The State Convention for the Libertarian Party of Indiana held over this past weekend was our most successful one to date! Â The light of Liberty is alive and well in the Hoosier state. Â Now, we need your help again. Â Check out the candidates page on our site and support the Libertarian candidate in your area! [...]
Should State Agencies compete for funds?
Recently Gov. Daniels (R) renewed his call for state agencies to reduce their operating budgets by up to 15% in the face of Indiana’s growing budget shortfalls. Â States like California are already in dire financial straights. Â Libertarian-leaning Reason Magazine suggests that perhaps state programs need to start “budgeting for outcomes”.
Decoding the Skies
National Geographic has a very interesting program coming up on Thursday (29 April). The episode is called Decoding the Skies and it explores our ancestors relationship with the night sky. Earlier generations (and not all that many back) depended on knowing what was going on with the night sky. I always find it interesting to learn about those ties because sadly we as a population have lost the knowledge and traditions of our ancestors. How many people do you think could tell you what phase the moon is in right now? Not too many I bet and that is pretty basic stuff.
It’s a very interesting episode, I was pretty amazed at some of things I didn’t know.
On another programming note: The Discovery Channel is airing a four part series called “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking”. This should be a real treat and you know I will have my recorder all set up, hopefully it will hold together!. You can see more about it here.
Hawking: Beware the Alien Menace! | Cosmic Variance
Okay, that’s a bit alarmist. But Stephen Hawking has generated a bit of buzz by pointing out that contact with an advanced alien civilization might not turn out well for us backward humans. In fact, we should just try to keep quiet and avoid being noticed.
“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.
Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact.
He explained: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”
To which I can only say: yeah. Sounds about right. If aliens were sufficiently enlightened to be utterly peace-loving and generous, it would be great to have back-and-forth contact with them. But it’s also possible that they would simply wipe us out — not necessarily in a Mars Attacks! kind of invasion, but almost without noticing (as we have done to countless species here on Earth already). So how do you judge the risk? (Dan Drezner gives the interplanetary-security perspective.)
It’s like the LHC doomsday scenarios, but for real — the sensible prior on “murderous aliens” is much higher than on “microscopic black hole eats the Earth.” Happily, a face-to-face chat seems unlikely anyway. Nothing wrong with listening in, on the unlikely chance that the aliens are broadcasting their communications randomly throughout the galaxy. Besides, a little advance warning wouldn’t hurt.
Update: I had forgotten that we had already discussed this a couple of years ago. Old bloggers tend to repeat themselves.
Photo safari – Orangutans Part 4 | Not Exactly Rocket Science
A few more shots from Perth Zoo’s orangutan exhibit. I’ll be back with some proper posts tomorrow, also with a great ape theme…
Photo safari – Orangutans Part 3 | Not Exactly Rocket Science
More shots from Perth Zoo’s wonderful orangutan exhibit. These apes are incredibly intelligent and it would be terrible to let them sit in an enclosure with nothing to stimulate them. So the zoo runs a “behavioural enrichment” programme, which essentially means that they leave plenty of toys, items and challenges to keep the orangutans mentally engaged. Here’s a sequence of a female making use of one such opportunity, and demonstrating the orangutan’s prowess with tools.
She grabs a sturdy stick from the grounds…
and walks over to a metal tray, where a keeper has hidden something. She fishes around for the treat. Sometimes, they will take the stick out and lick it to see what’s buried.
Nearly there…
Got it! A biscuit. OM NOM NOM. Meanwhile, baby watches intently, probably picking up a few tricks or two.
On Growth and Ink [Science Tattoo] | The Loom
Alex, a graduate student studying human biology and evolution, writes, “As an undergraduate at I was fortunate enough to study On Growth and Form by D’Arcy Thompson. His synthesis of mathematics, classics and biology was an inspiration to me, and drove me to pursue science as a career. Though I am now studying to be a paleoanthropologist, my tattoo of an (idealized) ammonite fossil is a reminder to me of the material and mathematical processes behind all living things. Plus extinct cephalopods are more aesthetically appealing than hominin skulls.”
Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.
I would qualify this as a launch problem and a design problem | Bad Astronomy
Hey Hollywood, why are you evaporating my youth from a solid directly to a gas?
Stop it. OK? It’s a moral imperative.
