The 9th ResearchBlogCast is up. We talk about the recent paper on cystic fibrosis genetics which I blogged.
Daily Data Dump – Monday | Gene Expression
I won the 3 Quarks Daily Science Prize. ‘Top quark’. Heh. “I” = Ed Yong. ‘nuf said.
Brown-eyed men perceived to be more dominant. Dienekes offers up a more banal explanation, that the disjunction between blue vs. brown-eyed males in dominance perception has to do with a correlation that’s a holdover from past population differences which are being eliminated through admixture. Plausible enough to me, excepting that I do wonder at models which presume that continental populations were ever so isolated.
Chimpanzees murder for land. In biology Malthus was right. Intrapspecific competition is the norm quite often because of reproduction up to the carrying capacity. This is why I think Brian Ferguson’s idea that war is a product of agriculture is highly naive; hunter-gatherers were up at their carrying capacity as well.
Bernie Madoff, Free at Last. Celebrity sociopath.
If it’s OK to reject blood from gay men, what about blacks? Will Saletan takes things to their logical conclusion to undermine the premise.
X-rayted pinup | Bad Astronomy
What’s more naked than naked?
This:
That picture is one of a dozen making up an unusual — to say the least! — pinup calendar. It was put together for EIZO, a monitor manufacturer; their equipment is used to display high-resolution medical displays… like radiographs. So it’s clever, and apropos.
I had to laugh when I saw them. I’m more of a WWII-style pinup kinda guy, but these are really funny. But as I looked at them more, I started to think more deeply about them.
First, I’m not overly concerned with discussing any potential sexism involved with these images; if you think calendars are sexist this won’t add to the fire or stanch any of those feelings. So either you think they’re sexist or you don’t; let’s agree to that and move on to a more interesting aspect of them.
Are they racy?
And I don’t mean sexy, I mean racy. Sexy is one thing, but racy implies a bit of a wink-wink, a little bit of naughtiness. If you find these sexy, that’s your business, and I have no bone to pick with you.
But seriously, would someone consider these to be racy pictures? I can think of arguments for and against. In many of the pictures, you can see a hint of flesh, and in many cases those particular body parts are considered to be, um, secondary sexual characteristics — and as is well known by the lingerie industry, hinting at skin can be more interesting than simply exposing it. In a lot of the pictures the model is posed provocatively. In most of them she’s wearing some killer stilettos, which is more of a pinup thing than a medical imaging thing.
On the other hand, these are freaking X-rays.
It’s funny how these things work. There are quite a few triggers that indicate sexuality to a man, including shape — the right curve in the right place. These pictures have that, but only kinda sorta. If it weren’t for the shoes and the poses, in most of these pictures you’d be hard-pressed to know if it were a man or a woman modeling!
And I’ll admit to hesitating before posting a picture from the calendar. I wanted to choose one that was relatively work-safe, and again the presence of the shoes or the pose used in some of them seemed inappropriate, so I chose what I thought was the least likely to invoke those triggers (and my wife agreed). How bizarre! If it were just a skeleton there would be no problem. If it were just the shoes sitting on a table, no problem. But the barest whisper of a breast or a behind together with the footwear and the position does, in my opinion, make these pictures bizarrely racy.
Humans have all sorts of complicated things going on in their brains. I’m curious as to what everyone else thinks about these pictures as well. I know that some people will rail about the sexism, others about the nature of pinups, and so on. But what do you think about the pictures themselves?
And yikes. Check out what stilettos do to your metatarsophalangeal joint between the metatarsal and proximal phalangeal bones! Perhaps one outcome of these pictures is that the next time I see a woman wearing 4 inch heels, this’ll be what I think of.
From Marsh Grass to Manatees: The Next Wave of Life Endangered by BP’s Oil | 80beats
Brown pelicans smothered by BP’s oil spill may be the symbols of sadness for the disaster in the Gulf, but they are, of course, far from the only animals affected. Marine scientists are watching other species for signs of danger.
Whales
Late last week, scientists spotted the first dead whale seen in the Gulf since the leak began gushing oil in April. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found a 25-foot-long sperm whale washed up, and now it is testing the sea creature for cause of death.
“While it is impossible to confirm whether exposure to oil was the cause of death, NOAA is reviewing whether factors such as ship strikes and entanglement can be eliminated,” the agency said. Samples collected from this carcass will be stored until the Pisces returns to port on July 2, or possibly if another boat is sent to meet the Pisces. Full analysis of the samples will take several weeks [New Orleans Times-Picayune].
