses the needs of five broadly-defined user groups: decision makers and policy leaders, scientists and applications-oriented data users, educators, business users and the public.

Highlights of the portal include an interactive “climate dashboard” that shows a range of constantly updating climate datasets (e.g., temperature, carbon dioxide concentration and sea level) over adjustable time scales; the new climate science magazine ClimateWatch, featuring videos and articles of scientists discussing recent climate research and findings; and an array of data products and educational resources.

Followed by this from Senator Snowe’s (R-ME) office:

Snowe Welcomes Decision to Create New National Climate Service at NOAA

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Ranking Member of the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) today applauded the U.S. Department of Commerce’s decision to create a National Climate Service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to further strengthen the agency’s climate science and service delivery capabilities. Senator Snowe learned of the decision in a one-on-one phone call with NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco earlier this morning and released the following statement:

“Today’s announcement that NOAA will create a National Climate Service represents a strong step forward for our Nation as we look to enhance our understanding of global climate change and its impacts on our economy, our communities, and our environment,” said Senator Snowe. “I have long supported the formulation of a National Climate Service, and when I spoke with Dr. Lubchenco this morning, I pledged to work with her to ensure that this new office operates efficiently and effectively to provide pertinent and practical climate change data for local communities to make cost effective decisions for the American taxpayer.”

“With at least 13 Federal agencies contributing pieces of the climate research puzzle, the system we currently have for integrating their data suffers from excessive interagency review and lack of coordination. That is why I have supported legislation in the past to create a single point of focus for Federal climate research within NOAA,” added Senator Snowe. “I am hopeful that this office will help ultimately achieve the goal of providing clear, concise guidance to our communities, states, and non-governmental decision makers that will give them and all U.S. citizens confidence in the predictions and projections that will help them understand and adapt to a changing climate.”

As study after study suggests that wine might have health benefits, beer tends to get the short end of the stick. But food scientist and beer lover Charles Bamforth wasn’t going to take that lying down, saying: “The wine guys have stolen the moral high ground. I resent the stance that people take that wine is better. It’s not” [Discovery News]. To prove it, he studied the silicon content of beers from around the country, and in a study in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, found that beer could be a good source of the substance in your diet.

Bamforth found that the beer’s silicon content ranged from 6.4 milligrams per liter to 56.5 milligrams per liter, with an average of about 30 milligrams. Since two pints of beer are just about equal to one liter, drinking two beers at happy hour could provide 30 milligrams of silicon. And while there is no official recommendation for daily silicon uptake, the researchers say, in the United States, individuals consume between 20 and 50 mg of silicon each day [LiveScience]. Light lagers and non-alcoholic beers not only lack flavor, they showed the lowest silicon content in Bamforth’s study. The ultra-hoppy India pale ales came in first.

While Bamforth happily reported his findings about silicon content, the study didn’t claim any link between beer drinking and bone health, which silicon supports. And so some scientists pooh-poohed the “beer is good for you” link that came out in the press release and some media reports. “To conclude any bone health benefits from this study would require a great leap,” said Dr. Tim Byers, deputy director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center in Aurora [ABC News]. While previous studies have suggested that beer could be connected to strong bones, or could have other benefits like limiting kidney stones and gallstones, Bamforth stresses moderation given the detrimental health effects of a few brews too many.

And even he isn’t taking the results too seriously. While studies about the health benefits of beer and wine might make you feel little better about ordering the next pint or glass, he says, that shouldn’t be your prime motivation. “I would first consider flavor and whether you like it or not,” Bamforth said. “Choose the beer you enjoy, for goodness sake” [Discovery News].

Related Content:
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Discoblog: A Scientific Defense of Beer
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DISCOVER: Stone Age Beer, recreating the brews of the past

Image: flickr/ a4pga

Do you recognize that song quote?  It’s from North to Alaska, by Johnny Horton, in 1960.  For most people raised in the Southeastern or Southwestern United States, that’s about as far to the aurorae as you ever came.  Of course, we know the aurorae are over the north and south polar regions, but for some reason many people only know them as the “Northern Lights”.  Those over the northern hemisphere are the Aurora Borealis, and those over the southern are the Aurora Australis.  “Aurora” was the name of the Roman goddess of dawn, “boreas” is Greek for “north wind”, and “australis” is Latin for “of the south”.

As an aside, the Aurora Australis was known to history before Australia (the continent), which was claimed and named in the 18th century.

Aurora Australis and Orion, 04/94, Image: NASA, STS-59 and Crew

The aurorae are caused by the Earth’s magnetosphere, which accelerates and funnels ionized particles along the magnetic field.  Aurora can be seen all over the world; indeed, it is imaged on other worlds, but it is more easily seen in the polar regions due to the magnetic field and longer periods of darkness.  Green or brownish red in the aurorae are associated with photons striking oxygen, while blue or red are associated with nitrogen.

