tingilinde

the speed of sound and track

This appeared in Language Log (thanks for the tip Sam)

I have no idea why it would be that forum, but it is wrong. The speed of sound is not an issue in track events and hasn't been for about thirty years. Way back when I was a physics grad student I gave a test question that asked the students find the handicapping for a track event. After the test one of the students, a sprinter, told me everyone had moved to speakers in the starting blocks - the gun is just a trigger.

The speed of sound in air is a very poor ruler, you can state a length in terms of the time it takes sound to go between the endpoints, but you have to be very clear about atmospheric conditions. Better to state lengths in terms of light travel time in a vacuum - or by stating the index of refraction in the medium. So Colleen is 6.66 nanoseconds tall (in a vacuum or in air to that level of accuracy)

light pollution- ruining the skies and perhaps a carcinogen?

I was looking for some links on light pollution. Events like tonight's Perseid meteor shower were much easier to see in the past and much of our street lighting is inefficient - about 30% lights the sky rather than the ground.

I found an audio piece in the form of a WNYC Please Explain interview. Perhaps more interesting is the recent view that excess artificial light at night can lead to human disease including cancer.

recommended listening!

slow motion lightning

I've seen better lighting movies, but this isn't too bad ... thanks for sending it George

comments from jim hansen

Jim Hansen, the climate guru from Columbia, has a fascinating trip report.(pdf) He offers some great advice at the end that is worth reading first:

The public, however, is not presented a realistic picture of how science works on such matters. Instead public discussion of global warming is befogged by contrarians, whose opinions are given a megaphone by special interests that benefit by keeping the public confused. Some of the contrarians were once scientists, but now they behave, at least on the topic of global warming, as lawyers defending a client. Their aim is to present a case as effectively as possible, citing only evidence that supports their client, and making the story appear as favorable as possible to their client. The best, the most articulate, are sought out by special interests, and even by much of the media, because the media likes to have “balance” in its coverage of most topics – and especially this topic because special interests have influence on the media.

The barrage of e-mails that I have received from the public highlights another aspect of the global warming story: it is now very political. The people sending these messages are not generally scientists, even though in many cases they parrot “scientific” statements of contrarians. In their opinion these matters should be discussed in you-tube “debates” between scientists and contrarians. My guess is that scientists may not fare very well in such a format.

It is this situation that has created what I call a huge gap between what is understood about global warming, by the relevant scientific community, and what is known about global warming, by those who need to know, the public and policy-makers. Nobody ever asks me what I mean by “the relevant scientific community”. If they did, I would say: people who know what they are talking about (which may cause a bit of consternation, but this is no time to mince words).

Is there any way out of this situation? Continuing real world climate change and the scientific method will eventually make things clear. Unfortunately, because of inertia of the climate system and climate tipping points, it is extremely dangerous to wait for real world events to be so large that they overwhelm special interests and their contrarian lawyers.

Here is one suggestion: the next President should ask the National Academy of Sciences to provide him a prompt assessment of the situation. After all, Abraham Lincoln established our Academy for just such purpose. Interestingly, at the beginning of the current administration, in early 2001, the President asked the Academy for a (albeit limited) assessment of global warming, apparently under the belief that the Academy would be critical of the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Well, the Academy’s report did have some criticisms, but, with clarity and authority, it reiterated the reality of global warming, the predominant role of humans in causing the warming, and the need for a policy response to minimize climate problems. The administration was apparently so taken aback that they never asked the Academy again for any broad advice on the topic. It does not do much good to cry over that tragedy – now is the time to figure out the best way forward from this point.

There is a lot of good information and commentary. I copied one of his figures showing carbon dioxide emissions by fossil fuels types (note the scales are different!). Somewhat stunning, eh? At its current rate of growth, China is on target to double it carbon emissions in 8 to 9 years. Also note that many feel 2000 MtC/yr is the necessary worldwide carbon target for 2040-2050 - we are four times higher now.

Lots of interesting commentary on carbon caps, nuclear energy (he doesn't know enough to comment with authority), Tom Blees (who I find a bit ungrounded), an offer to drive a hydrogen car, criticism he (Hansen) gets ..

the magnificent violence hidden in a raindrop

Bob Krulwich gave the commencement at Caltech

Science and story telling.

listen!

This is the best commencement I've heard in a long time.

solar energy + water = fuel

A holy grail. You can use electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, but the efficiency is low.

