Archive for September, 2010

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Spring blizzards in New Zealand

September 22, 2010

The Southern Hemisphere is still facing bitterly cold weather.

Southland, New Zealand

The 1st of September is usually designated as the start of spring in New Zealand. Lambing is in full swing but six days of blizzards are being called the worst spring storm in living memory. Cars, lambs, and buildings have all fallen victim to the unusually heavy, wet snow that has fallen in Southland. Seven trampers were rescued by helicopterafter being caught in the snowstorm that has swept South Island national parks. A roof of a stadium collapsed in Southland under the weight of wet snow. A sixth day of snow, rain, wind, hail and sleet was forecast for the already battered coastal belt from Colac Bay in Southland, parts of Central Southland, the Catlins, Owaka and Clinton. Three snowfalls of up to 15cm since Saturday had left ground conditions so wet and muddy that newborn lambs had nowhere dry to go.

A ewe shows concern for her lamb

BARRY HARCOURT/The Southland Times

Exactly how many lambs have been killed will not be known until tailing but at an expected average price of $80 for each lamb, the cost to farmers could be measured in millions of dollars. In recent days, the Owaka Lions Club has collected up to 400 dead lambs a day from the 19km Owaka Valley Rd, for which farmers receive 50c each.

Federated Farmers adverse events spokesman David Rose said he estimated half the farms in Southland were affected. “The spring storm of 2010 is, frankly, the worst in a generation, with farmers going back over 50 years for anything this bad.”

MetService warned that temperatures would plunge in the Southland tonight as a cold front crosses the region. It said significant snowfalls were expected overnight, mainly above 200m, where 10-15cm is possible, especially in the Catlins and hilly areas exposed to strong southwesterlies. Localised blizzards and snow drifts are possible. The Fire Service in Invercargill said it had been flat out working three pumps to drain properties around the city swamped by melting snow.

The North Island has also received its share of the snow fall.

The Rimutaka Hill Road was closed following 2-6cm of snow accumulating on the hill above 400m from 3am to 7am this morning. It has since reopened with cars only allowed across in escorted convoys, one way at a time. The Manawatu Gorge road has reopened following a slip which closed it yesterday. Snow is also falling on the Central Plateau this morning, with 4-12cm accumulating on the Desert Road between 3am and 12am this morning. Another 3-6cm are expected over the next couple of hours. Drivers are warned the road may close.

Sources: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10675265

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10675510

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Posted in Environment, New Zealand, Weather | Comments Off on Spring blizzards in New Zealand

Harvard President says Hauser could lose tenure

September 22, 2010
Statue of John Harvard, founder of Harvard Uni...

John Harvard: Wikipedia

The Boston Globe reports on an interview of Harvard’s President Drew Gilpin Faust by former ABC correspondent Charlie Gibson.

The discussion, billed as a start-of-the-school year address, was held at Sanders Theatre and broadcast over the Internet. In response to Gibson’s question about why Marc Hauser remained on the faculty even after the university found him guilty of eight instances of scientific misconduct, Faust said Harvard is addressing the issue. “Integrity is absolutely fundamental in everything we do,’’ Faust said. “We have a process we have undertaken, and that process still has some part to continue because it involves federal funds.’’ Cases of scientific misconduct could result in a loss of tenure, Faust said.

Gibson said the silence from the university has been “somewhat deafening,’’ and raised the possibility that the lack of response could call into question Harvard’s research integrity and have financial implications. But Faust replied that Harvard has moved to depart somewhat from its normally confidential proceedings, in order to correct the scientific record, though it remains mindful of ongoing federal investigations. “Announcing that there were indeed findings, that was unprecedented,’’ she said.

Whether the Harvard President is actually trying to maintain and protect integrity or merely engaging in damage control is unclear. The second part of the Boston Globe article is about the honouring of Martin Peretz and how Harvard is swallowing its principles and seems to show that there is a price at which Harvard is prepared to compromise integrity.

But meanwhile the wagons continue to circle.

Bert Vaux who is a former Professor of Linguistics at Harvard University and Jeffrey Watumull who is a PhD student in Linguistics and a member of Hauser’s lab have rushed to his defence in The Harvard Crimson.