Manatees
So far, it at least appears that manatees have been spared toxic exposure to the ever-growing oil spill. However, a science team hunkered down at Dauphin Island in Alabama—in the path of the oil—say their luck may not hold.
Until recently, biologists believed that manatees rarely ventured west of peninsular Florida, where, so far, no oil has appeared. But in 2007, Ruth Carmichael, who leads the Dauphin Island team, began documenting a relatively large summer migration of manatees to Mobile Bay, Ala. — leading them directly into and through the path of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak. From a couple of dozen to as many as 100 come to Mobile Bay for the summer, out of a total North American population of 5,000, she said [The New York Times].
The Little Guys
Large animals produce devastating pictures during a disaster like the BP oil spill. But those large creatures rely on something far less visible to us—the small creatures and plants at the bottom of the food chain—and those might be the most vulnerable of all to the oil, according to ecologist John Caruso.
In particular, the cord and Spartina grasses that grow on the coast of Louisiana are crucial to the ecosystem and especially sensitive to the oil leak, Caruso said. These grasses form the foundation of the local food chain, and their root systems lessen the erosion of the small islands that protect inland Louisiana from hurricanes, Caruso said [LiveScience].
Coral
We just don’t know. There are deep water coral living more than 1,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf, but scientists at the moment can’t say how they’re doing. First, they haven’t been able to go there. Second, they don’t have a good model, according to Erik Cordes, who studied deep water coral in Australia.
“If this had happened on a shallow-water reef, there would be a lot more data to evaluate the impact,” Cordes said. “We’re kind of playing catch-up. We’re trying to come up to speed very quickly on this” [Discovery News].
As for the oil leak itself: Late last week BP said its siphoning operation was collecting in excess of 25,000 barrels of oil per day. There’s still plenty they’re not getting: The total flow is now between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day. As BP’s relief wells approach their targets, the company says it will be bringing in more tankers to increase its capture capacity to 80,000 by using four ships and two separate pipes.
If you want more fuel for anger, check out the lengthy investigation in yesterday’s New York Times about what BP, its contractors, and the government knew about the weakness of the blowout preventer and other failed systems.
Recent Posts on the Gulf Oil Spill:
80beats: Obama’s Speech on the Oil Spill: What Do You Think of His “Battle Plan”?
80beats: BP to Kevin Costner: We’ll Take 32 of Your Oil Clean-up Machines
80beats: Should We Just Euthanize the Gulf’s Oil-Soaked Birds?
80beats: Meet the Oil-Covered Pelicans, Symbols of the BP Oil Spill
80beats: Scientists Say Gulf Spill Is Way Worse Than Estimated. How’d We Get It So Wrong?
Image: Wikimedia Commons
E-focals: Electric Eyeglasses Are the New Bifocals | Discoblog
Benjamin Franklin would be proud. The tinkerer who loved playing with electricity and allegedly invented the bifocals might have been glad to know that one company has now brought the two things together: PixelOptics has designed a pair of powered specs that can track users’ eyes and automatically adjust the glasses’ focal length, depending on if the wearer needs to see close-up or far-away.
The glasses use liquid crystals, which can change how much they bend light when an electrical current runs through them. A video demonstration of what a wearer might see is available on PixelOptics’ website, and the company hopes that the glasses will be available in the United States before the end of 2010.
Peter Zieman, director of European sales for PixelOptics, said the device uses motion tracking software similar to the iPhone, and told The Telegraph:
“In essence, glasses haven’t changed all that much since they were first invented. The most recent development was transition lenses that tint in sunlight, but even that was 15 years ago…. Our glasses bring modern technology to an old solution.”
Perhaps Zieman doesn’t give other eye-wear inventors enough credit; for example, in 2008 a retired physics professor Josh Silver created a pair of fluid-filled spectacles that could change strength when the amount of liquid inside varied.
Still, as Star Trek fans might agree, electric eyeglasses really are more futuristic.
Related content:
DISCOVER: Not Your Father’s Bifocals
Discoblog: Cheap “Liquid Glasses” Bring Clear Vision to the Poor
Discoblog: Contacts Claim to Fix Your Vision While You Sleep
Discoblog: Will the Laptops of the Future Be a Pair of Eye Glasses?
Discoblog: Possible Cure For Blindness: Implanting a Telescope in Your Eye
Image: flickr / Franklin College
Chimpanzees murder for land | Not Exactly Rocket Science
Between 1998 and 2009, John Mitani witnessed 18 murders firsthand, and found circumstantial evidence for three more. But no police were ever called, for these killers were all chimpanzees, from the Ngogo community in Uganda’s Kibale National Park.