Daniel Nocera from MIT has just published in Science (an MIT pr piece here), something that claims to be efficient and easy to make.

potentially very exciting and probably much more work to be done.

lhc rap

yikes -- thanks to the 18 (and counting) people who sent this

(actually factual)

$10 microscope on a chip from caltech

A very nice project by Changhuei Yang of Caltech.

snip

"Our research is motivated by the fact that microscopes have been around since the 16th century, and yet their basic design has undergone very little change and has proven prohibitively expensive to miniaturize. Our new design operates on a different principle and allows us to do away with lenses and bulky optical elements," says Yang.

The fabrication of the microscopic chip is disarmingly simple. A layer of metal is coated onto a grid of charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor (the same sensors that are used in digital cameras). Then, a line of tiny holes, less than one-millionth of a meter in diameter, is punched into the metal, spaced five micrometers apart. Each hole corresponds to one pixel on the sensor array. A microfluidic channel, through which the liquid containing the sample to be analyzed will flow, is added on top of the metal and sensor array. The entire chip is illuminated from above; sunlight is sufficient.

When the sample is added, it flows--either by the simple force of gravity or drawn by an electric charge--horizontally across the line of holes in the metal. As cells or small organisms cross over the holes, one hole after another, the objects block the passage of light from above onto the sensor below. This produces a series of images, consisting of light and shadow, akin to the output of a pinhole camera.

getting mooned

A neat movie put together from images taken at 15 minute intervals 31 million miles out from Deep Impact's telescope

compensation in leaves

Strolling through PLoS Biology I came across a paper by Hirokazu Tsukaya: Controlling Size in Multicellular Organisms: Focus on the Leaf (pdf)

Early on I came across this:

The mechanisms that integrate cellular proliferation with organ size in animals are also not yet understood. As is widely known (even in Greek mythology), the size of the human liver is strictly controlled, and if most of the liver is surgically removed, it will regenerate to the proper size

Clearly a nice sense of humor, so I decided to continue.

A very cool problem space

smart power

Burning coal is dumb for a variety of reasons, but it may case problems with cognitive development in children - from Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health

snip

Closing coal-fired power plants can have a direct, positive impact on children’s cognitive development and health according to a study released by the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH) at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. The study allowed researchers to track and compare the development of two groups of children born in Tongliang, a city in China’s Chongqing Municipality – one in utero while a coal-fired power plant was operating in the city and one in utero after the Chinese government had closed the plant. Among the first group of children, prenatal exposure to coal-burning emissions was associated with significantly lower average developmental scores and reduced motor development at age two. In the second unexposed group, these adverse effects were no longer observed; and the frequency of delayed motor developmental was significantly reduced. The study findings are published in the July 14th Environmental Health Perspectives.

“This study provides direct evidence that governmental action to eliminate polluting coal-burning sources benefits children’s neurodevelopment,” said Frederica Perera, DrPH, professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health, director of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, and lead author of the study. “These findings have major implications for environmental health and energy policy as they demonstrate that reduction in dependence on coal for energy can have a measurable positive impact on children’s development and health – in China and elsewhere.”

drinking to counteract climate change

It isn't what you think..

kidney stones and rising temperatures. Getting enough water is the cure.

fiddlesticks

The uniformity of wood density in modern and "the really good" violins appears in PLoSOne

snip

A Comparison of Wood Density between Classical Cremonese and Modern Violins Berend C. Stoel1, Terry M. Borman2
1 Department of Radiology, Division of Image Processing, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands2 Borman Violins, Fayetteville, Arkansas, United States of America

Abstract
Classical violins created by Cremonese masters, such as Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesu, have become the benchmark to which the sound of all violins are compared in terms of their abilities of expressiveness and projection. By general consensus, no luthier since that time has been able to replicate the sound quality of these classical instruments. The vibration and sound radiation characteristics of a violin are determined by an instrument's geometry and the material properties of the wood. New test methods allow the non-destructive examination of one of the key material properties, the wood density, at the growth ring level of detail. The densities of five classical and eight modern violins were compared, using computed tomography and specially developed image-processing software. No significant differences were found between the median densities of the modern and the antique violins, however the density difference between wood grains of early and late growth was significantly smaller in the classical Cremonese violins compared with modern violins, in both the top (Spruce) and back (Maple) plates (p = 0.028 and 0.008, respectively). The mean density differential (SE) of the top plates of the modern and classical violins was 274 (26.6) and 183 (11.7) gram/liter. For the back plates, the values were 128 (2.6) and 115 (2.0) gram/liter. These differences in density differentials may reflect similar changes in stiffness distributions, which could directly impact vibrational efficacy or indirectly modify sound radiation via altered damping characteristics. Either of these mechanisms may help explain the acoustical differences between the classical and modern violins.

a loud noise 100 years ago

Tuguska

how long does stuff live?

some of you will love this resource

expect extreme weather

The recent NOAA report on extreme weather as a result of global warming...