“In our experience, Marc Hauser is the consummate scientist—the most disinterested, the most rational, the most ethical. We are proud to be his colleagues. However, we are less than proud of those in the cognitive sciences reacting publicly to Hauser’s case with irresponsible impatience (disrespect for due process), unjustified slurs, and half-baked conjectures. All are interested in the truth, but as scientists we ought to consider the case reasonably and measuredly, with objectivity and fairness”.

But they forget that his nonsense started at least as long ago as 1995. One wonders whether Hauser’s defenders are part of a concerted damage control exercise. Methinks they do protest too much.

The onus of proof has shifted.

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Posted in Ethics, Science, Scientific Fraud | 1 Comment »

Habitable planet to be discovered in May 2011?

September 22, 2010

The only thing certain about forecasts is that they are more often wrong than right – and I exclude forecasts made entirely on known science or “laws” of nature where the level of uncertainty is insignificant (e.g. the sun will rise tomorrow). Nevertheless “Future History” which is a study of how forecasts evolve and how accurate they have been is a most powerful tool when making judgements about directions to follow and actions to be taken. In management “Future History” methodology is, I think, one of the most powerful tools for the development of corporate strategies and action plans.

The New Scientist reports that :

“Two researchers have used the pace of past exoplanet finds to predict that the first habitable Earth-like planet could turn up in May 2011”.

In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors that fit on a chip doubles about once every two years – a trend now known as Moore’s law. Samuel Arbesman of Harvard Medical School in Boston wants to see if scientometrics – the statistical study of science itself – can similarly be used to not only study past progress but also to make predictions.

He and Greg Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, are testing the idea with exoplanets. Over the past 15 years or so, the pace of planet discoveries has been accelerating, with some 490 planets now known. “It is actually somewhat similar to Moore’s law of exponential growth,” Arbesman says.

To predict when astronomers might find the first planet similar in size to Earth that also orbits far enough from its star to boast liquid water, the team scoured the discovery records of 370 exoplanets.

They focused on two basic properties needed for habitability: a planet’s mass and its surface temperature. They used these two factors to assign each planet a ‘habitability metric’ ranging from 0 to 1, where 0 was uninhabitable and 1 is close to Earth’s twin.

A rough estimate of each planet’s habitability was then plotted against the date of its discovery. Using different subsets of the 370 planets, the researchers made curves from the individual points and extrapolated the curves to find when a planet would be found with a habitability of 1. They then analysed the range of discovery dates to determine which would be most probable.

Habitable planets: http://t2.gstatic.com/images

Their calculations suggest there is a 50 per cent chance that the first habitable exo-Earth will be found by May 2011, a 75 per cent chance it will be found by 2020, and a 95 per cent chance it will be found by 2264.

In fact, exoplanet researchers have made forecasts of the future informally, plotting the mass of planets against the date of discovery to see how the field is progressing. “We’ve done that for many years at conferences,” says Eric Ford of the University of Florida in Gainesville. “The new aspect of this paper is putting an uncertainty on those predictions and unfortunately the uncertainty is quite large.”

One source of uncertainty is how factors like changes in funding and the development of new techniques and technology can alter the pace of discovery. “Like the stock market, past returns are no guarantee of future performance,” Ford says.

“There are always these complex factors of how science is actually done,” Arbesman agrees. But he says the forecasting technique could still prove useful, even if these factors are not accounted for directly. In part, that is because new technologies tend to take a while to ramp up, so they may not lead to sharp jumps in the number of discoveries made.

Previously, Arbesman has quantified how the ease of discovering new mammalian species, chemical elements, and asteroids affects the rate of their discovery. New species and asteroids are more difficult to find the smaller they are, and indeed larger ones are found first. For chemical elements, the opposite is true, since the bigger they are, the rarer and more unstable they tend to be.

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Posted in Philosophy, Science, Social Science | 1 Comment »

Chilies: The real difference between humans and animals

September 22, 2010

As Paul Bloom, a Yale psychologist, puts it, “Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language, rationality, culture and so on. I’d stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.”

Chilies

From the New York Times:

Indian Jolokia pepper

Jolokia chili

Habaneros are very hot, although there’s a lot of variation. On the standard Scoville heat scale (Bell peppers 0, the hottest Indian jolokia peppers 1,000,000) orange habaneros run 100,000 to 350,000. By comparison, jalapenos can go anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000. Two percent capsaicin bear spray is advertised at 3.3 million units, and pure capsaicin — the chemical that causes the pain — hits 16 million.

