New Archeology Find Buries Theory on First Americans, Re-Opening a Gaping Mystery | 80beats

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What’s the News: Archeologists have discovered thousands of stone tools in Texas that are over 15,000 years old. The find is important because it is over 2,000 years older than the so-called Clovis culture, which had previously thought to be the first human culture in North America. As Texas A&M University anthropologist Michael Waters says, “This is almost like a baseball bat to the side of the head of the archaeological community to wake up and say, ‘hey, there are pre-Clovis people here, that we have to stop quibbling and we need to develop a new model for peopling of the Americas’.”

How the Heck:

At a site on Buttermilk Creek in central Texas, Archeologists discovered 15,528 items, ranging from chert flakes to blades and chisels.
The first indication that the tools were older than anything previous seen on North America came from their stratigraphic horizon: The excavated layer was underneath a layer of classic Clovis tools. (The sediments showed no indication of mixing after the tools were dropped.)
The most conclusive evidence came from a dating technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ...


KaBLAMBLAMBLAM! | Bad Astronomy

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What the heck hit Mars and made this?

[Click to barsoomenate.]

This image is from my favorite Red Planet paparazzo, the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows three craters, each about 1.5 to 2 km (0.9 to 1.2 miles) across… and they all formed at the same time!

How can I tell? Well, for one thing, if this were a coincidence, with three impacts happening at very different times, then you’d see overlap in the crater rims; the earliest crater would be partially obscured by the later crater, and that in turn by the most recent impact. But that’s not the case here, since the rims aren’t overlaying each other. In fact, the straight walls between them are exactly what you’d expect if you have impact explosions happening simultaneously: the expanding shock waves smack into each other and create a linear feature.

Not only that, but let your eye follow the straight lines between craters up and down, above and below the craters themselves and onto the landscape. You can see that the hellish expanding wall of fire etched itself onto the Martian ...


Darwin, hey? | Gene Expression

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At The Intersection Sheril Kirshenbaum posts some rather stark data from Gallup and a Canadian outfit on the differences in attitudes toward evolution between Americans and Canadians. Those Tories are different! The answers seem very similar to those on offer for the General Social Survey’s “CREATION” question. I thought I’d compare Canadians to various American demographics. The question was asked in 2004 of over 1,400 Americans. I find it somewhat ironic in that I think there has been some question as to the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, and his attitude toward evolution. Harper is a member of the Evangelical Protestant Christian and Missionary Alliance (and apparently has appointed known Creationists to various government positions, something controversial or notable in Canada). In contrast, Barack Hussein Obama is famously more grounded in evolution than angels.

Humans… Were created by God in the last 10,000 years
Evolved through natural selection
Evolved over time through divine guidance
DK/NR Canada, 2011
14
58
19
8 USA, 2010
40
16
38
6 God created man
Man has evolved
Man has evolved, but god guided
Other USA, 2004
43
12
42
4 Demographics Male
38
14
44
4 Female
47
11
40
3 Age 18-34
38
11
48
3 Age 35-64
43
13
40
4 Age 64-
49
13
37
2 No diploma
47
13
36
4 HS diploma
49
10
38
3 College degree
32
15
50
4 Graduate degree
21
26
49
4 Protestant
55
6
37
3 Catholic
37
8
52
3 No Religion
20
32
43
6 Democrat
37
17
44
2 Independent
44
11
41
5 Republican
48
7
40
5 White
41
14
42
3 Black
57
6
34
4 New England
25
15
51
10 Mid-Atlantic
32
15
50
3 E. North Central
42
10
46
2 W. North Central
37
15
46
2 South Atlantic
55
12
28
5 E. South Central
52
6
41
2 W. South Central
53
6
38
3 Mountain
43
13
42
2 Pacific
30
18
46
6

Image Credit: Yosemite

Quantum Smell | Cosmic Variance

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Over on the Facebooks, Matt Strassler points to a BBC story about the role of quantum mechanics in explaining our sense of smell. There aren’t any equations in the article, and I haven’t read the research papers, but the idea seems to be that electrons move from one part of a protein to another part via quantum tunneling. The potential that allows this to happen is only set up if you have the right chemical involved, which is how the protein purportedly “smells” the existence of this chemical. The resulting mechanism is just absurdly sensitive — apparently fruit flies can smell the difference between hydrogen and deuterium (chemically identical, but tiny differences in atomic energy levels from having an extra neutron in the nucleus).

