Daily Data Dump (Tuesday) | Gene Expression

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Cultural innovation, Pleistocene environments and demographic change. Gene-culture coevolution gurus Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that climatic fluctuations may work to the advantage of humans because of the adaptive flexibility inherent in a cultural species.

Common versus rare variants, again. Some skepticism of the new exhortation to look for rare variants of large effect instead of common variants of more modest effect. This sort of posturing by biologists strikes me as similar to what happens in social science (to a great extent all of what falls under the rubric of sociology seems to be posturing with doctorates). Does this happen in the physical sciences?

Sean Carroll Talks School Science and Time Travel. I wonder when he’s going to stop being asked about how he got together with Jennifer Ouellette. People meet up through internet. Via blogs. It happens.

Media to Tea Partiers: Can You be More Racist? Mind-reading is hard. Conservatives are racists and liberals are crypto-Leninists. Meanwhile, there’s life to be lived.

Neural Correlates of Being a Total Bad-Ass. Psychology with fMRI = telling you stuff you already know with a pretty picture to boot.

It's Just Rocket Science…

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Great article on extending the Cassini Mission from the New York Times.

In six years of cruising around the planet Saturn and its neighborhood, the Cassini spacecraft has discovered two new Saturn rings, a bunch of new moons and a whole new class of moonlets. It encountered liquid lakes on the

motor heating prblm

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hi, i have installed a 56 kw induction motor with pump. but at the time of starting with load it's heating. i have all ready checked the alignment it is ok. it is all so taking rated current volt is also normal. what may the problem.

How Bad is Bad? $.20 on the Private Medical Insurance Dollar

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Here’s how much of your thousands of dollars in medical insurance premiums actually go to the medical doctors who do the work.

This is a settlement from Cigna for $89.57 of a $475.00 medical bill including a complete medical physical and a new patient office consult of moderate complexity. This represents about one to two hour of our medical and administration time providing service including review of records, intake, and documentation. A full roster of patients like this (which we don’t have, thank God…) works to be about $30 per hour per doctor. That’s gross revenue… not salary, not profit, and this is for one of “America’s most exclusive communities” (gag)… At 160 hours of work per month, that’s $4800 per month in sales, which is just barely enough to make minimum payments and rent.

Let me tell you what happens now:

Either:

1) I debit this patient’s payment card for the remaining unsettled balance ($250). Unfortunately, more and more people provide to us completely maxed payment accounts. Either this charge will clear and ruin this patient’s monthly financies, or this patient will be denied due to abject poverty, or because this is Greenwich, Connecticut, this patient is on Trust Fund Welfare, whomever is the “poppa/mamma bear” of this family will try to confront the medical doctor directly and complain. If bear already (unfortunately) knows me by name, they will demand that I am disciplined.

I assure you 100% that this patient is completely convinced that he “saves money” by buying medical insurance and would simply not believe that not only is all insurance —especially medical insurance— an almost guaranteed financial loss in all expected circumstances, but also, that his “fiscal responsibility” doesn’t protect him from being billed twice —once for “insurance,” and again because insurance refused to pay.

Aside: isn’t it funny how much money we spend trying to “save money?”

2) I don’t debit this patient. I inform the patient that he may apply for financial assistance, the patient has a private freak out about how “everything is circling the drain,” and I never hear from the patient again. Meanwhile, the office itself either:

a) goes bankrupt (“acquired”) and nobody gets any medical care outside of the hospital meatgrinder (and hospital collections are far more ruthless and expensive)

b) increasingly charges fewer patients with some financial support for the poor while people in the middle —enough to pay something but not enough to qualify for financial assistance— …get no service whatsoever.

Healthcare is diverging: either you get Private Flight service, or you get the DMV factory line. If you are somewhere in the middle: I have news for you, you better pick a side now, because it’s not so much that flight is impossibly expensive… it’s that it’s not for sale… to you.

Note: there is little correlation between quality of insurance and socioeconomic status —unless you are an informatic or organized labor.

Mensa Selects Its Favorite Brainy Games of 2010

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From Wired Top Stories:

American Mensa has been holding its "Mind Games" competition each year since 1990 to select five new games from a group of about 50 or 60 submitted by manufacturers. Those five winners earn the right to display the Mensa Select Seal. The games are selecte

Gorgeous nightscape timelapse | Bad Astronomy

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Tom Lowe has done it again: another jaw-dropping astronomy timelapse.

Timescapes: “Death is the Road to Awe” from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

Wow, that’s simply stunning. The music is beautiful and driving, too; it’s from "The Fountain", a movie I quite enjoyed.

My favorite was the cactus with the Pleiades, Orion, and Sirius behind it. But the whole thing is devastatingly beautiful. You should watch the other short films he’s made, too!


Airlines and Scientists Clash Over the Volcanic Ash Cloud | 80beats

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Six days after ash from Iceland’s volcano paralyzed European airspace, aviation experts and academics are arguing over whether the entire mess could have been avoided.

Ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano started to spread across North European skies last week, grounding thousands of domestic and long-haul flights and causing an estimated $1 billion in losses. Today the European Union attempted to get the continent moving again and reopened certain routes, giving millions of stranded passengers a chance to head home and throwing a lifeline to airlines that were hemorrhaging an estimated $250 million a day.