The bottom line is that more extreme weather is very likely. Very high level, but a nice summary (I just skimmed it, but it looks like a useful read)

forests and climate change

a video from Science

worth watching

Lots of print behind their paywall

visual processing in certain athletes

A neat study on visual processing in certain athletes (tennis players) in PLoS ONE.

Abstract

In tennis, as in many disciplines of sport, fine spatio-temporal resolution is required to reach optimal performance. While many studies on tennis have focused on anticipatory skills or decision making, fewer have investigated the underlying visual perception abilities. In this study, we used a battery of seven visual tests that allowed us to assess which kind of visual information processing is performed better by tennis players than other athletes (triathletes) and non-athletes. We found that certain time-related skills, such as speed discrimination, are superior in tennis players compared to non-athletes and triathletes. Such tasks might be used to improve tennis performance in the future.

Colleen is a serious beach volleyball player and has some serious visual skills. You have to wonder about how much of this is from training and how much of it is factory installed.

losing sight of day and night time

setting your clock optically

An interesting note in PLoS ONE

Abstract

Rod/cone photoreceptors of the outer retina and the melanopsin-expressing retinal ganglion cells (mRGCs) of the inner retina mediate non-image forming visual responses including entrainment of the circadian clock to the ambient light, the pupillary light reflex (PLR), and light modulation of activity. Targeted deletion of the melanopsin gene attenuates these adaptive responses with no apparent change in the development and morphology of the mRGCs. Comprehensive identification of mRGCs and knowledge of their specific roles in image-forming and non-image forming photoresponses are currently lacking. We used a Cre-dependent GFP expression strategy in mice to genetically label the mRGCs. This revealed that only a subset of mRGCs express enough immunocytochemically detectable levels of melanopsin. We also used a Cre-inducible diphtheria toxin receptor (iDTR) expression approach to express the DTR in mRGCs. mRGCs develop normally, but can be acutely ablated upon diphtheria toxin administration. The mRGC-ablated mice exhibited normal outer retinal function. However, they completely lacked non-image forming visual responses such as circadian photoentrainment, light modulation of activity, and PLR. These results point to the mRGCs as the site of functional integration of the rod/cone and melanopsin phototransduction pathways and as the primary anatomical site for the divergence of image-forming and non-image forming photoresponses in mammals.

and a discussion of the paper

snip

"It is entirely possible that in many older people a loss of this light sensor is not associated with a loss of vision, but instead may lead to difficulty falling asleep at the right time," says Satchidananda Panda, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory, who led the study.

Understanding how melanopsin does its job may one day allow scientists to reset the body's biological clock with a pill to alleviate symptoms associated with jet lag, shifts in work schedules, seasonal changes in day lengths and disorders such as insomnia and depression, the researchers say. Their findings are published in the June 11, 2008 issue of the PLoS ONE.

Visual processing begins when photons entering the eye strike one or more of the 125 million light-sensitive nerve cells in the retina at the back of each eye. Rod cells use rhodopsin to pick up dim light, while cone cells rely on related photopigments to discriminate color. This first and outermost layer of cells converts the information into electrical signals and sends them to an intermediate layer, which in turn relays signals to the optic nerve. Melanopsin is different from the classical rod and cone opsins, which help us see.

"It functions like a light meter in a camera, but does more than set our biological clock," explains Panda. "The incoming information about light intensity is also used to adjust the aperture or pupil size, regulate melatonin synthesis and physical activity."

and there are only 2000 of these cells, which are in a small part of the eye...

sacrifice and the athlete

Or possibly the sacrifice of athletes ... a very unusual human sacrifice from 4,300 years ago.

100 meters in 9.72 seconds

Every time a 100 meter record falls, there is speculation on how fast a human can go. After all - Banister only had a four minute mile.

This article is interesting as it mentions a cheetah's time - about 6 seconds for 100 meters (and this is an average cheetah). But the person interviewed notes cheetahs have the same muscles, tendons and bone structure as a human...

er...

Yeah- and they have four legs, and only weigh about 70 pounds .. small differences.

A big of googling finds this:

Williams TM, Dobson GP, Mathieu-Costello O, Morsbach D, Worley MB, Phillips JA.