Tip o’ the green jello to Swoopy. Mmmmm, Swoopy™.
Notorious Kiss | The Intersection
One of Hollywood's most memorable kisses took place between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in the 1946 film Notorious. What's noteworthy is that it happened during the years of the Hays Code (1930-1968) when "scenes of passion" were extremely restricted and kisses were limited to seconds. To get around the regulations, director Alfred Hitchcock cleverly filmed Grant and Bergman exchanging a series of interrupted kisses as Grant answers a telephone call. So each kiss takes just moments, but the entire scene is nearly three minutes. Submit your photograph or artwork to the Science of Kissing Gallery and remember to include relevant links. The Science of Kissing debuts January 2011.
Shelby’s Contradictions Laid Bare For All To See
SpaceX's Elon Musk, Sen. Richard Shelby spar over Obama space policy, Huntsville Times
"The CEO of a company seeking to carry American astronauts into space says U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, is fighting a new national space plan that would bring billions into North Alabama. "I just don't understand what his beef is," Elon Musk, CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Inc. (SpaceX) said in a telephone interview Friday night. "I don't really understand why Sen. Shelby is so opposed to commercial crew," Musk said, "given that Atlas and Delta are right there in Alabama, because no one's going to be a bigger winner in commercial crew than United Launch Alliance." Musk referred to the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture that builds Delta and Atlas rockets in Decatur for NASA, the military and commercial satellite customers. ULA and SpaceX are among the commercial companies wanting NASA contracts to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station if President Obama's space program is approved by Congress. "For ULA it's a certainty," Musk said of winning contracts. "For SpaceX it's much more a question mark."
- Shelby Goes Personal on Bolden
- Shelby: Obama Plan Would Destroy U.S. Space Supremacy
- Shelby: Gov't Spending is Bad - Except for Spending on NASA, earlier post
- Shelby Was For The Private Sector Before He Was Against It, earlier post
- Alabama Political Donations Go National, earlier post
Shuttle Mission Delays
Change in Experiment Will Delay Shuttle's End, NY Times
"A $1.5 billion seven-ton cosmic-ray experiment scheduled to be carried aloft July 29 on the space shuttle Endeavour won't be ready until August, according to the experiment's leader, Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delaying the end of the 29-year-old shuttle program. NASA officials acknowledged that there would be a delay but said they had not yet decided when the final launching would be. The experiment, known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, was to be installed on the International Space Station as one last scientific errand before the final shuttle launching, of the Discovery, now scheduled for Sept. 16."
New NASA Logo Designs
Space, the designer's frontier, Boston Globe
"Ideas asked four graphic designers to come up with a new emblem for the 21st-century space agency, to conjure a vision of NASA that fits the present."
Keith's note: I still like my "wormball" logo concept.
Rocket Racers take to the skies in Tulsa
Yesterday was the QuikTrip Air and Rocket Racing Show in Tulsa, featuring the first public flights of two X-Racer vehicles at the same time. (There had been previous test flights not open to the public, although anyone around the Tulsa airport late Friday looking up at the right time could have seen the two on a test flight.) Here’s a video of one of the vehicles during the first of two flights Saturday afternoon: the voices are of Miles O’Brien, who emceed the event; RRL co-founder Peter Diamandis; and Jim Bridenstine, executive director of the host institution, the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, and an owner of an RRL team.
The event allowed the Rocket Racing League to showcase their vehicles and talk about other developments, including a iPhone game that will be available next month (with an iPad version to follow in June.) The league was a little hazy about their future plans, beyond doing a series of increasingly-ambitious demonstration flights through the end of next year, although they did not announce when the next demo flight would be. By early 2012, Diamandis said, the league would be ready to begin actual competitive races. Skeptics will note that the league has pushed back the date of actual races multiple times over the last several years.
Yesterday demonstrated that the racers, while impressive, still aren’t quite ready for full-scale competitive racing. While the first set of flights went well, the second set, about two hours later, ended early: neither racer appeared to relight their engines after the initial takeoff burn. Both landed safely, and there was no sign of problems with either vehicle when they were towed over the league’s tent for the public to view closeup. RRL hasn’t yet disclosed what caused the second set of flights to be cut short. (Update: RRL spokesperson Diane Murphy said Sunday the truncated flight was caused a computer glitch that caused an alarm that shut off the engine in one of the aircraft. Both landed as a precaution, but a later check showed that it was a false alert and not an issue with the engine or other part of the vehicle.)
