NCBI ROFL: The Big, the Bad, and the Boozed-Up. | Discoblog

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It’s booze week on NCBI ROFL! All this week we’ll be featuring articles about ethanol, ethyl alcohol, and even CH3CH2OH. Enjoy!

The Big, the Bad, and the Boozed-Up: Weight Moderates the Effect of Alcohol on Aggression.

“Most people avoid the “big, drunk guy” in bars because they don’t want to get assaulted. Is this stereotype supported by empirical evidence? Unfortunately, no scientific work has investigated this topic. Based on the recalibrational theory of anger and embodied cognition theory, we predicted that heavier men would behave the most aggressively when intoxicated. In two independent experiments (Ns= 553 and 327, respectively), participants consumed either alcohol or placebo beverages and then completed an aggression task in which they could administer painful electric shocks to a fictitious opponent. Both experiments showed that weight interacted with alcohol and gender to predict the highest amount of aggression among intoxicated heavy men. The results suggest that an embodied cognition approach is useful in understanding intoxicated aggression. Apparently there is a kernel of truth in the stereotype of the “big, drunk, aggressive guy.”"

Photo: flickr/ peretzp

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Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Surprise! ...


Scientists Confirm: Blood Test Can Tell A Fetus’s Sex at Seven Weeks | 80beats

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What’s the News: A blood test can reliably tell a mother-to-be whether to expect a boy or girl as early as seven weeks into pregnancy, according to a new analysis published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The test can distinguish the sex of a fetus up to three months earlier than an ultrasound can, and doesn’t carry the slight risk of miscarriage that accompanies invasive tests such as amniocentesis.

How the Heck:

The test works by detecting tiny bits of fetal DNA floating through an expectant mom’s bloodstream. In particular, the test looks for little fragments of a Y chromosome, which only males have. Some Y chromosome DNA in the blood sample means it’s a boy; none means it’s a girl.
Of course, this method isn’t perfect. The test could fail to recognize a minute amount of male DNA in a sample, or mistakenly detect a bit of a Y chromosome where there isn’t. So, the researchers set out to determine just how accurate this test was. They analyzed all the data from 57 previous studies of the technique, looking at a combined total of more ...


Small, Sneaky Squid Produce Big Sperm | 80beats

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spacing is important

What’s the News: In the squid world, the body size of male spear squid determines the mating strategies they use. Small male squid, which have no chance of physically competing with their larger rivals, must try to get with the females of the species on the sly. Now, researchers in Tokyo have learned that this difference in mating behavior has resulted in the evolution of divergent sperm types, though perhaps not in the way you’d think: diminutive male squid actually produce larger sperm than big male squid.

What’s the Context:

Male spear squid, also known as Bleeker’s squid, are either large “consorts,” or small “sneakers.” During mating, consorts will try to court a female by flashing vibrant colors across their bodies; if successful, a consort will place a packet of sperm, called a spermatophore, into the female’s oviduct, a tube that leads to her ovaries. As you’d expect from his title, the consort male will then guard his ...


Success! Functioning Anal Sphincter Grown in a Petri Dish | Discoblog

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anal sphincter

Eyes, sperm, you name it: these days, chances are someone’s cooking it up on a little slab of agar and gearing up to graft/sew/implant it in anything that comes near. Today’s body part is the anal sphincter, that handy little ring of muscle that maintains the separation between your insides and your outsides. Researchers grew them from cells, implanted them in mice, and compared the new sphincters’ function with the animals’, ah, native orifices. And apparently, they were quite satisfactory.

You young whippersnappers out there might not realize it, of course. But malfunctioning sphincters are a big, messy problem as you get older, and a lot of people suffering from fecal incontinence (including women recovering from births, which can put everything down there out of whack) could benefit from this research. Right now, Depends or surgery with high rates of complication are what people with damaged sphincters have to choose from, and the possibility of replacing the muscle is intriguing.