Department of Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz 95064, USA. williams@darwin.ucsc.edu

To establish a skeletal muscle profile for elite sprinters, we obtained muscle biopsy samples from the vastus lateralis, gastrocnemius and soleus of African cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus). Muscle ultrastructure was characterized by the fiber type composition and mitochondrial volume density of each sample. Maximum enzyme activity, myoglobin content and mixed fiber metabolite content were used to assess the major biochemical pathways. The results demonstrate a preponderance of fast-twitch fibers in the locomotor muscles of cheetahs; 83% of the total number of fibers examined in the vastus lateralis and nearly 61% of the gastrocnemius were comprised of fast-twitch fibers. The total mitochondrial volume density of the limb muscles ranged from 2.0 to 3.9% for two wild cheetahs. Enzyme activities reflected the sprinting capability of the cheetah. Maximum activities for pyruvate kinase and lactate dehydrogenase in the vastus lateralis were 1519.00 +/- 203.60 and 1929.25 +/- 482.35 mumol min-1.g wet wt-1, respectively, and indicated a high capacity for glycolysis. This study demonstrates that the locomotor muscles of cheetahs are poised for anaerobically based exercise. Fiber type composition, mitochondrial content and glycolytic enzyme capacities in the locomotor muscles of these sprinting cats are at the extreme range of values for other sprinters bred or trained for this activity including greyhounds, thoroughbred horses and elite human athletes.

wow

Sort of amazing -- so 83% of the quadriceps and 61% of the calf muscles of the cheetah are fast-twitch muscle. This is at the very high end of olympic sprinters. The glycogen breakdown of a cheetah is twice that of a human. Several other important differences are noted. Cheetahs and humans are very different animals, with one being much better suited to sprinting than the other. One wonders what an olympic class cheetah would be like. Of course cheetahs would be lousy marathon runners.

So it is likely that humans will never be at 6 seconds and extremely likely that the current record is not far from its limit.

brian greene on science education

Science education is very broken - wonder and natural curiosity are natural components of science, but are rarely evident in the K12 world.

Brain Greene's comments in todays NY Times...

martian parachute image cleaned up

even better - details here

best photo of the decade

the mind wobbles

Phoenix under parachute from the HIRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - from 310 km.

JPL rules

(thanks for the tip Jeff)

yummm methane

It may be that most of the life on Earth is in the Earth and uses methane - from this weeks Quirks and Quarks - prokaryotic life (mp3)

how much of you is you and the six tribes of the inner elbow

Nicholas Wade on humans as superorganisms

snip

Since humans depend on their microbiome for various essential services, including digestion, a person should really be considered a superorganism, microbiologists assert, consisting of his or her own cells and those of all the commensal bacteria. The bacterial cells also outnumber human cells by 10 to 1, meaning that if cells could vote, people would be a minority in their own body.

Dr. Segre reckons that there are at least 20 different niches for bacteria, and maybe many more, on the human skin, each with a characteristic set of favored commensals. The types of bacteria she found in the inner elbow are quite different from those that another researcher identified a few inches away, on the inner forearm. But each of the five people Dr. Segre sampled harbored much the same set of bacteria, suggesting that this set is specialized for the precise conditions of nutrients and moisture that prevail in the human elbow.

Microbiologists believe that humans and their commensal bacteria are continually adapting to one another genetically. The precision of this mutual accommodation is indicated by the presence of particular species of bacteria in different niches on the human body, as Dr. Segre has found with denizens of the elbow.

older and wiser

what was that again?

perhaps science isn't being taught in your local school

Even though there are courses that claim to be science ... from PLoS Biology: Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait

not terribly surprising though

pining for the fjords

a norwegian blue perhaps?

snip

55 million year old fossil remains of parrots discovered near the North Sea

Scientific researchers have discovered the fossil remains of parrots in Scandinavia which are more than 55 million years old. The findings, published in the current issue of Palaeontology, indicate that parrots, which today only live in the tropics and the southern hemisphere, once flew wild over what is now Norway and Denmark. This suggests that parrots may have first evolved in the North, much earlier than had previously been considered.

“Obviously, we are dealing with a bird that is bereft of life, but the tricky bit is establishing that it was a parrot,” explains Dr David Waterhouse, the lead author of the scientific paper. “As with many fragile bird fossils, it is a wonder that anything remains at all, and all that remains of this early Danish parrot is a single upper wing bone (humerus). But, this small bone contains characteristic features that show that it is clearly from a member of the parrot family, about the size of a Yellow-crested Cockatoo.”

the long and short of it

Height in humans turns out to be interesting to study. It is easily measured, but is influenced by genetic and environmental factors. Most of the variation is genetic, but is far from trivial - a few years ago some convincing evidence was found looking for single-letter differences — single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs — in the genetic code that occur more often in taller people compared to shorter people. (' first heard this on a Quirks and Quarks program). The scan zeroed in on a single-letter difference, either a ‘C’ or ‘T’, in the HMGA2 gene that accounted for an estimated 0.3% of the height variation among study participants. Compared to individuals with two ‘T’-containing copies of the gene, those with one ‘C’-containing copy of the gene tended to be taller by about half a centimeter, and those with two copies were nearly a centimeter taller. It only accounted for a small percentage of observed variation in the population, but more work has been done.