Climate Rally in DC
The world’s largest climate rally in history is going on right now (April 25) in Washington DC and you can watch it live right here.
The live stream below will feature everyone from James Hansen to James Cameron to Sting to Joe Romm (thanks to Climate Progress for this notice, by the way) right here:
(I removed the video because it was starting automatically and it couldn’t be turned off).
Other speakers this afternoon include:
Climate scientists like James Hansen, and Stephen Schneider.
EPA chief (and heroine!) Lisa Jackson & CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley
Cultural leaders like James Cameron (Avatar; Titanic) and Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale; The Blind Assassin)
Top business executives from Siemens, Phillips, UL, Future Friendly & SunEdison
Top labor leaders, including the President of the AFL-CIO and Secretary of the SEIU.
Progressive activists, including Jesse Jackson, Lydia Camarillo, & Hilary Shelton
Climate policy gurus like Joe Romm, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, & Rafael Fantauzzi
Spiritual leaders, including Rev. Theresa Thames, Rev. Richard Cizik, & Rabbi Warren Stone
Athletes like Dhani Jones, Aaron Peirsol, & Billy Demong
Environmentalists like Bobby Kennedy & Phillipe Cousteau
I wish I was there! In between the speakers we will hear from some of the most committed artists in the nation, including Sting, John Legend, The Roots, Willie Colon, Passion Pit, Bob Weir, Jimmy Cliff, Joss Stone, Booker T, The Honor Society, Mavis Staples….Here is the music schedule:
12:00 – Bob Weir (w/Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, John Cage, John Kadlecik)
12:45 – Willie Colon
1:25 – Honor Society
2:20 – Passion Pit
3:10 – Jimmy Cliff (w/ John Legend, Bob Weir)
4:05 – The Roots
4:55 – The Roots and Friends (Mavis Staples, Booker T., Patrick Stump, Joss Stone, Robert Randolph, Bob Weir)
5:45 – John Legend w/ The Roots
6:35 – Sting w/ The Roots.
From Climate Progress and EarthDay.org.
A Report from the Bariatric Trenches
The American Society of Bariatric Physicians recently invited me to speak at their continuing medical education (CME) conference on obesity in Seattle. They got my name from Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch and asked if I could speak about questionable weight loss treatments like HGH, MIC (methionine, inositol and choline), and the HCG Diet. I seized the opportunity to discuss how to evaluate any medical claim, with examples from alternative medicine as well as from weight loss. My title was “Questionable Evidence for Questionable Treatments.” I talked about some of the things that can go wrong in clinical trials and why simply finding reports of positive randomized controlled trials (RCT) is not enough. I advocated rigorously science-based medicine and recommended the SBM website.
Several people came up afterwards to express their thanks and their agreement, but some of the questions from the audience were rather hostile. One man said he was a military doctor and he was using and teaching acupuncture (which I had criticized as a bad example of “tooth fairy science” in my talk). I asked for his opinion of battlefield acupuncture and he just said “No comment.” A couple of people thought science wasn’t enough and thought it was okay to prescribe questionable treatments when there was no proven effective treatment. I responded that I had no objection as long as the patient was told the facts and not given the false impression that the questionable treatment had been tested and shown to work.
I was glad for the chance to meet some of the ASBP members. I had never met a bariatric physician and was interested to learn about their practices and philosophies. I had never really thought about the fact that most obese patients had associated diseases like hypertension and diabetes, so their overall management could be very complex. I attended the whole obesity course: some of what I heard was educational, some of it was questionable, and some of it was frankly disturbing.
The first speaker was Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories. I had read his book and agreed with his evaluation of the dietary fat hypothesis, but I was not entirely convinced that he had enough clinically significant evidence to justify replacing it with the carbohydrate hypothesis. In this talk, based on his forthcoming book, he focused on the history of the case against sugar. It was refreshing to hear him say that
Until demonstrated otherwise, high fructose corn syrup is just another form of sugar.