It’s still a controversial theory, but apparently not crackpotty. The question of how important quantum mechanics (as opposed to just its classical limit) is for biological processes was brought up in our earlier post on quantum photosynthesis. Which reminds me in turn of this worthwhile talk by Seth Lloyd, on the basic topic of “quantum life” and photosynthesis in particular. In between learning about how quantum phenomena might remain relevant in the hot, warm environment of a plant, you can enjoy Lloyd’s principled stance not to use PowerPoint under any circumstances.


To Boldly Grow Where No Sperm Has Grown Before: in a Petri Dish | 80beats

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What’s the News: For the first time in medical history, scientists have successfully grown mouse sperm in a laboratory. As Northwestern University cell biologist Erwin Goldberg told New Scientist, “People have been trying to do this for years.” It’s hoped that being able to grow sperm outside the testes will lead to improved fertility treatments for men.

How the Heck:

The concept is simple: Combine the right dosage of chemicals that will provide nourishment to testes in a petri dish. Actually finding the magic amount is a tedious process of trial and error.
First, the team genetically engineered mice “so that a protein only present in fully grown sperm would fluoresce green.”
Next, the scientists extracted germ cells (which produce sperm) from the newborn mice testes, and put them in a bath of agarose gel, fetal bovine serum, testosterone, and other chemicals.
After about a month, they discovered that virtually half of the lab-grown sperm were glowing, indicating that they were fully grown.
They then used in vitro fertilization to impregnate female mice, who eventually gave birth to fertile mice themselves.

Context:

Past attempts at lab-grown sperm weren’t very successful. Many of ...


How to Protect World Cup Crowds From Blazing Sun? Carbon-Fiber Flying-Saucer Clouds | Discoblog

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Picturing yourself at the 2022 World Cup, surrounded by Qatar’s (as-yet-to-be-built) state-of-the-art stadium sounds like a soccer-fan’s dream, but there’s one problem: In the summer, when the event is traditionally held, this desert country’s temperatures can easily top 115 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s hard to enjoy soccer when you’re suffering a heat stroke, which is why engineers are developing a flying-saucer-like carbon-fiber cloud that will float above soccer-eyed spectators and automatically reposition itself to block the sun, cooling them from the sizzling heat.

As Saud Ghani, head of Qatar University’s Mechanical and Industrial Engineering group, told CNN, this giant iPhone-shaped robotic cloud could potentially drop temperatures by 10 degrees Fahrenheit. It does this by shielding the pitch from sunlight (a simple-enough concept). So how does it stay aloft, and stay in the right place to block the sun?

“Artificial clouds will move by remote control, [be] made of 100 percent light carbonic materials, fueled by four solar-powered engines and will fly high to protect direct and indirect sun rays to control temperatures at the open playgrounds,” Ghani said in a statement. Pockets ...


The Valley of the Teenagers: My new brain column for Discover | The Loom

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When you’re a teenager, it seems like nobody understands you. And once you’re finished being a teenager and get to observe them as an adult, you have to wonder what on Earth is going through their heads. In my new column for Discover, I gingerly step into the teenage mind, exploring what neuroscientists are learning about how their brains work. Teenagers may do things that seem crazy and/or stupid, but that doesn’t mean they themselves are crazy or stupid. The teen years turn out to be a unique phase of mental life, when we tally up the rewards and costs of our choices with a kind of math that you won’t find in the heads of children or grownups. Check it out.