The major step forward made here is that these sphincters, which were grown in a circular mold from human muscle biopsy cells and mouse nerve cells, could, by virtue of those nerve ...


Success: SETI array back on track! | Bad Astronomy

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Via Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log blog, I am very pleased to find out that the mothballed SETI telescope array will soon be operating again!

As I reported here a few of months ago, the SETI Allen Telescope Array had to be shut down due to a lack of funds. It costs roughly $2.5M per year to keep it running, and the funding agencies were pulling back. The folks at SETI decided to create a public fund drive called SETIstars, hoping to raise the $200,000 needed to kickstart the project again.

As of a few days ago, that goal was reached! I was happy to see that people such as Jodie Foster (who played SETI astronomer Ellie Arroway in the movie "Contact") and science fiction author Larry Niven were among people who had contributed, as well as Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders.

The $200k donated is enough to get things started again, but not enough to continue operations, so it looks like there will be more fund (and awareness) raising soon by SETI. I think this is a pretty interesting endeavor; SETI has long been a political and ...


SMBC on the brain | Bad Astronomy

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I was on travel yesterday and didn’t get a chance to link to the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal web comic, leading to approximately a metric ton of emails and notes on Twitter telling me about it. I know, the sample I have extracted below doesn’t give you a hint why people would be telling me about this particular strip, but click it to get the whole picture.

OK, spoilers below the fold! Don’t read until you’ve looked at the comic!

Yes, that’s me, and yes, that’s Neil Tyson. Normally, I’d be concerned (if not outright repulsed) by being involved in the life cycle of a parasitic organism, but since (SMBC artist) Zach’s wife, Kelly, studies those things, I have to face the fact that he does this out of love. Also, the cercariae in Zach’s brain make him create comics that he knows will get put into my blog, so who’s the parasite and who’s the host now, huh?

[NB: Zach is now selling his SMBC book. You may also recognize his fashion model at the bottom of that page. Time to update my resumé!]

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Attacks on Climate Science in Schools Are Mounting | The Intersection

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My latest DeSmog piece is about the classroom climate for climate science teaching–and how poisonous it is getting. It starts like this:

A few months back, those who care about accurate climate science and energy education in high school classes registered a minor victory. Under fire from outlets like The New York Times, the education publishing behemoth Scholastic (of Clifford the Big Red Dog and Harry Potter fame) pulled an energy curriculum sponsored by the American Coal Foundation, which gave a nice PR sheen to coal without bothering to cover, uh, the whole environmental angle. The curriculum had reportedly already been mailed to 66,000 classrooms by the time it got yanked.

When it comes to undermining accurate and responsible climate and energy education at the high school level, Scholastic may have been the most prominent transgressor. But precisely because it is a massive and respected educational publisher, and actually careswhat The New York Times thinks, it was also the most moderate and easy to reason with.

Although it’s hard to find online now, I’ve reviewed the offending coal curriculum, entitled “The United States of Energy.” In my view, it didn’t even contain any obvious falsehoods—except for errors of omission. It was more a case of subtle greenwashing.

What’s currently seeping into classrooms across the country is far, far worse—more ideological, and more difficult to stop. We’re talking about outright climate denial being fed to students—and accurate climate science teaching being attacked by aggressive Tea Party-style ideologues.

You can read on here….


Reason and the Mind of Michele Bachmann | The Intersection

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By Jon Winsor

A couple weeks ago, when Chris described the Tea Party as authoritarian, I had to stop and think–how could that be? The Tea Party bills itself as libertarian. How could it be simultaneously authoritarian? How would that work?