Chimpanzees are highly intelligent animals, capable of great acts of empathy, technological sophistication, culture and cooperation. But they can also be murderers. Groups of chimps, mostly male, will mount lengthy aggressive campaigns against individuals from other groups, attacking them en masse and beating them to death. Their reasons for such killings have long been a source of debate among zoologists, but the aftermath of the Ngogo murders reveals an important clue. After the chimps picked off their neighbours, they eventually took over their territory. It seems that chimps kill for land.
The vast majority of these murders were carried out by groups of Ngogo males on patrol. These patrols are stern, single-file affairs. Males march along the borders of their territories, scanning for other chimps and neither feeding nor socialising. They monitor the northeastern part of their territory with particular fervour and indeed, 13 of their 21 kills took place here.
Of these victims, 4 were adult males and 9 were youngsters. That may seem like a small number, but for chimps, these are severe losses. At the hands of the Ngogo attackers, the northeastern community was experiencing death rates that were 23 to 75 times higher than those observed in other groups of chimps. They were even higher (by around 5 to 17 times) than the death rates due to violence between groups of human hunter-gatherers.
It’s clear that the Ngogo chimps are skilled at waging war against their neighbours and the exceptionally large males in their number probably contribute to their aptitude for violence. And because of their aggressive tactics, they have increased the size of their territory by some 22%, expanding into the northeast area that their neighbours once called home. With murder came new real estate to colonise.
Mitani’s observations back up other anecdotal evidence from other parts of Africa. In Gombe National Park, the Kasekala community of chimps took over the territory of the neighbouring Kahama clan after a series of fatal attacks. But the former community actually splintered off from the latter some time previously. Elsewhere in the Mahale Mountains, one group of chimps annexed the territory of another. All the males in the latter group mysteriously disappeared, but no murders were ever directly witnessed.
In contrast, Mitani found clear and direct evidence that the Ngogo chimps killed off their rivals and commandeered their land. These observations don’t rule out the alternative ideas that the attacks were motivated by a desire for more mates. After all, more acreage could attract more females into the group or improves the chances of existing members. But Mitani’s observations do rule out at least one idea behind chimp aggression – that it’s a side effect of humans. Some zoologists had suggested that by providing food to wild chimps, we were instigating conflict between them, but that’s clearly not the case in Ngogo.
Much of this behaviour might seem familiar, for it has poignant echoes of human warfare. After all, we also kill each other over resource. Richard Wrangham, a primatologist from Harvard University, has suggested that understanding the reasons behind chimp violence could help us to understand and address “the roots of violence in our own species”. Even so, Mitani is very careful about drawing an analogy between chimp and human aggression, given the myriad of reasons that humans have for waging war.
Chimp expert Frans de Waal appreciates his caution. He says, “There have been claims made in the past that since chimps wage war and we do as well it must be a characteristic that goes back 6 million years, and that we have always waged war, and always will.
“There are many problems with this idea, not the least of which is that firm archaeological evidence for human warfare goes back only about 10-15 thousand years. And apart from chimpanzees, we have an equally close relative, the bonobo, that is remarkably peaceful. The recent discovery of Ardipithecus also adds to the picture, as the suggestion has been that Ardi was relatively peaceful too. The present study provides us with a very critical piece of information of what chimpanzees may gain from attacking neighbours. How this connects with human warfare is a different story.”
Reference: Current Biology; citation tbc]
Image by Caelio (does not depict a chimp kill)
More on chimps:
- Chimps call during sex to confuse fathers, recruit defenders and avoid competitors
- How chimpanzees deal with death and dying
- Chimps prefer to copy others with prestige
- Male chimps trade meat for sex
- Chimpanzees make spears to hunt bushbabies
To be fruitful and multiply | Gene Expression
Over at The Wall Street Journal Bryan Caplan has an op-ed, The Breeders’ Cup: Social science may suggest that kids drain their parents’ happiness, but there’s evidence that good parenting is less work and more fun than people think. Bryan Caplan makes the case for having more children. Much of the op-ed focuses on behavior genetic insight as to the relative lack of long term importance of shared environment (read: parental environmental input). But the section on happiness and diminishing returns on the misery cost of children piqued my interest:
…closer look at the General Social Survey also reveals that child No. 1 does almost all the damage. Otherwise identical people with one child instead of none are 5.6 percentage points less likely to be very happy. Beyond that, additional children are almost a happiness free lunch. Each child after the first reduces your probability of being very happy by a mere .6 percentage points.