However, this grounding of flights drew sharp rebuke from Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), who argued that the entire mess could have been avoided had the airlines focused on facts and figures on actual damage caused to jet engines by volcanic ash, saying: “Europe was using a theoretical mathematical approach and this is not what you need. We needed some test flights to go into the atmosphere and assess the level of ashes and take decisions” [Reuters]. Unsurprisingly, the European Union’s transit officials have replied that they’re not willing to compromise on passenger safety.

Airlines canceled flights to and from Europe because the silicate particles in volcanic ash are known to create a glass-like coating inside airline engines when they fly through ash clouds. In 1982, almost 800 passengers on a British Airways flight had a narrow escape when the plane lost power in all four engines after flying though an ash cloud over the Indian Ocean. Not willing to risk a repeat of that terrifying incident, the European Union shut down flight routes last Thursday. NATO also limited military exercises after volcanic glass built up in fighter engines.

However, British Airways and Air France-KLM say they have both operated test flights in the region since the eruption, and they report that they encountered no problems due to the ash. Bisgnani argues that this proves that the governments made a mistake imposing a “blanket ban” on air travel in northern Europe. He said decision-makers should consider setting up “corridors” to repatriate the estimated 7 million passengers stranded across the globe [Reuters].

But atmospheric scientists explain that volcanic ash clouds pose a very tricky threat to pilots, who can’t see the clouds of tiny particles. They say that instruments could be installed on airplanes to help pilots detect large concentrations of ash as they fly–the instrument’s warnings would prompt the pilot to drop down to a lower altitude to steer clear of the ash. However, not many of these expensive, specialty detectors currently exist.

Experts add that there’s no guarantee that switching altitudes would give the pilot the all-clear, as changing wind conditions could move the ash to lower altitudes, too. Says aviation engineer Stewart John: “You could think that you’re safe flying along at 20,000 feet rather than up at 40,000 where the ash is, only to find that the wind has suddenly dropped and the ash is now at 20,000 feet” [Reuters].

Bisignani, meanwhile, argues that there needs to be consensus on what constitutes a safe concentration of ash. Aviation consultant Chris Yates says the volcanic ash guidelines were drawn up by a UN body, the International Civil Aviation Organization. Regulations for grounding the flights to protect them from volcanic ash, Yates says, were based on “experience gained from over 80 incidents between 1980 and 2000 and computer modeling (or) best guestimate” [Reuters].

Related Content:
80beats:In a Warmer World, Iceland’s Volcanoes May Get Even Livelier
Visual Science: Up Close and Personal With Iceland’s Volcanic Eruption
80beats:Icelandic Volcanoes–Disrupting Weather & History Since 1783
80beats: Volcanic Eruption in Iceland Causes Floods, Shuts Down European Air Travel
Bad Astronomy: Iceland Volcano Eruption Making an Ash of Itself
DISCOVER: Disaster! The Most Destructive Volcanic Eruptions in History (photo gallery)

Image: Wikimedia


Reminder: astronomy panel discussion Wednesday night at Caltech | Bad Astronomy

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A reminder to everyone: tomorrow I moderate a really cool panel of astronomers, where we’ll be discussing the search for Earths orbiting other stars. The original post is below. You can submit questions to the panelists, too!

I am very pleased and excited to announce that I will be moderating a fascinating panel in Pasadena California on Wednesday, April 21. The topic is "The Quest for a Living World": how modern astronomy is edging closer to finding another Earth orbiting a distant star.

[Click for a higher-res version.]

The panelists are all-stars in the field: Caltech astronomy professor John Johnson, Berkeley astronomer Gibor Basri, MIT planetary astronomer Sara Seager, and NASA Ames Research Center’s Tori Hoehler. We’ll be talking about how we’re looking for these new worlds, what the state of the art is, and perhaps toss around some of the philosophy of why we’re looking for them. You might think the answer is obvious, but I’ve found that astronomers have lots of intriguing reasons for why they do the work they do.

The event is sponsored by Discover Magazine, the Thirty Meter Telescope (yes, a project to build a telescope with a 30 meter mirror!), and Caltech. It will be at 7:30 p.m. at Caltech’s Beckman auditorium. It’s also free! Send an email to exoplanets@tmt.org if you want to attend.

We’ll be taking questions from the audience, and if you have a question you’d like to submit in advance then we have an online form where you can send it.

Last year’s panel on astronomy frontiers was a lot of fun, and very well-attended. If you’re in the LA area, then I highly recommend you come! I know you’ll have a great time, and you’ll get a taste for some of the astronomical adventures in store for us in the next couple of years.


An Artificial Eye on Your Driving

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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:

Prof. Shai Avidan of Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Engineering is collaborating with General Motors Research Israel to develop advanced algorithms that will help cameras mounted on GM cars detect threats, alerting drivers to make split-second de

When the Load of a Generator is Suddenly Dropped

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I am an Electrical Eng.

Suppose a Generator is running with electrical load of hundreds of Mega Watts. That means a boiler is generating steam at the rate which can supply the energy to turbine and generator coupled with it. Now if any fault occurs in power grid, and a generator trips in frac

Announcing Unscientific America in Paperback–Coming in June | The Intersection

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The book that caused all the ruckus--relentlessly bashed by New Atheists, praised by the president's science adviser and the National Science Teachers Association--is set for its second run, this time with a new introduction that responds to critics and extends the argument. In paperback, Unscientific America officially comes out June 8, and can be preordered online now. So if you missed the hardback, here's your second chance. We'll have more soon about the book, but we wanted to let you know now...to get ready.