Ryan Lizza’s great profile of Michele Bachmann in The New Yorker shows us. I’d encourage people to read the whole thing, but a couple key paragraphs jumped out at me. The first is Lizza’s description of Bachmann’s religious influences: theologian Francis Schaeffer (a very important theologian for modern evangelical activism), and a leading proponent of Schaffer’s, Nancy Pearcey:

[Pearcey taught] readers how to implement Schaeffer’s idea that a Biblical world view should suffuse every aspect of one’s life. She tells her readers to be extremely cautious with ideas from non-Christians. There may “be occasions when Christians are mistaken on some point while nonbelievers get it right,” she writes in “Total Truth.” “Nevertheless, the overall systems of thought constructed by nonbelievers will be false—for if the system is not built on Biblical truth, then it will be built on some other ultimate principle. Even individual truths will be seen through the distorting lens of a false world view.

Is the Bible a clearly discernible “system” that competes with all other systems? There are many ways to interpret the Bible, so who gets to say when the Bible and a “system” conflicts? The implication is that some people are continually right in some sense, and others are continually wrong, regardless of the demonstrable cases where the “right” people might be in error.

A second paragraph that jumped out at me has to do with the beginning of Bachmann’s political career:

Bachmann was getting interested in politics just as her party was getting interested in people like her. In the late nineteen-nineties, she began travelling throughout Minnesota, delivering lectures in churches, and writing pamphlets, on the perils of a federal education law known as School to Work, which supported vocational training, and a Minnesota education law known as Profile of Learning, which set state education standards. In one pamphlet, she wrote that federal education law “embraces a socialist, globalist worldview; loyalty to all government and not America.” In another, she warned of a “new restructuring of American society,” beginning with “workforce boards” that would tell every student the specific career options he or she could pursue, turning children into “human resources for a centrally planned economy.”

David Frum comments on this phase of Bachmann’s development:

This kind of talk would sound paranoid to most of us. It emerges from a religious philosophy that rejects the federal government as an alien instrument of destruction, ripping apart a Christian society. Bachmann’s religiously grounded rejection of the American state finds a hearing with many more conventional conservatives radicalized by today’s hard economic times.

When Bachmann is asked what principle motivates her, her answer is ”liberty”. But Lizza notes dryly, ”It is a peculiarity of the current political moment that a politician with a history of pushing sectarian religious beliefs in government has become a hero to a libertarian movement.”

Thinking over the above, it’s helpful to distinguish two strands of American libertarianism. The first is the kind we think of with Ron Paul or Reason magazine. This view believes in the power of a free individual’s reason to improve life, and it is plausibly anti-authoritarian (although arguably, it has its own authorities and ways of being absolute). The second libertarianism has to do with freedom from the federal government. This is not necessarily because you dislike authority. You might just view the federal government as a rival authority to the authority you want. With this second kind of libertarianism, “states rights” comes to mind, and also the religious homeschool movement.

Michele Bachmann has this second view in spades. Not only is she a staunch disciple of Schaeffer and Pearcey, but also John Eidsmoe (who told an interviewer “it was the state [of Alabama's] ‘constitutional right to secede,’ and that ‘Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun understood the Constitution better than did Abraham Lincoln…’”), and also J. Steven Wilkins (“the leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North”), and David A. Noebel (a homeschooling activist and “longtime John Birch society member whose pamphlets include… ‘Communism, Hypnotism, and the Beatles.’”)

So while the first type of libertarianism at least has a classical liberal’s respect for reason and shared facts, Bachmann’s style of libertarianism seems much more Manichean, and paradoxically authoritarian (where a particular “moral” authority is very strong. Maybe calling it libertarianism is a stretch). If we’re going to talk to a Michele Bachmann about just about any national policy, particularly science-related policy, right out of the gate reason and shared facts are going to have a hard time.


TEDxNASA to be Webcast

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TEDxNASA@Siliconvalley On Aug. 17 Will Be Streamed Online, NASA

"NASA's four research centers -- Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif; Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif.; Glenn Research Center in Cleveland; Langley Research Center and the National Institute of Aerospace, both in Hampton Va. -- are co-hosting the event. It is modeled after the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences that bring together visionaries in technology, entertainment and design to create a dialogue about important global challenges."