The op-ed is a precis of Caplan’s next book, Selfish Reasons to Have Kids. Being an economist he focuses on rational individual behavior, but I want to point to another issue: group norms. In the left-liberal progressive post-graduate educated circles which I come into contact with in the USA childlessness is not uncommon, and bears no stigma (on the contrary, I hear often of implicit and explicit pressure on graduate students to forgo children for the sake of maximizing labor hour input into research over one’s lifetime from advisors). On the other hand, the norm of a two-child family is also very strong, and going above replacement brings upon you a fair amount of attention. The rationale here is often environmental, more children = more of a carbon footprint. But my friend Gregory Cochran has stated that as an individual who is well above replacement whose social milieu is more conservative that he perceives that more than two children is also perceived as deviant in Middle American society. In other words, the reasoning may differ, but the intuition is the same (in Italy the reasoning mostly involves the cost of raising children from the perspective of parents, both in cash and time).
The numbers in the General Social Survey tell the tale. In 1972 42% of adults had more than 2 children. In 2008 32% did. More relevantly in 1972 47% of adults between the ages of 25 and 45 had more than 2 children. In 2008 the figure for that age group is 27% for those with more than 2 children.
Of course the numbers mix up a lot of different subcultures. One anecdote I’d like to relate is a conversation I had with a secular left-of-center university educated couple. They expressed the aspiration toward 4 children. I asked them out of curiosity about the population control issue, and they looked at me like I was joking. It needs to be mentioned that they weren’t American, rather they were from a Northern European country which seems on the exterior to resemble the United States very much. But it reminds us of the importance of group norms in shaping life choices and expectations, the implicit framework for our explicit choices.
All that goes to my point that Bryan Caplan’s project will be most effective among demographics geared toward prioritizing individual choice, analysis and utility maximization, as opposed to relying upon the wisdom of group norms. Economists, quantitative social science and finance types, libertarians, etc.
Note: Here’s Will Wilkinson’s rebuttal to Caplan’s empirical case in regards to happiness.
SMBC gets the finger | Bad Astronomy
I’ve not seen this trick before, but Zach Weiner at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is correct. Not only is he correct, but his math is correct, and his philosophical punch line is funny and correct. And I’m not saying that just because I’ll see him at Comic Con soon and I’m trying to get him to buy the first round. I swear, sometimes when I don’t get a math trick, that guy in the panel really is me.
Also. Don’t forget to hold your mouse over the red button at the bottom for extra bonus Zach-ish goodness*.
* He really does look like that.
French Museum: Irradiate That Dead Mammoth, S’il Vous Plait | Discoblog
You wash your hands before supper, and you irradiate your mammoths before public display. French customs requires the latter, so researchers plan to hit the world’s oldest baby mammoth with three days worth of gamma rays.
In July 2009, a hunter found the mammoth, now known as Khoma, partially frozen in Siberia. Foxes had used the animal as a giant chew toy, and it was missing bits of its head and trunk. Still, at over 50,000 years old Khoma was a prize: the oldest known mammoth infant.
Here’s hoping those foxes didn’t get sick. Tests have revealed that really old microbes live inside the frozen corpse, and researchers say the mix may include the bacterium anthracis, which can lead to anthrax and black lung disease. Researchers want to irradiate the animal to kill off these microbes before giving the furry babe an autopsy and putting it up for display.
Laurent Cortella, a nuclear physician, told the AFP:
“Our baby, inside its box, will undergo three to four days of a continuous bombardment of 20,000 grays of gamma rays,” he said, grays being the unit that measures absorbed dosage…. “The slightest lethargic little germ from time immemorial hasn’t the least chance of resisting when you realise that one gamma ray of four grays kills a human.”
The lab has used the same technique on other old stuff, including one celebrity corpse: the 1,800-year-old mummy of Ramses II, who had a nasty fungal infection.
Related content:
80beats: Zed the Mammoth Unearthed From Under an L.A. Department Store
DISCOVER: 69. Frozen Baby Mammoth Unearthed
80beats: The Last Mammoths Made a Round Trip Across the Bering Land Bridge
Image: flickr / PhiveKali
Robot Sub Dives Deep for Clues to a Fast-Melting Antarctic Glacier | 80beats
Why is Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier losing so much ice into the sea? Because, researchers say, it has come unstuck at the bottom.
The Western Ice Sheet in Antarctica contains “enough water to raise global sea levels by several metres,” Christian Schoof writes in an accompanying commentary on the paper in Nature Geoscience, and so the high rate of ice loss in place like Pine Island is a worry. But the force of the atmosphere, even if you accounted for a warming Antarctica, doesn’t explain the melting rate. So the British Antarctic Survey team led by Adrian Jenkins ventured a guess that something else was going on under the ice, and sent a robot to investigate.
What the autonomous underwater bot found was pretty jarring.