A researcher, John Baxter, MD, discussed new drugs based on thyroid hormone that attempt to separate its beneficial effects on atherosclerosis and obesity from its harmful side effects. Interesting, but still in a very preliminary research stage. He went on to complain about the impediments to approving new drugs. In his opinion, the studies the FDA requires are intended to look for risks rather than benefits. He defended the “file drawer” practice, saying that his group did not publish negative trials that didn’t get the results they wanted (perhaps because the experimental design was flawed), since that would “pollute the literature” (?!).
Dr. Vernon Neppe spoke on nutritional supplementation and biopsychosocial issues. He said that supplements are drugs, they may be dangerous, manufacturing controls are poor, evidence is lacking, pharmacology is complex, interactions are common, there is evidence favoring vitamin D and fish oil supplements but questions remain, and generally food is better than pills. And he addressed the “natural” fallacy by pointing out that snake venom was natural. I was impressed by his common sense and was amazed by his alphabet soup of credentials: I don’t remember ever seeing anyone with more initials after his name. He listed 14 titles: MD, PhD, FRSSAf, DFAPA, DSPE, BN&NP, FRCPC, DABPN, FFPsych, MMed, DPsM, MB, BCh. I only know what the first two mean.
Dr. Kendall Gerdes spoke on food allergy and food addiction, a talk deserving a post just for itself. I’ll cover it next week.
Dr. Robert Lerman recommended omega-3 supplementation for bariatric patients because of its anti-inflammatory, insulin sensitizing, CVD risk-reducing effects and other potential benefits. He made a good theoretical case, but didn’t have any real evidence showing clinical benefit. He cited one study that reported higher maximum weight losses with fish and fish oil supplements than with placebo but did not report the average weight loss or the statistical significance. Without that information, I thought it was too meaningless to bother mentioning.
Dr. Barbara Schneidman reported on hot button issues for state medical boards. Some boards have restricted the use of “weight loss enhancers” to patients with a BMI over 30, and have prohibited using Schedule II drugs for the purposes of weight loss. Audience members thought this was unwise, that doctors should have the freedom to prescribe according to their own clinical judgment.
Jeffrey Bland, PhD spoke on “Beyond the Dogma of the Calorie.” Maybe it’s not that excess calories cause obesity which then causes diabetes, but rather that some underlying mechanism causes both obesity and diabetes. He pointed out that after bariatric surgery the blood glucose and lipid levels fall faster than the weight. He blames an interaction between genetics and the environment that he thinks involves “Larmarckian” inheritance (that’s his synonym for epigenetics). He implicates the gut microbiome as both causing and resulting from obesity. Some of the slides he didn’t get to (but that were included in the syllabus) covered resveratrol and claimed that specific dietary phytochemicals play a role in obesity and metabolic diseases. For what it’s worth, Dr. Bland is featured on Quackwatch. He has been in trouble with the FTC and the FDA for making unsubstantiated claims about supplements sold by his companies. He believes in detoxification and is a notorious promoter of naturopathy.
There were informative talks about managing childhood obesity and about pre- and post-op care for bariatric surgery. A talk on the Mediterranean diet covered a number of evidence-based health benefits, but did not explain why the speaker advocates a “modified” Mediterranean diet supplemented with protein powder, chromium, lipoic acid, and cinnamon.
The ASBP recently issued an official policy statement that HCG does not work for weight loss and that the HCG diet is not recommended. The last speaker on the program challenged the ASBP’s position. He claimed that the “con” studies were flawed, that more studies are needed, and that meanwhile HCG should only be used by physicians with special training and expertise (like him). One of his slides said “It is OK to use a placebo;” he added the caveat “as long as it works.” That statement can be criticized both on the basis of the meaning of the word “placebo” and on the consensus of medical ethicists that using placebos is unethical.
There was a room full of commercial booths. I was amazed at all the innovative ways companies had devised to profit from obesity. Most of them were giving away free samples of foods and supplements. (“You’re too fat, so let us sell you food”?) One product was a calcium citrate/vitamin D supplement disguised as a chocolate candy, with added calories. Is that a good idea? One salesman told me his products were classified as “medical foods” that were covered under a special FDA regulation. The FDA apparently doesn’t agree. They warned Dr. Bland that his similar products did not fit their regulatory definition of medical foods
…because the diseases and conditions described in the product labels do not have distinct nutritional requirements and because the products do not have any unique impact on the dietary management of those diseases and conditions beyond that which could be achieved by modification of the normal diet alone.