Now something like a few dozen SNPs have been identified accounting for a few percent of the difference. Lots of work to do, but an interesting technique that requires a large number of measurements.

The link and abstract

Nat Genet. 2008 May;40(5):575-83. Epub 2008 Apr 6.

Genome-wide association analysis identifies 20 loci that influence adult height.

Weedon MN, Lango H, Lindgren CM, Wallace C, Evans DM, Mangino M, Freathy RM, Perry JR, Stevens S, Hall AS, Samani NJ, Shields B, Prokopenko I, Farrall M, Dominiczak A; Diabetes Genetics Initiative; Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, Johnson T, Bergmann S, Beckmann JS, Vollenweider P, Waterworth DM, Mooser V, Palmer CN, Morris AD, Ouwehand WH; Cambridge GEM Consortium, Zhao JH, Li S, Loos RJ, Barroso I, Deloukas P, Sandhu MS, Wheeler E, Soranzo N, Inouye M, Wareham NJ, Caulfield M, Munroe PB, Hattersley AT, McCarthy MI, Frayling TM.
Genetics of Complex Traits, Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Science, Peninsula Medical School, Magdalen Road, Exeter EX1 2LU, UK.

Adult height is a model polygenic trait, but there has been limited success in identifying the genes underlying its normal variation. To identify genetic variants influencing adult human height, we used genome-wide association data from 13,665 individuals and genotyped 39 variants in an additional 16,482 samples. We identified 20 variants associated with adult height (P < 5 x 10(-7), with 10 reaching P < 1 x 10(-10)). Combined, the 20 SNPs explain approximately 3% of height variation, with a approximately 5 cm difference between the 6.2% of people with 17 or fewer 'tall' alleles compared to the 5.5% with 27 or more 'tall' alleles. The loci we identified implicate genes in Hedgehog signaling (IHH, HHIP, PTCH1), extracellular matrix (EFEMP1, ADAMTSL3, ACAN) and cancer (CDK6, HMGA2, DLEU7) pathways, and provide new insights into human growth and developmental processes. Finally, our results provide insights into the genetic architecture of a classic quantitative trait.

sometimes smarter isn't better ...

neat - from today's NY Times

of course there are human politicians

going (slightly) beyond google earth

the 4d ionosphere -- very cool Probably only useful to amateur radio operators and shortwave listeners, but cool eye candy for everyone else.

really old accents

New work on the mechanics of what Neanderthals may have sounded like. (mp3 via quirks and quarks)

symmetry breaking and tail wags

So the dog is looking at you and wagging his tail mostly to his left. What do you do?

It turns out that left wagging is different from right wagging...

Ferrets show the same behavior.

___

The answer is not "give the dog a beer"

hidden secrets in amber

Greg points out an article about using synchrotron X-rays to look at the 3d structures of objects embedded in amber. Most of the wonder stuff you've seen in amber - like 100 million year old insects - is in clear amber. Most of it isn't and this new technique allows looking at things that were invisible.

wonderful images!

coprolite - straight poop from the past

Quirks and Quarks had a piece on dietary clues found in 14,000 year old coprolite from a cave in Oregon.

via podcast or an mp3 here

great material for that dinner party!

a scientist's bill of rights?

The current administration's anti-science positions need to be changed. It is hopeless to change them now, but a non-Republican administration might be able to codify some basic principals about scientific honesty.

The SciAm podcast deals with the issue in this week's podcast - via iTunes or listen from your browser here

in the end it is money

Remember the plucky little Martian rovers that have gone way past their design life making incredible discoveries?

Well it seems that a budget cut may nail one of them

Depending on how you count that is about 15 minutes of Iraq

atlas at the lhc

A beautiful "vr" photo of the Atlas experiment at the Large Hadron Collider

thanks Petr!

the mind and all that jazz

A fascinating study that appears in PLoS ONE ... it appears musicians are shutting down neural impluses that might impeded the flow of novel ideas. One wonders if this extends to other creative activities.

Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation

Abstract

To investigate the neural substrates that underlie spontaneous musical performance, we examined improvisation in professional jazz pianists using functional MRI. By employing two paradigms that differed widely in musical complexity, we found that improvisation (compared to production of over-learned musical sequences) was consistently characterized by a dissociated pattern of activity in the prefrontal cortex: extensive deactivation of dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbital regions with focal activation of the medial prefrontal (frontal polar) cortex. Such a pattern may reflect a combination of psychological processes required for spontaneous improvisation, in which internally motivated, stimulus-independent behaviors unfold in the absence of central processes that typically mediate self-monitoring and conscious volitional control of ongoing performance. Changes in prefrontal activity during improvisation were accompanied by widespread activation of neocortical sensorimotor areas (that mediate the organization and execution of musical performance) as well as deactivation of limbic structures (that regulate motivation and emotional tone). This distributed neural pattern may provide a cognitive context that enables the emergence of spontaneous creative activity.

cassini's wild ride

Closing in on Enceladus(video)

really exciting stuff! The press release from JPL

sigh - a tip of the hat to Bjarne for reminding us of this.

how much white matter in w's brain?

thinking white

thanks for the link Roger

feynman on beauty

avalanche on mars!

Wow.. the High Resolution Imagine experiment now orbiting Mars is catching some amazing scenes.

It is noted this cliff is 700 meters high with slopes of about 60 degrees.

risk analysis and global warming

If people are worried about global warming, why aren't they acting?

Paul M. Kellstedt, Sammy Zahran, and Arnold Vedlitz ponder the issue in Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes Toward Global Warming and Climate Change in the United States, published in the journal Risk Analysis

The authors test the assumption that providing information about global warming leads to increased public concern and find the opposite.

troubling (but it leads to more questions)

Abstract

Despite the growing scientific consensus about the risks of global warming and climate change, the mass media frequently portray the subject as one of great scientific controversy and debate. And yet previous studies of the mass public's subjective assessments of the risks of global warming and climate change have not sufficiently examined public informedness, public confidence in climate scientists, and the role of personal efficacy in affecting global warming outcomes. By examining the results of a survey on an original and representative sample of Americans, we find that these three forces—informedness, confidence in scientists, and personal efficacy—are related in interesting and unexpected ways, and exert significant influence on risk assessments of global warming and climate change. In particular, more informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming. We also find that confidence in scientists has unexpected effects: respondents with high confidence in scientists feel less responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming. These results have substantial implications for the interaction between scientists and the public in general, and for the public discussion of global warming and climate change in particular.

In recent years, information available to the mass public about both the causes and consequences of global warming and climate change has increased significantly. This information increase is reflected in longitudinal data on the number of scientific manuscripts, newspaper articles, and congressional hearings devoted to the issue.(1) Indeed, knowledge about global warming was formerly the exclusive purview of climatologists and a small subset of environmental activists. This situation has changed. Today, information about global warming and climate change is readily available to average Americans who watch television news, and are able to see satellite pictures of changes in ocean temperatures, or of glaciers melting.

But discussions of global warming are spreading beyond the news media and into popular culture. The documentary about former Vice President Al Gore and his work, since leaving office, on raising awareness of climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, has received considerable attention as it opened to fanfare and critical acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival. Or, for those with kids, Ice Age: The Meltdown, presents the digital-animation thriller of three cute and furry animals trying to survive the breakdown of a glacial dam.1 It is not hyperbolic to say that global warming and climate change are mainstream issues.

In differing ways, and for different audiences, these movies are intended to raise awareness of global warming. (That is clearly the explicit goal of An Inconvenient Truth, and seemingly an implicit one of Ice Age: The Meltdown.) An underlying assumption is that providing information about global warming—in effect, taking the scientific consensus and popularizing it—will lead to increased public concern about the risks of global warming. The lack of public outcry about global warming, then, is not because the public does not care enough about global warming; it is because they don't know enough about it. The more people know about global warming, the thinking seems to go, the more they will feel personally responsible for it, and also be concerned about it.2

Another way of saying this is to assert that scientific experts have a heightened perception of the risks of global warming, whereas the general public has (at least for now) a minimized perception of the risks. It tends to be assumed that the scientific assessment of the risks is both correct and objective, and that, by implication, the public's perceptions of the risks are both inaccurate and subjective.(2) Such a disparity between expert and lay assessments of risk has been detected in other domains—such as the ongoing controversy about the safety of genetically modified foods—and is commonly referred to as the knowledge-deficit model.(3)

The goal of this article is to test this assumption. Using the results of an original survey of a random sample of the American public, we seek to uncover the role of information and personal efficacy in determining the public's assessment of the risks of global warming and climate change. What kinds of knowledge, if any, lead to heightened concerns about global warming? Or, paradoxically, does increased information decrease concern about global warming? Do information sources, and an individual's level of trust in those sources, make a difference? What kinds of people feel more personally responsible for global warming and climate change, and what kinds feel less responsible for it?