The Little-Known 2007 Energy Law That May Have a Big Effect on Oil Consumption | 80beats

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What’s the News: In a much-ignored speech last week (not ignored by Grist), Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) argued that the U.S. could become less vulnerable to spiking oil prices if we used less of it (surprise!). The crux of the talk was a graph he showed of our country’s estimated petroleum imports, and specifically, the significant change inprojection between 2008 and 2011 (blue and red lines above). Our now-declining gas and oil imports are in part a result of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

How the Heck:

Our petroleum imports are projected to decline because the Energy Act included strategic changes to biofuel and fuel efficiency policies. For example, automakers are required to increase fleetwide gas mileage to 35 miles per gallon by 2020 and more money is being funneled into biofuel production.
As Bingaman said in his speech, the act will save the U.S. billions of oil barrels—more than the 23 billion that we now have in U.S. proven oil reserves.
The bottom line is that by including more biofuels into our gasoline and supporting alternative energies, we’ll require less petroleum and thereby rely less on the petrostates. The ...


Beetle turns itself into a wheel (that’s how it rolls) | Not Exactly Rocket Science

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The southern beaches of Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia, USA, are part of a national park. To protect the area, only residents and staff are allowed to drive their vehicles on the sands. But there are plenty of wheels nonetheless – small, living ones.

The beaches are home to the beautiful coastal tiger beetle (Cicindela dorsalis media). Tiger beetles are among the fastest of insect runners, but their larvae are slow and worm-like. If they’re exposed and threatened, running isn’t an option. Instead, they turn themselves into living wheels. They leap into the air, coil their bodies into a loop, and hit the ground spinning. The wind carries them to safety.

The fact that a long, worm-like animal can jump and roll is amazing in its own right. The ability is even more remarkable because the tiger beetle is “one of the best-studied insect species in North America” and until a few years ago, no one had ever seen it doing this. Alan Harvey and Sarah Zukoff were the first. They write, “[Sarah] was walking through some unusually loose sandy drifts on Cumberland Island and happened to kick up ...

Blast site blastocyte | Bad Astronomy

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If you follow me on Twitter you may have figured out I’m otherwise occupied for right now, and have spotty internet access. But I happened to have a connection for a few minutes, and got a press release from the folks at Rutgers and the Chandra X-Ray Center about a supernova remnant, and the picture of this old exploded star was simply too cool not to share right away:

Pretty freaky, eh? [Click to ensupernovenate.]

The science involved is pretty interesting (see the Chandra page about it), but basically, this shows high-energy X-rays (in blue) and lower energy X-rays (in red) emitted by extremely hot gas in the supernova (the entire image is superposed on the correct background from the Digitized Sky Survey to show the positions of stars). This emission traces the magnetic fields in the gas (which is actually ionized and therefore a plasma), and this in turn has yielded some surprises for the scientists. Again read the page for the details, which are cool.

But in the meantime, the image itself gives an almost three-dimensional feel to the supernova remnant, doesn’t it? ...


Truth and the Oped Pages | The Intersection

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I’ve got a new post up at DeSmogBlog, airing some of my outrage over this exchange in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It’s between a climate denier and John Abraham, and while Abraham gets the better of things factually and intellectually (of course) I don’t think oped pages ought to be printing columns that, essentially, misinform:

A few posts back I highlighted new research suggesting that “on the one hand, on the other hand” coverage of fact-based political divides leaves citizens in a postmodern funk, uncertain what the truth is and whether they are capable of discerning it. It’s yet another reason why journalists have a responsibility to serve as arbiters of factual disputes—rather than thinking their job is done if they let one side say the sky is pink, but then provide a counter-quote from an expert saying that in fact it’s blue.

What goes for journalists ought to go for op-ed pages. While it might be more difficult to design a study to test the effect on readers of an exchange like that in the Star Tribune, I would guess it is the same—making them feel helpless about discerning where the truth lies.

You can read the full DeSmogBlog post here.