In just a few decades — since the 1970s — the relatively warm deep ocean water flowing beneath the cold, buoyant glacier meltwater has encroached inland under the glacier some 30 km, or 18.6 miles, and the pace of the outflow of Pine Island Glacier continues to accelerate [Discovery News].
Underneath the glacier, the explorer’s acoustic instruments found a huge ridge that rises about 1,300 feet up from the rest of the seabed upon which the glacier rests. But the relatively warm ocean water has been cutting away the glacier’s underside. According to co-author Pierre Dutrieux, that ridge can help explain why ice loss accelerated so recently.
“Some decades ago, the glacier was sitting on this ridge and the friction of the ridge was restraining the flow of the glacier,” he explained. “When the glacier became detached from the ridge, the ice flow was able to accelerate significantly” [BBC News].
The team’s findings bring up the climate change question, but as with any single event, the dynamics are too complex to say “global warming caused this.” Jenkins addresses this problem in his statement on the find:
“The discovery of the ridge has raised new questions about whether the current loss of ice from Pine Island Glacier is caused by recent climate change or is a continuation of a longer-term process that began when the glacier disconnected from the ridge. We do not know what kick-started the initial retreat from the ridge, but we do know that it started some time prior to 1970. Since detailed observations of Pine Island Glacier only began in the 1990s, we now need to use other techniques such as ice core analysis and computer modelling to look much further into the glacier’s history in order to understand if what we see now is part of a long term trend of ice sheet contraction.”
Related Content:
DISCOVER: The Last Unexplored Place on Earth
DISCOVER: Science Is Best When Done Underwater–by Robots
80beats: An Iceberg the Size of Luxembourg Breaks Free from Antarctica
80beats: Climate Panel Admits Glacier Blunder, Scrambles To Save Face
80beats: Tiny Soot Particles May Be Melting Mighty Himalayan Glaciers
Image: British Antarctic Survey
Gravity’s galactic brushstrokes | Bad Astronomy
Great beauty in art, it is sometimes thought, comes at the price of great strife. Massive forces, both internal and external, shape the flow of artistry. This metaphor applies equally well to galaxies as it does to humans.
Of course, when the Universe is your canvas, the scale’s a little bigger. Like with this dramatic Hubble view of the spiral galaxy M66:
[Oh yes, you most assuredly want to click that to see the galactic 3906 x 2702 pixel version.]
Mmmmm, pretty. Artistically, I like this shot in particular because of the angle and the way it’s framed; when I look at it I get the impression that it’s looming over me, and I perceive it to be sliding by. The sense of motion frozen in time is palpable.
But then the nerdy science part of my brain kicks in; numbers and physics fill in the back story of the artistry, making the picture even cooler than it looks. That galaxy is as big as the Milky Way: 100,000 light years across. It’s 35 million light years away — 350 quintillion kilometers, more than 200 quintillion miles. It’s also part of a trio of galaxies, the other two being M65 and NGC 3628 — the Leo Triplet. When I was younger, I used to observe them through my telescope in late spring when Leo the Lion was high in the sky to the southwest. They weren’t much more than smudges, but my already-getting-ready-to-be-a-scientist brain knew that I was seeing trillions of stars, dimmed by their unfathomable distance.
Those three galaxies are close enough together that the gravity of each affects the other two. See how the spiral arm at the bottom appears to be wider, messier, less organized than the one near the top of the picture? That’s no illusion. It’s thought that a recent pass by NGC 3628 may have bonked M66 pretty hard, disturbing it and messing around with its structure. The core of the galaxy — usually a smooth and symmetric blob — is all weird and misshapen. The pink glow in the image (emitted by hydrogen gas) is where stars are being born, and the deeper red is where they’re being cranked out en masse. Many times, when a galaxy passes near another one, the gas clouds get all riled up, collapsing to form lots of new stars.
That’s more obvious in the Spitzer Space Telescope image I’ve included here. Spitzer sees far-infrared light, which is emitted by warm gas and dust. You can see how wide and weird the lower spiral arm of M66 is, as if it’s been tugged and pulled, like a piece of taffy.
In this Spitzer image, gas and dust emission is also colored red, and starlight is blue (seen as a fuzzy glow since individual stars are not visible). You can see the stars are not distributed evenly: instead there’s more to the right; a good sign that another galaxy is affecting M66. Also, since red is gas and dust, that’s where stars are being actively born, and there’s a lot of that going on just outside the central region of the galaxy. That’s yet another sign that this galaxy was disturbed; the gravity of a passing galaxy can push the gas toward the center where it circles the core and forms stars.