Next Batch of NASA Artifacts Available Next Week

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NASA Unveils New Batch Of Space Shuttle Program Artifacts, NASA

"The artifacts are not only from the shuttle era, but also from the Apollo, Mercury, Hubble Space Telescope programs. The approximately 2,000 items include: -- the Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station, an underwater habitat that was used to demonstrate space life support system ideas for use on space stations -- shuttle heat shield tiles used to test problems experienced during missions -- parts of Apollo and shuttle era spacesuits, including hard upper torso garments to protect astronauts from extreme temperatures."

Marc's Note: You can also purchase your very own Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA).

NASA Combines ESMD with SOMD to Create HEO

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NASA Creates Human Exploration And Operations Directorate, NASA

"NASA has announced the creation of the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate. The new organization, which combines the Space Operations and Exploration Systems mission directorates, will focus on International Space Station operations and human exploration beyond low Earth orbit."

Marc's Note: Hey, just when I was starting to like these acronyms, they're gone. Now with HEO we can get on with the next human mission beyond LEO to? An asteroid, the moon, maybe Phobos, how about Mars?

Pushing for Solids, SSME etc. for SLS

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Hatch & Reid (and others) Forcing NASA's Hand, Tea in Space

"We reported that Orrin Hatch was circulating a letter in the senate during our nation's darkest fiscal hour... now we know who he got to sign it. The signatures are:

Harry Reid (NV)
Orrin Hatch(UT)
Mike Crapo (ID)
James E. Risch (ID)
Dean Heller (NV)"

Marc's Note: Tea in Space has obtained a letter signed by five senators (PDF) which basically says you have what you need with the SRB's, Ares
derived components, SSME etc., so use it.

Marc's update: For those who've had problems downloading the letter from the Tea in Space site I've updated the link so you can download it from NASA Watch.

Marc's update: My mistake, Keith had already posted the letter on August 2nd.

Shuttle Moves Out, Commercial Company To Move In

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NASA OPF-3Deal that may bring 600 jobs to KSC could get OK soon, Florida Today

"Kennedy Space Center Director Robert Cabana said he is optimistic a deal will close soon to transfer control of a former shuttle hangar to Space Florida.

He said that will clear up red tape, and enable what he described as "a commercial company" to move into the building known as Orbiter Processing Facility Bay 3, where it hopes to employ 500 to 600 people."

Marc's Note: The commercial company is Boeing.

Dawn Spacecraft Starts Taking Detailed Observations of Vesta

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Dawn Spacecraft Starts Taking Detailed Observations of VestaNASA's Asteroid Photographer Beams Back Science Data, NASA

"The Dawn spacecraft has completed a graceful spiral into the first of four planned science orbits during the spacecraft's yearlong visit to Vesta. The spacecraft started taking detailed observations on Aug. 11 at 9:13 a.m. PDT (12:13 a.m. EDT), which marks the official start of the first science-collecting orbit phase at Vesta, also known as the survey orbit."

WATCH LIVE: Bolden Speaks at NASA Future Forum

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NASA Future Forum, NASA TV

"NASA's first Future Forum of 2011 will bring together agency officials and local business, science and education leaders to discuss the agency's role in advancing innovation, technology, science, engineering, and education and NASA's benefit to the nation's economy. Rep. Donna F. Edwards will deliver opening remarks at 8 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Aug. 11, at the University of Maryland's Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center in College Park."

Marc's Note: Bolden will speak no earlier than 8:10 a.m. EDT.

Marc's Update: Bolden took a break from his prepared remarks at the beginning of his speech to talk about the American capability for cargo resupply and that is what months, not years from bridging that gap.

"That is a message that I have failed to get out, that is a message that we at NASA, that is the message that the American admin, that our, that the administration has failed to get out." ... "We're months away, not years, from an American capability to deliver cargo to the International Space Station."

He was referring to the SpaceX demo flight scheduled for November 30 this year. He also brought up Orbital saying both companies would be bringing cargo to the ISS in 2012 and that after the SpaceX final demo in November SpaceX could be bringing their first cargo to station in February of 2012.