More next week.
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Hawaii Sized Plastic Island
Probably one of the most bold island development proposals I have seen in a long time a group of architects from the Netherlands have proposed a crazy idea to take all the plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean and recycle it into a floating island the size of Hawaii.
Climate refugees would be able to move there and live in recycled plastic homes, and work on farms or grow seaweed. The entire island would be totally self-sufficient once built, producing its own food and energy, and managing waste. While totally off the wall, this is an intriguing concept that gets our imaginations in motion about what we can do with that ginormous mass of plastic floating around in the ocean.
For more information on this proposal visit Inhabitat.
How’s This for Unsafe at Any Speed?
Hey, why not take a rear-engined, four-wheel, independent suspension car and throw on a couple of straight axles and a blown 350 up front?
It's cool to pick something totally different for a radical project, and if you're going for a drag-strip-scorching gasser, a Corvair is a
A New Virus May Threaten Blood Supply
Although many people may experience benign viral infections transmitted through blood transfusions, they are usually not a threat to their wellbeing. However, the xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) may change all of that.
What is it?
The XMRV is contracted i
World’s Smallest, Lightest Telemedicine Microscope
via MedGadget
Researchers at The California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA (CNSI) have developed a tiny telemedicine microscope for imaging blood samples or other fluids, testing water quality or other public health need in resource-limited settings.
From the press release:
Slightly wider than a US quarter and weighing just 46 grams, the lensless microscope is a self-contained imaging device. Using LUCAS (Lensless Ultra-wide-field Cell Monitoring Array) technology, it generates holographic images of microparticles or cells by employing a light-emitting diode to (LED) illuminate the objects and a digital sensor array to capture their images.
Samples are loaded using a small chip that can be filled with saliva or a blood smear for health monitoring. With blood smears, the lensless microscope is capable of accurately identifying cells and particles, including red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. The technology has the potential to help monitor diseases like malaria, HIV and tuberculosis.
The microscope is fairly robust with few moving parts and a large aperture. Images can be uploaded via a direct USB connection to a smart phone or other device, and sent to a hospital.
More information: UCLA engineer invents world's smallest, lightest telemedicine microscope
From dust to stars | Cosmic Variance
We’re all waiting for the Planck map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which should become the definitive map of the early Universe for the foreseeable future. While we’re on tenterhooks, the Planck team has been feeding us tidbits to keep us occupied. The first was a gorgeous map of the dust. Now they’ve released some images of a stellar daycare. Planck’s key science goals have to do with mapping the CMB, which is an image from the far edge of the Universe. All the foreground stuff in between (like our galaxy, and all its dust and stars) is a nuisance, and need to be removed. Most of the Planck team would be just as happy if no stars existed at all. In that case the images of the CMB would be pristine and spectacular, and the whole mission would be a lot easier. Of course, it’d be pretty cold and lonely Universe, since there’d be no Sun, and no Earth, and no Planck team, and (shudder to think) no blogs.
For better or worse, there are dusty regions in our galaxy, filled with newly-born stars. Planck has been specifically designed to map out these annoying foregrounds, so as to be able to remove them from its images. The trick is that stars generally form in these regions, because it is precisely this dust which collapses to form stars. But this same dust obscures our view of what’s happening, at least at optical wavelengths. At microwave wavelengths, one can image the dust directly, and Planck observes at multiple frequencies precisely to do this. It makes detailed maps of stars and dust, just to subtract them off. But in the process, we get these lovely pictures.
The image is of Orion. The right panel is a composite image, while the left shows the three individual color bands: red corresponds to synchrotron emission from hot electrons in our galaxy’s magnetic field, green corresponds to hot gas (presumably heated by the stars), and blue corresponds to cold gas (this is the stuff that collapses into stars). The giant red circle in the image is from a star which exploded roughly 2 million years ago, and blew out its surrounding dust (inhibiting further star formation in that region). We’re seeing the aftermath of the birth (and death) of a star! The details of how stars are born, live, and die are pressing astrophysical questions, and these images show us the process as it unfolds. Whatever. Enough with the distractions. Planck has now imaged the entire sky in at least three frequency bands, and it looks like the data is good. Hopefully the full-sky CMB maps aren’t too far behind!