And the clincher? In most galaxies, you see one star exploding at the end of its life every century or so. In the past 20 years, M66 has had three! Hot, massive stars don’t live long, only a few million years. So if a galaxy is making more stars than usual, you’ll see more supernovae than usual. Clearly, M66 has been pretty busy lately!
Maybe that’s why I love spiral galaxy pictures so much. They appeal to the parts of my brain evolved to appreciate artistry… and then the sciencey nodes kick in, adding a depth and dimension to the beauty. And art is always better when there’s a good story behind it.
Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin and Robert Gendler
Science and Religion Dialogue at the AAAS | The Intersection
Recently, I did a long post describing the substance of the Templeton Cambridge fellowship, and why it is valuable. Fortunately, that's not a tough argument to make. The fact is, journalism (and dialogue) about science and religion are pretty difficult to oppose. Case in point: Last week, here in D.C. (my old, new home), I attended an event at the American Association for the Advancement of Science to reintroduce its Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER), which now has a new infusion of energy and a new director, Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, formerly of NASA and an astrophysicist with a special expertise in the study of exoplanets. Yes, that's right: America's leading scientific society has created a program to foster more dialogue between science and religion--and of course, considers that to be a very good thing. (Note: My understanding is that at present, significant funding of this initiative comes from Templeton.) AAAS CEO Alan Leshner has more to say about DoSER in a recent piece over at Huffington Post entitled, appropriately, "Science, Religion, and Civil Dialogue." As Leshner writes, the idea is to find new ways to bring science and religion into a humble, nonjudgmental dialogue, and break down the barriers between ...
Animal Apartheid | Gene Expression
Here’s an article from Canada on the debate about whether hybridization should be discouraged. I understand the impulse toward preserving nature as it is, but the drive for presumed purity seems almost fetishistic. Consider this sentence: ” Or could hybrids actually weaken genetically pure populations of disappearing wildlife?” What does “genetically pure” mean in a deep sense here? We know what it means instrumentally for the purposes of conservation genetics, but the way people talk about pristine lineages makes it seem an almost ethical concern.
When it comes to conservation and environmental policy you’re at the intersection of science, norms, and the messy world of human possibility. Perspective matters a lot in how you value or weight the parameters within your value system. To me the preservation of putatively pure lineages immemorial smacks a bit of pre-Darwinian biology, with its focus on systematic analysis of fixed and eternal kinds as well as a descriptive analysis of anatomy and physiology. At the other end is evolutionary biology which is a process, a phenomenon, understood as a flux of gene frequencies and morphs over time. It is by definition a refutation of a static conception of nature. Of course it takes time…but but not that much time. And then there’s the tendency to see humans as apart and beyond nature, exogenous to the system, destabilizing an eternal equilibrium. This is also arguably a false ideal, humans have been part of the ecosystem of every continent excepting Antarctica for at least 10,000 years, Australia for 50,000 years, Eurasia for a million years, and Africa somewhat longer. Modern H. sapiens sapiens has likely reshaped whole ecosystems through predation and fire even before agriculture and dense societies.
Let’s have a more nuanced and subtle conversion here, and put the focus on what our ultimate values are, or at least the ultimate values of the majority. As it is too often it seems to me that we’re not that far from “king’s wood” whereby we view nature as something to be isolated from the common man, who by his presence sullies and contaminates its purity. And now the fixation on distinct kinds and lineages seems to veer in a similar direction, albeit focusing on the purity of species and sub-species rather than nature as a whole.
Discover Takes Top Two Quarks! | The Loom
I see an interesting pattern here. My piece focused on signs of interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals. Ed wrote about gut bacteria picking up genes from marine bacteria as an adaptation for eating sushi. And Morgan wrote about how protozoans gobbled up photosynthetic bacteria and gave rise to plants and green slugs and other wonders. I wonder if the judge, Richard Dawkins, has horizontal gene transfer on his mind? From The Selfish Gene to The Slippery Gene?
I won the 3 Quarks Daily Science Prize. ‘Top quark’. Heh. | Not Exactly Rocket Science
I woke up this morning to various emails and tweets saying that I’ve just won the 3 Quarks Daily Science Prize for 2010. Monday mornings don’t usually start this promisingly!
For those who haven’t been following, this is the second of what will hopefully be a long-running competition, focusing on science writing on blogs. The winning entry was this post on the gut bacteria of Japanese people, which have borrowed sushi-digesting genes from their oceanic relatives.
It goes without saying that I’ve very grateful to all the readers who nominated posts and voted for them and to the editors of 3 Quarks Daily for organising the competition.