Some experts argue that we like chilies because they are good for us. They can help lower blood pressure, may have some antimicrobial effects, and they increase salivation, which is good if you eat a boring diet based on one bland staple crop like corn or rice. The pain of chilies can even kill other pain, a concept supported by recent research.

I can identify with this.  Bring on the vengaya chutney.

My Vengaya chutney:

Vengaya chutney

2 large onions, a fistful of dried red (Indian) chilies, a chunk of ginger, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 Habanero chilies.

Blend together into a paste. Add chilies to suit for colour and heat.

Garnish with a teaspoon each of mustard seeds and urad dal, 2 bay leaves heated for 90 seconds in hot oil.

Serve as relish on anything and with everything.

  • Spread on bread and serve grilled or roasted
  • spread on bread when making sandwiches
  • add a teaspoon to any soup (or any gravy for that matter)
  • spread on any meat before grilling (or after grilling if you prefer the raw heat)
  • add a tablespoon while tossing pasta
  • eat traditionally as an accompaniment to idlis and dosais.

The NYT continues:

Others, notably Dr. Paul Rozin at the University of Pennsylvania, argue that the beneficial effects are too small to explain the great human love of chili-spiced food. “I don’t think they have anything to do with why people eat and like it,” he said in an interview. Dr. Rozin, who studies other human emotions and likes and dislikes (“I am the father of disgust inpsychology,” he says) thinks that we’re in it for the pain. “This is a theory,” he emphasizes. “I don’t know that this is true.”

But he has evidence for what he calls benign masochism. For example, he tested chili eaters by gradually increasing the pain, or, as the pros call it, the pungency, of the food, right up to the point at which the subjects said they just could not go further. When asked after the test what level of heat they liked the best, they chose the highest level they could stand, “just below the level of unbearable pain.” As Delbert McClinton sings (about a different line of research), “It felt so good to hurt so bad.”

The story of how chilies got their heat is pretty straightforward. A recent study suggested that capsaicin is an effective defense against a fungusthat attacks chili seeds. In fact, experiments have shown that the same species of wild chili plant produces a lot of capsaicin in an environment where the fungus is likely to grow, and very little in drier areas where the fungus is not a danger.

The fact that capsaicin causes pain to mammals seems to be accidental. There’s no evolutionary percentage in preventing animals from eating the peppers, which fall off the plant when ripe. Birds, which also eat fruits, don’t have the same biochemical pain pathway, so they don’t suffer at all from capsaicin. But in mammals it stimulates the very same pain receptors that respond to actual heat. Chili pungency is not technically a taste; it is the sensation of burning, mediated by the same mechanism that would let you know that someone had set your tongue on fire.

No one knows for sure why humans would find pleasure in pain, but Dr. Rozin suggests that there’s a thrill, similar to the fun of riding a roller coaster. “Humans and only humans get to enjoy events that are innately negative, that produce emotions or feelings that we are programmed to avoid when we come to realize that they are actually not threats,” he said. “Mind over body. My body thinks I’m in trouble, but I know I’m not.” And it says, hand me another jalapeño.

Other mammals have not joined the party. “There is not a single animal that likes hot pepper,” Dr. Rozin said. Or asPaul Bloom, a Yale psychologist, puts it, “Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language, rationality, culture and so on. I’d stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.”

As James Gorman, the author of the NYT article puts it:

A taste for chilies has no deep meaning, no evolutionary value. It’s just a taste for chilies. I might add, though, that since it takes such a complicated brain and weird self-awareness to enjoy something that is inherently not enjoyable, only the animal with the biggest brain and the most intricate mind can do it. Take heart, chili heads. It’s not dumb to eat the fire, it’s a sign of high intelligence.

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Posted in Behaviour, Food, Recipies, Social Science | 1 Comment »

After Harvard’s Hausergate, now misconduct at Mount Sinai

September 21, 2010
Mount Sinai School of Medicine logo.png

Image via Wikipedia

Earlier this week, the blog Retraction Watch called attention to four recent paper retractions by noted gene therapy researcher Savio Woo of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Today, the school said in a statement that two of Woo’s postdoctoral fellows have been fired for research misconduct and that an internal investigation has cleared Woo of any wrongdoing.