Islam, creationism, and anti-modernism | Gene Expression

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The other day I was listening to NPR and they were discussing at length the upheavals in the Arab world. Offhand I noted how the discussants would occasionally shift between “the Arab world” and “the Muslim world,” and naturally they all took for granted the central role that Islam would play in the Egyptian polity (and likely the Libyan one). There was nothing shocking about any of this, but imagine you engaged in some substitution. Switching from “Western world” to “Christian world” would sound old-fashioned and anachronistic. The European Union famously omitted mention of Christianity in its constitution several years back, from which erupted a controversy between its more religious and secular member nations (e.g., Poland vs. France). Western societies may still have Christianity as the dominant religion, but in most cultures it does not have the same relationship to the broader culture that it once did.

This is in part due to some radicals on this continent. As outlined in The Godless Constitution the United States of America was founded with a federal government which did not operate under the explicit umbrella of a religious institution. Nor did that federal government engage in any subsidy toward religion. This was ...

Human population genetics & identity politics | Gene Expression

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Joshua Lipson has a column up in the Harvard Political Review, DNA and the New Identity Politics. I’m generally very keen on spreading insights from the biological sciences into other domains; not as an imperialist, but as a intellectual entrepreneur. There are few assertions Joshua makes which I would quibble with in the details, but it’s a good sign that assertions are being made in the first place. Just don’t tell everyone!

Right now the new human population genomics is robust and informative in phylogeny. In terms of function, not so much. But that will probably change at some point. Lipson states:

Fortunately, this discipline of science has little to say about important social or psychological differences between ethnic groups and races: as a result, access to new information about the genetic landscape of humanity has not prompted a spooky stir of neo-eugenics….

There may come a time in the very near future where we’ll know more about how populations differ in terms of average psychological dispositions. I pointed to a simple reason for possible differences already this week. But perhaps in a more novel vein, how about how parents and siblings will relate to each ...

The genetic world in 3-D | Gene Expression

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When Zack first mooted the idea of the Harappa Ancestry Project I had no idea what was coming down the pipe. I wonder if his daughter and wife are curious as to what’s happened to their computer! Since collecting the first wave of participants he’s been a result generating machine. Today he produced a fascinating three dimensional PCA (modifying Doug McDonald’s Javascript) using his “Reference 1″ data set. He rescaled the dimensions appropriately so that they reflect how much of the genetic variance they explain. The largest principal component of variance is naturally Africa vs. non-Africa, the second is west to east in Eurasia, and the third is a north to south Eurasian axis.

I decided to be a thief and take Zack’s Javascript and resize it a bit to fit the width of my blog, blow up the font size, as well as change the background color and aspects of positioning. All to suit my perverse taste. You see the classic “L” shaped distribution familiar from the two-dimensional plots, but observe the “pucker” in the third dimension of South Asian, and to a lesser extent Southeast Asian, populations.

The the topology of the first three independent dimensions of ...

Twins: Brazil edition | Gene Expression

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A few years ago a story came out about a town populated by Germans in Brazil which exhibited a tendency toward twinning. The combination of Germans, Brazil, and twins, naturally meant that Josef Mengele came into the picture. A more prosaic explanation for the twinning, favored by locals, was that it was something environmental, like their water. The oddity warranted coverage by National Geographic, and you can imagine what the British press did with the story. At first I thought I saw references to elevated frequencies of identical (monozygotic) twins, which would have have been strange indeed. Twinning varies across populations and families, but that variance tends to be of the fraternal (dizygotic) variety. Some of this is heritable, but some of it is clearly due to environment. Specifically, nutritional inputs that increase levels of insulin-like growth factor, which is found in milk and meat (I suspect this explains the higher twinning rate in Northern Europe vis-a-vis Southern Europe). This doesn’t even go into other factors brought on by modernity, such as delayed childbearing and fertility technology.

But in any case, it turned out that the Brazilian twins were ...

NCBI ROFL: If I could date myself, I would. | Discoblog

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How do I love thee? Let me count the Js: implicit egotism and interpersonal attraction.