I’m feel very proud of this, especially because this year’s finalists included some of the finest science writers in the market and because it was judged by none other than Richard Dawkins. The latter is important, for The Selfish Gene was hugely influential to me, showing not only how incredible evolution is but how inspirational a piece of good science writing can be. Without it, I would probably be doing something else.
I also wanted to say something about writing competitions, from the perspective of someone who’s currently judging the ABSW ones, and has judged OpenLab entries in the past. These competitions, by their nature, are incredibly and necessarily subjective. There’s no SI unit for writing quality and no standard template for what the ideal, Platonic piece would look like. It’s relatively easy to sort pieces into rough categories of merit but when it comes to discerning between the top entrants at a finer level, personal opinion factors heavily into it. Which is a really roundabout way of saying that getting into the top stratum is a massive honour and I wholeheartedly congratulate all the semi-finalists and finalists for their tremendous work.
And finally, it’s worth mentioning again (given recent accusations that bloggers have the luxury of time – ha!) that most of us write our blogs in our spare moments, often getting nothing in return save a sense of satisfaction and the odd comment or so. These efforts are worth recognising and I thank the editors of 3 Quarks Daily for doing so.
$100 Million To Aid CxP Employee Transition
President Obama Proposes Additional Financing For Growth And Jobs
"The president submitted to Congress on Friday, June 18, a fiscal year 2011 budget amendment that targets up to $100 million toward spurring regional economic growth and job creation in the aerospace industry. The amendment would provide up to $40 million in aid for Florida's Space Coast and a maximum of about $60 million for other affected regions. These funds specifically would be made available from the Constellation Program transition element of the agency's exploration request. The amendment does not increase the total of the administration's fiscal year 2011 budget request."
John Glenn Has Something To Say
Statement of Senator John Glenn (ret.) Regarding NASA Manned Space Flight
"These are critical days for the future of Manned Space Flight. Conflicting views and advice come to the President and Congress from every quarter in the aerospace and science communities. There is good reason for the concern.
The U.S. for the first time since the beginning of the Space Age will have no way to launch anyone into space - starting next January.
Our astronauts will have to be launched in Russian spacecraft, from a Russian base in Kazakhstan, to go to ~IJ International Space Station.
Starting at the end of this year, and probably for the next five to ten years, the launches of U.S. astronauts into space will be viewed in classrooms and homes in America only through the courtesy of Russian TV.
For the "world's greatest spacefaring nation," that is hard to accept."
ULA Joins CSF
"The Commercial Spaceflight Federation is pleased to announce that United Launch Alliance of Denver, Colorado has joined the Federation as an Executive Member. United Launch Alliance operates the Atlas V, Delta II, and Delta IV launch vehicles. Michael C. Gass, President and CEO of United Launch Alliance, stated, "United Launch Alliance has close business relationships with many members of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, including Bigelow Aerospace, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Space Florida, and XCOR Aerospace. Additionally, ULA is a funded participant in NASA's Commercial Crew Development Program. So joining the Commercial Spaceflight Federation is a natural fit for us, and we are proud to do so."
The Cape Week in Review – Workforce Assistance, Atlantis Encore and STS-51G 25 Years Later
The past week was a week of change at Cape Canaveral. Organizations within Brevard County united to assist workers the will be laid off when the shuttle era comes to an end sometime next year. At the same time the proposal for there to be one more flight added before the program is ended continued this week. Meanwhile the space shuttle Discovery was fitted with new engines and prepped for her final flight - STS-133. (With video)
Marc's note:
We also have an additional in depth story by Jason Rhian on help for workers on the Space Coast.
Space Coast and National Groups Align to Help Aerospace Workers, SpaceRef
"With some 8,000 space workers facing layoffs at the end of the shuttle program, groups in and around the Kennedy Space Center area are aligning to provide assistance and guidance to help those facing unemployment find new employment. Brevard Workforce Development was recently awarded a $15 million grant to help provide these highly-trained professionals find work in the post-shuttle era. Now the employment-assistance group is putting that money to work with the assistance of other organizations."
Groups Host Job Fairs for Displaced Aerospace Workers
The first of three planned job fairs for this month was held this week on June 17 by Brevard Workforce Development (more commonly known as Brevard Workforce) and the job-placement site Monster.com. On June 2, Brevard Workforce was awarded a $15 million National Emergency Grant (NEG). The grant was announced by Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis during a visit to NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
Brevard Workforce has worked swiftly to align itself with groups that are focused on alleviating the problem of rampant unemployment that is looming along the Space Coast. With only two scheduled shuttle flights remaining before the shuttles are retired some 8,000 workers in the region will soon be laid off.