Magnetosphere, Image: Science.NASA.gov

We know that the aurorae are caused by ordinary (and extraordinary) solar activity.  After the Carrington Event in 1859 (Saturday’s riddle) the aurorae were particularly active.  Reported all over the Earth, in some places they were so bright that one could read newsprint outside at 1:00 am.   Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis are also believed to be nearly mirror images of each other.

Aurora Mirror Image, Credit: Polar VIS, NASA/JPL

Thought to be a sign from God to the Europeans in the Middle ages, the spirits dancing in the sky to the Cree, and the reflection of light from the body armor of virgin warriors by the Vikings, the aurorae have lost none of their beauty and appeal through discovery.

Here are a few links if you want to read more about the aurorae:

Aurora link RE: 1859 solar flare
Aurora forecast – Geophysical Institute
Sounds in and around Aurora
“The Northern Lights”, Alan Booth, 1992 documentary (45min)
The Northern Lights in mythology – Bullfinch’s, et al

And an excellent link to YouTube recording the sounds of aurorae, along with informational narration (well worth watching):

?Listening to Northern Lights, YouTube

I’ve been posting sporadically on how sunspots are starting to come back to the Sun, and I’m glad to see a new group sprouted up recently… and it’s a monster:

These images are from SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The orange one is in visible light, and the sunspots are pretty obvious. The green one shows the Sun in the far ultraviolet, and you can see the sunspots are pretty intense, blasting out high-energy light. Sunspots are indicators of magnetic activity, and the intense magnetic field can accelerate plasma (ionized gas) to high energies.

Just so’s you know, a hundred Earths could fit across this image, so that oughta give you an idea of just how big these blemishes are.

What this means is that the Sun is becoming active again. You can see it better in this video I put together using SOHO animations. These are real SOHO observations. Note that some of the data are missing so the Sun’s rotation is a bit jerky, and that you can see that data dropouts and other problems plague these sort of observations. Oh– actually, another group popped up on the Sun earlier, too, and you can see those in the visible light data.

You can actually see the plasma flowing along the magnetic field lines in the latter part of the video.

Right now, the Sun is struggling to climb back up to the peak of its magnetic cycle, which will probably occur in 2013 or later, given how slow this has been — which you might want to keep in mind if some crackpot or scammer is trying to sell you on the idea that solar activity will destroy the Earth in 2012. When the Sun is at its peak, the magnetic field is at its strongest, and we see the most sunspots. However, the strongest solar flares and other explosive events tend not to happen until well after the cycle peaks, so it’ll be late 2013 or 2014 before we see the most vigorous activity, if the Sun holds to its previous behavior.

Again, people selling you on 2012 disasters generally have a very tenuous grasp on science. The less you know the better for them.

I expect we’ll be seeing more and more sunspots now as time goes by. It’s nice to see this happening, as it adds to the activity seen in December, and ends a long period of minimal sunspots — heck, for a long time, there were none at all. Boring. Now we can look forward to some exciting action again… just in time for SDO to launch, too!

[P.S. If anyone can tell me why the first few frames of my uploaded videos turn gray sometimes, that would be nice. I don't know whether to curse iMovie, Flash, YouTube, or all three.]

Image credit: SOHO (ESA and NASA)

[Update; The launch was scrubbed due to low clouds. The next launch attempt will be at 04:14 Eastern (09:14 GMT) Monday morning... but they're predicting 60% chance of low clouds again!]

Don’t forget: the Space Shuttle Endeavor is scheduled to launch tomorrow, Sunday February 7, at 04:39 Eastern time (09:39 GMT). It’s the last planned night launch of a shuttle. I will not be live-tweeting it, since that’s 02:30 my time and I’m not staying up for it (I have to travel Monday and don’t need to screw up my system that much). But a lot of folks are there and will be tweeting it as it happens, like Universe Today’s Nancy Atkinson. Follow her for more info as it happens.

Image credit: NASA.

So, reader reactions?

I gotta say, I got a kick out of that Budlight commercial with the astronomers – and I don’t drink beer. 

You can find it HERE.

and….The Who were EXCELLENT!

The Solar Dynamics Observatory, due for launch on February 9 at 10:30 Eastern time (15:30 GMT), is a revolution in solar observing: equipped with state-of-the art detectors, it’ll stare at the Sun and teach us far more about our closest star than we’ve ever had a chance to before. It’s like SOHO on steroids.

I was going to write up a lengthy post about it, but then I found out my friend Nicole Gravitationaliotta, aka The Noisy Astronomer, already put together a great post about it. That saves me time.

Something I want to point out: SDO will have a continuous science data streamrate of a whopping 16 megabytes per second. You might want to read that again. That’s 1.4 terabytes per day, or half a petabyte per year. Given that a Blu-Ray disk holds 50 gigabytes at most, that means SDO would fill 28 disks a day just to store that data. Cripes. That’s a vast amount of data to sift through. If the Sun is hiding anything, it has about a week to figure out what to do. After that we’ll be watching everything it does.