The article proceeds as follows. In the next section, we review the literature on the public's perceptions of risks of global warming and climate change, noting that the literature does not take into account how information and individual efficacy play a role in those perceptions. Next, consistent with the literature on risk perceptions of genetically modified organisms, we present an information-based theory of risk perception of global warming and climate change that questions the applicability of the knowledge-deficit model to the problem of global warming. Our focus on news media portrayals, information, and personal efficacy leads to several counterintuitive hypotheses that contrast with the assumption that raising awareness will raise concern. Then we describe a survey that we conducted to answer these very questions. We then present the results of that survey and build a multivariate model of concern about global warming and climate change. We conclude with speculation about directions for further research.

fireflies under the sea

Amazing sea creatures from David Gallo's TED talk...

thanks Magi!

best title for a scientific paper this year

from PLoS Biology

Understanding the Web of Life: The Birds, the Bees, and Sex with Aliens.

by Jason Tylianakis

Some people seem to want the Ignoble. (Actually the paper is interesting.)

something and nothing to laugh at

rats, professionals and schoolgirls ... a serious look at laughter

Radiolab has a great piece on laughter this week (mp3)

great stuff!

we might be screwed - ocean acidification

There was quite a bit of talk about ocean acidification at the AAAS meeting earlier this month. The stuff of nightmares. Like many things with the climate it is not the absolute number, but the rate of change that can get you.

Ars Technica as a quick review

engineering + art + science

deeply cool work

Phil Fraley Productions

autistic savant animals?

Some work that reacts to Temple Grandin's book appears in PLoS Bilogy

snip

When Grandin proposed similarities in cognition between autistic savants and animals, she reasoned on the basis that animals, like autistic humans, sense and respond to stimuli that nonautistic humans usually overlook. In other words, animals respond to and remember the details of the world around them, whereas nonautistic humans overlook the details in favour of the overall whole. Since Grandin's book Animals in Translation shows extraordinary insight into both autism in humans and animal welfare, the question deserves scrutiny from scientists working on animal cognition and comparative neuroscience.

beelzebufo

one big frog from the late Cretaceous.

wrong!

really wrong...

Someone sent this piece that makes the standard creationist claim that science is based on faith. The full article is weird with its mention of two kinds of science, but the core is here:

Much of the problem stems from the different starting points of our divergence with Darwinists. Everyone, scientist or not, must start their quests for knowledge with some unprovable axiom—some a priori belief on which they sort through experience and deduce other truths. This starting point, whatever it is, can only be accepted by faith; eventually, in each belief system, there must be some unprovable, presupposed foundation for reasoning (since an infinite regression is impossible).

sigh ... so wrong!

Science assumes the universe follows a set of rules and that those rules can be deduced by studying how the universe operates.

And it works. I think many creationists think of science as some big book (I wonder where they come up with that idea) of bits of knowledge. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is a method. You observe, create a hypothesis, predict, and observe again. It always refines and it checks itself.

Science is fundamentally based on what you can observe - on hard evidence. Evolution, general relativity quantum electrodynamics, continental drift ... these are not religions, but products of the scientific method.

Science makes wonderful predictions and these are harnessed by sports like engineering. The products of our modern society are, for the most part, ultimately based on science.

running into wetwear limitations

Human multitasking on Quirks and Quarks (mp3)

on teaching stories

It is fine to teach stories and storytelling in schools, but not in science class.

A frightening piece on Florida citizens

sex and the ferret

ah for valentine's day...

a tip of the hat to my valentine, Sukie

space program discussions

This will be very interesting and I will follow up as reports become available.

The Bush Administration has downplayed science at many turns. Sending men to the moon a second time, given other challenges and a huge deficit courtesy of his little game in Iraq, is beyond foolish. Real science can be done for so much less.

It will be interesting indeed ...

distorting science for profit and evil

Naomi Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at UCSD. She has studied the history of the science of climate change as well as misrepresentation of the results by forces within the radical right that have lead to precious time lost dealing with the problem.

The talk is well-known, but I recommend it highly if you haven't seen it.

dawkins on the wonders of science

From a 1996 BBC program

SCIENCE is useful but that is not all it is. Science can be uplifting, thrilling, life-enhancing. Originally broadcast on Britain's Channel 4 in 1996, Break the Science Barrier follows the Oxford Biologist Richard Dawkins as he meets with people who have experienced the wonders of science first-hand. We meet the astronomer who first discovered pulsars, the geneticist who invented DNA fingerprinting, a scientist who discovered a protein that causes cancer, and others. Dawkins interviews famous admirers of science such as Douglas Adams and David Attenborough, and asks them why science means so much to them. We also see how dangerous ignorance of science can be in classrooms, courts, and beyond.