This week's event was held at the Radisson Resort in Port Canaveral. Named "Launch your Job Search" the fair were offered tips on interviewing, networking and how to improve one's resume. This week's event was only the start of Brevard Workforce's efforts to assist aerospace engineers.
Next week Brevard Workforce, will team up with Kennedy Space Center to host a workshop to aid laid off or soon-to-be laid off workers find new employment. The first day of the fair will take place at two separate facilities located at Kennedy Space Center and will have over 40 different business and government organizations attending. This half of the job fair will only be open to current KSC employees. For those already impacted by layoffs there will be a second job fair held for them off of KSC.
An Atlantis Encore? - It's a Possibility
The ongoing push for one more flight in the shuttle program progressed further this week with NASA pursuing a decision by the end of June. Shuttle mission managers are hoping for a final determination to get them of the holding pattern that they have been waiting in. If approved, the extra flight would be used to deliver more supplies to the International Space Station.
An extra shuttle flight would also serve to fill the gap between when NASA delivers cargo to the station and when cargo can be delivered via commercial means. Of more immediate concern it would keep many shuttle workers employed longer - allowing them more time to make the transition to a new career.
Thousands of employees have lost their jobs in the past year. This has been a big concern for NASA managers - and local lawmakers alike. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson D-Orlando has been among those pushing for one more flight for the space shuttle. However, while there are many positive aspects to one more flight - the notion of Atlantis being sent into orbit again - is not without its downside.
Space shuttle Atlantis makes its slow trek from the Shuttle Landing Facility to Orbiter Processing Facility-1. STS-132 was the 34th shuttle mission to the station, the 132nd shuttle mission overall and the last planned flight for Atlantis. Photo credit: Jack Pfaller
In a time of financial struggle proposing to send up Atlantis on a flight that could cost as much as $1 billion - is likely to run into some opposition. There is also the risk involved. Ever since the loss of the space shuttle Columbia NASA has had a policy of keeping an additional shuttle on standby in case it was needed to fly a rescue mission.
Atlantis will already be prepped just in case Endeavour which will fly the current final mission of the shuttle program - STS-134. Since Atlantis would essentially be prepped and ready to go it would be fairly simple to modify it for a final flight. If approved, this mission would take place in June. Although not widely mentioned it is rumored that it may actually be Discovery that would fly this last mission as it has the ability to tap the station's energy and thus stay on-site about four days longer.
Outside of extending some high-tech jobs this additional flight would also serve to ensure that the International Space Station is in the best possible condition for when there will be no more shuttle flights to restock the station. In the end the ultimate say lies with Congress as whether or not to conduct a final mission.
Discovery Prepped for Final Flight
For what could be the last time, the space shuttle Discovery had her Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) swapped out this week in preparation for her scheduled fall flight to the International Space Station. Meanwhile the mission's External Tank (ET) and Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) were mated together and readied for what could possibly an October liftoff.
At Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a space shuttle main engine is installed in space shuttle Discovery. Discovery and its STS-133 crew are targeted to deliver the Express Logistics Carrier-4 filled with external payloads and experiments, as well as critical spare components to the station later this year. Photo credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller
This week in Cape History
June 17, 1985: NASA launched space shuttle Discovery on mission STS-51G from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew included the first person of Arabic descent, Sultan Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, to fly in space. A total of three communications satellites were deployed during the mission and was the Discovery's fifth flight. The mission ended successfully with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base on June 25, 1985.
The crew of STS-51G pose in this photo in their dress uniforms. In the front row from left to right: Pilot, John O. Creighton, Commander Dan Brandenstein and Mission Specialist-1 John Fabian. In the back row from left to right are Mission Specialist-3 Steven Nagel, Mission Specialist-1 Shannon Lucid, Payload Specialist-1 Patrick Baudry and Payload Specialist-2 Sultan Salman Abdelazize Al-Saud
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The Cape Week in Review is compiled by Jason Rhian, the Cape Insider, and is a weekly
round-up of what's happening at Cape Canaveral. If you have information or suggestions for the Cape Week in Review please email us at capereview@spaceref.com.
John Glenn Pushes for Shuttle Extension
John Glenn to NASA: Keep shuttles flying, MSNBC
"Glenn fears that a failure involving Russia's Soyuz craft, the only ship besides the shuttle capable of bringing astronauts to the space station, would almost certainly result in the abandonment of the station."
John Glenn pushes to keep space shuttle flying. Florida Today
"The cost of continuing the shuttle is really very tiny compared to the $100 billion investment that we've made in the station," said Glenn, who became the first American to orbit Earth in 1962 and then returned to space aboard Discovery in 1998 at age 77."