Also, a fun thing about this for me is that the project scientist for SDO is Barbara Thompson, a woman I’ve known a long, long time: her office was across from mine when I was working on Hubble, and I would often drop by to swap stories with her and generally mix it up. It’s very cool to know that an old friend will be helping run such a fantastic astronomical instrument.

This week’s edition of The Science of Kissing Gallery features our first wedding kiss from one of my very best friends, author and primate researcher Vanessa Woods, along with her husband, Duke anthropologist Brian Hare. It’s hard not to smile at this happy moment from their wedding in Australia.

Submit your original photograph or artwork to the gallery here and remember to include relevant links. And thanks for so many funny, thoughtful, unusual, and creative images already!

When it comes to a sperm fertilizing an egg, it all comes down to speed and timing. If the sperm starts swimming at top speed too soon, it will die before it reaches the egg. But if it swims too slowly then it won’t get to its destination in time. Now, scientists have discovered a system in the sperm that acts like a gas pedal, causing the sperm to swim faster as it gets closer to the egg. The findings were published in the February issue of Cell.

Researchers already knew that the speed of a sperm depends on its pH, or its internal acidity levels. The less acidic and more alkline it is, the faster it swims. They also knew that a sperm doesn’t sprint at top speed for its entire trip through a woman’s reproductive tract. It travels relatively slowly for the first part of its journey, and then gets lodged in the sticky folds of the fallopian tubes, resting until another, still unknown signal raises their pH again. This initiates their final race to the egg. “It’s a tough job for a sperm — when it’s deposited it has to travel a long distance to the egg sites,” [said Dejian Ren, who was not involved in the new study]. “This process has been known for many decades, but how it actually happens remained a mystery” [The Scientist].

Now the researchers say they’ve found the mechanism that raises a sperm’s pH and kicks it into high gear. In order to increase its pH and become more alkaline, the sperm needs to jettison protons, and the US scientists have found pores on its surface which allow it to do precisely that. Dr Yuriy Kirichok, who led the research, said: “The concentration of protons inside the sperm cell is 1,000 times higher than outside. If you just open a pore, protons will go outside – we identify the molecule that lets them out” [BBC].

The scientists found that as the sperm got closer to an egg, they react to a substance called anandamide, which is present in the female reproductive tract. That is when these pores or Hv1 proton channels, open–releasing protons and making the sperm swim faster. Gaining a better understanding of what prompts sperm to spring into action could open doors toward developing effective male contraception, or, alternatively, ways to give “slow swimmers” a jolt [Time].

And since anandamide is an “endocannabinoid,” this may explain why male marijuana smokers can have fertility problems–the cannabinoids found in marijuana may mimic the effect of the natural substance. Dr Kirichok said: “Marijuana likely activates sperm prematurely, leaving them burnt out in a matter of hours” [BBC].

For more info, check out this video of the researchers from the University of California in San Francisco talking about the proton activation.

Related Content:
80beats: Did Researchers Really Grow Human Sperm from Stem Cells?
80beats: Older Fathers’ Sperm May Produce Children With Slightly Lower IQs
80beats: Testicles Could Yield Stem Cells Without the Ethical Complications
80beats: Men Have a Biological Clock, Too

Image: iStockphoto

Current Status: GO
Today’s Launch was scrubbed due to weather, they will try again tomorrow even earlier. I will update the status as information becomes available.

Launch Date: Monday, 4:14 am ET

Odds of Launch: 60 percent

Shuttle: Endeavour (OV-105)

Mission: STS-130

Mission Length: 13 days

EVA’s: 3 (on flight days: 5, 7, 10)

Commander: George Zamka

Pilot: Terry Virts

Mission Specialists: Robert Behnken and Kathryn Hire, Nicholas Patrick, Stephen Robinson

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

NOAA’s Forecast:

Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 46. North northwest wind around 5 mph.

To keep current with the news about the launch, I recommend you go to NASA’s Launch Blog which should be live around midnight 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.

If I can get up on time, I will be watching the launch itself on NASA-TV

The big priority for this mission: deliver the connecting module known as Tranquility. Tranquility has a cupola. The cupola is a robotic control station that offers 360 degree views of the ISS and of course, Earth and other objects. Once Tranquility is attached and operating building the station is 90 percent complete and naturally we are going to halt manned flights, yeah that dog and pony show makes a lot of sense.

Image Credits: NASA / NOAA

We live in the future.

Don’t believe me? Then why not sit back, relax, and watch this live video stream from frakking space.

That’s right: we can now watch video, live, from the International Space Station.

<Futurama voice>Welcome to the world of TOMORROW!</Futurama voice>

This is very cool. You can watch live as the astronauts on board do their duty, see shots outside the portal to view the station components, and even watch as the Earth rolls by under the station at 8 kilometers per second. Wow.

This is precisely the kind of thing I’ve been harassing my friends at NASA media to implement for years. I’m glad they’ve finally done it!

Now, if only they’d allow embedding…