With so many expressing paranormal beliefs and ignorance of science, Dawkins encourages viewers to contrast these ancient superstitions with the power and beauty of our scientific achievements and understanding.

part 1

part 2

part 3

under estimating climate change

The models used in the IPCC reports assume equilibrium in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (or very close to equilibrium). Recent work indicates a much more dynamic environment that could bring much more dramatic rises in sea level.

Robin Bell of Columbia has a very nice non-technical summary in the February 2008 Scientific American and a shorter on-line version has been posted.

Understanding these issues is a major part of the International Polar Year.

recommended reading!

from the republican war on science

A "conference" sponsored by the Heartland Institute. (RealClimate)

Window dressing, PR and distortions. And no real scientists (despite a free weekend at a nice hotel). But they will get their PR talking points ... sigh ...

They learned their techniques pushing tobacco and many journalists are too thick to see through it. It is a shame science literacy is so low in the US.

why doesn't the public understand climate change?

An interesting, if somewhat dated, paper on public attitudes towards climate change (pdf - a tip of the hat to Cliff)

Abstract Public attitudes about climate change reveal a contradiction. Surveys show most Americans believe climate change poses serious risks but also that reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions sufficient to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations can be deferred until there is greater evidence that climate change is harmful. US policymakers likewise argue it is prudent to wait and see whether climate change will cause substantial economic harm before undertaking policies to reduce emissions. Such wait-and-see policies erroneously pre- sume climate change can be reversed quickly should harm become evident, underestimating substantial delays in the climate’s response to anthropogenic forcing. We report experiments with highly educated adults – graduate students at MIT – showing widespread misunder- standing of the fundamental stock and flow relationships, including mass balance principles, that lead to long response delays. GHG emissions are now about twice the rate of GHG removal from the atmosphere. GHG concentrations will therefore continue to rise even if emissions fall, stabilizing only when emissions equal removal. In contrast, most subjects be- lieve atmospheric GHG concentrations can be stabilized while emissions into the atmosphere continuously exceed the removal of GHGs from it. These beliefs – analogous to arguing a bathtub filled faster than it drains will never overflow – support wait-and-see policies but violate conservation of matter. Low public support for mitigation policies may arise from misconceptions of climate dynamics rather than high discount rates or uncertainty about the impact of climate change. Implications for education and communication between scientists and nonscientists (the public and policymakers) are discussed.

another reason for local commuting on a bike

Or walking - or doing any sort of moderate physical activity.

A sedentary lifestyle accelerates aging at the chromosome level

snip

"
A sedentary lifestyle increases the propensity to aging-related diseases and premature death. Inactivity may diminish life expectancy not only by predisposing to aging-related diseases, but also because it may influence the aging process itself," study author Lynn F. Cherkas, of King's College London, said in a prepared statement.

The researchers looked at the physical activity levels, smoking habits and socioeconomic status of 2,401 white twins. The researchers also collected DNA samples from participants, and examined the length of telomeres-repeated sequences at the end of chromosomes in white blood cells (leukocytes). Leukocyte telomeres shorten over time and may serve as a marker of a person's biological age.

Overall, the study participants had an average telomere loss of 21 nucleotides (structural units) per year. But those who were more active in their leisure time had longer leukocyte telomeres than those who were less active.

"Such a relationship between leukocyte telomere length and physical activity remained significant after adjustment for body-mass index, smoking, socioeconomic status and physical activity at work," the authors wrote.

"The mean difference in leukocyte telomere length between the most active [who performed an average of 199 minutes of physical activity per week] and least active [16 minutes of physical activity per week] subjects was 200 nucleotides, which means that the most active subjects had telomeres the same length as sedentary individuals up to 10 years younger, on average."

One wonders if you can make arguments that installing good bike paths is cost effective when health costs are considered.

___

There are limits - you probably don't want to commute on a bucking bull, even if it is a good workout. And there is an issue of style (hat tip to Bjarne)

S ≥ 10102

Pointed to by Cosmic Variance - what is the entropy of the Universe?

What is the entropy of the universe?

Paul Frampton, Stephen D.H. Hsu, Thomas W. Kephart, David Reeb
(Submitted on 11 Jan 2008)

Standard calculations suggest that the entropy of the universe is dominated by black holes, although they comprise only a tiny fraction of its total energy. We give a physical interpretation of this result. Statistical entropy is the logarithm of the number of microstates consistent with the observed macroscopic properties of a system, hence a measure of uncertainty about its precise state. The largest uncertainty in the present and future state of the universe is due to the (unknown) internal microstates of its black holes. We also discuss the qualitative gap between the entropies of black holes and ordinary matter.

from sorting out syphilis to why *we* don't see our own mistakes

Lots of good stuff on this week's Quirks and Quarks ... via podcast or here

snapshots from a warm place