“From the perspective of implicit egotism people should gravitate toward others who resemble them because similar others activate people’s positive, automatic associations about themselves. Four archival studies and 3 experiments supported this hypothesis. Studies 1-4 showed that people are disproportionately likely to marry others whose first or last names resemble their own. Studies 5-7 provided experimental support for implicit egotism. Participants were more attracted than usual to people (a) whose arbitrary experimental code numbers resembled their own birthday numbers, (b) whose surnames shared letters with their own surnames, and (c) whose jersey number had been paired, subliminally, with their own names. Discussion focuses on implications for implicit egotism, similarity, and interpersonal attraction.”

Photo: flickr/VJ_fliks

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: A rose by any other name: would it smell as sweet?
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: What’s in a name? Part I: U.G.H. you’re going to D.I.E.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: What’s in a name? Part II: Why Kevin Kouzmanoff strikes out so much.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Beauty week: ...


Busted | Cosmic Variance

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Loyal reader Mandeep Gill points out that I wrote “prevarication” when I clearly meant “equivocation” in the consciousness post. It’s now corrected. Very annoying, as I do like to use words to mean what they’re supposed to mean. I think I have a pretty good track record with “begging the question.”

While I have your attention, fellow loyal reader Richard O’Connell points us to a poem relevant to that post: Robert Browning’s Caliban upon Setebos. It begins:

‘Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,
Flat on his belly in the pit’s much mire,
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.
And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush,
And feels about his spine small eft-things course,
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh:

There’s a lot more.

Also! Flip Tanedo points out that Brian Hill’s transcription of Sidney Coleman’s lectures on quantum field theory have finally been LaTeXed (pdf). Thanks to Bryan Gin-ge Chen and Ting Yuan Sen for undertaking this thankless task. I took that course a couple years after the notes were made, and every student in the class had a photocopy. Yes, Sidney did gripe a bit that nobody laughed at his jokes any more because they had all read them in the notes.

That’s all I got right now. Just trying to lower the bar so our co-bloggers will be encouraged to contribute more frivolous posts.


Sex Increases Risk of Heart Attack by 2.7X—Significantly Less Than Its Fun Multiplier | Discoblog

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There are certain things you’re not supposed to do during sex and having a heart attack is one of them. We’ve known for a while that bursts of moderate to intense physical activity—including sex—increase heart attack risk, but a few scientists have now put number on that risk. And especially for out-of-shape folks, the diagnosis doesn’t look good (unless you’re aiming for death by sex, of course).

Studying death and sex is a tricky subject: Scientists can’t just round up volunteers, watch them make love, and then note which ones die. So instead they analyzed data from 14 different studies to single out connections between sex, exercise, and the risk of cardiac death or heart attacks.

As the researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Acute cardiac events were significantly associated with … sexual activity.” When exercising, you’re 3.5 times more likely to get a heart attack, and when having sex (or immediately after sex), you’re 2.7 times more likely.

The main take-home message is not that you should give up sex, but that you should get more regular exercise. That’s because they also discovered that your likelihood of ...


NASA wants smart high school kids | Bad Astronomy

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NASA is looking for U.S. high school students to participate in their INSPIRES program: Interdisciplinary National Science Program Incorporating Research Experience. Students who get in will get access to all kinds of cool stuff:

The selected students and their parents will participate in an online learning community with opportunities to interact with peers, NASA engineers and scientists. The online community also provides appropriate grade-level educational activities, discussion boards and chat rooms for participants to gain exposure to careers and opportunities available at NASA.

That’s nice, but the real deal is this part:

Students selected for the program also will have the option to compete for unique grade-appropriate experiences during the summer of 2012 at NASA facilities and participating universities. The summer experience provides students with a hands-on opportunity to investigate education and careers in the STEM disciplines.

Man, I would’ve killed for that opportunity when I was in high school! So if you’re a teacher with some good students, a parent, or a high school kid yourself, check out the program. And if it looks good to you, apply! The deadline for applications is June 30.

Hey. Sometimes, it is ...