Two of Woo’s post-doctoral fellows at Mount Sinai School of Medicine were dismissed for “research misconduct,” said Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the institution. According to Michaels:

When Dr. Savio L C Woo came to suspect that two post-doctoral fellows in his laboratory may have engaged in research misconduct he notified the Mount Sinai Research Integrity Office. Mount Sinai immediately initiated institutional reviews that resulted in both post-doctoral fellows being dismissed for research misconduct. At no time were there allegations that Dr. Woo had engaged in research misconduct. As part of its review, the investigation committee looked into this possibility and confirmed that no research misconduct could be attributed to Dr. Woo, who voluntarily retracted the papers regarding the research in question. Mount Sinai reported the results of its investigations to the appropriate government agencies and continues to cooperate with them as part of its commitment to adhere to the highest standards for research integrity.

File:HippocraticOath.jpg

Wikipedia: A twelfth-century Byzantine manuscript of the Hippocratic Oath.

According to ScienceInsider, the names of postdocs Li Chen and Zhiyu Li were recently removed from Mount Sinai’s directory. Chen and Li were listed as first authors on the retracted papers. Three  major journals — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Human Gene Therapy, and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute — recently retracted papers authored by Woo and others.

In a retraction notice issued this month, Woo wrote that:

It was discovered that some of the micrographs in two papers we published [figure 4 in J Natl Cancer Inst 2008;100:1389-1400 (1), and figure 3 in Hum Gene Ther 2009;20:751-758 (2)] are apparently duplicated. This has been reported to the institutional research integrity committee by the authors and while the outcome of an investigation is pending, the undersigned co-authors respectfully request a retraction of both papers and sincerely apologize to our colleagues.

The four papers in question focus on two different areas of gene therapy research. One pair, published in 2008 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and in 2009 in Human Gene Therapy, investigate genetically engineered bacteria as a weapon against cancer. The other two papers describe a method for using bacterial enzymes to introduce therapeutic genes. A 2005 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports experiments in which mice with the metabolic disorder phenylketonuria appeared to be cured using this method. As a demonstration of the promise of gene therapy, that work garnered some media coverage, includingthis article in Science. A 2008 paper in Human Gene Therapy described the use of the technique in human cells.

Source: http://blog.the-scientist.com/2010/09/20/new-in-a-nutshell/

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Medicine, Science, Scientific Fraud | 2 Comments »

Cornish polar bear was a cow!

September 21, 2010

Polar bears are not after all trying desperately to escape the Arctic.

The presenter of ITV’s West Country breakfast bulletin informed astonished viewers that an animal more commonly spotted near the North Pole had turned up in the seaside town of Bude. Video footage showed a large, white beast lying on the shore.

Video footage of the 'polar bear' on a beach in Cornwall

'polar bear' on a beach in Cornwall

“A walker in Cornwall has caught an extraordinary sight on camera. A polar bear has washed up on a beach near Bude,” an excited Miss Naomi Lloyd said. “The bear comes from the Arctic Circle and an investigation is under way as to how it could have ended up there.”

White cow alive on a beach


Closer inspection revealed that the polar bear was, in fact, a cow. The farm animal had been bleached white by sea water.

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Mapping Sterotypes

September 21, 2010

Yanko Tsvetkov, a Bulgarian designer and illustrator living in London, has produced seven maps in which countries and regions are labelled according to the stereotypes of their inhabitants held by the people of other.

Excellent stuff.

nationalities.http://alphadesigner.com/project-mapping-stereotypes.html

Europe from the US

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/8013399/Smelly-people-commies-and-dirty-porn-Europe-mapped-by-national-stereotypes.html

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US Embassy to adopt Medieval fortress design features

September 20, 2010

From http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/st_modernfortress/

By Mike Olson

Courtesy Kierantimberlake

New US Embassy for London

A US embassy is expected to extend the welcoming hand of democracy—while maintaining a 30-meter zone of blast protection. Such was the challenge facing KieranTimberlake when the architectural firm entered a State Department competition to design a new embassy on the banks of the Thames in London. Its winning plan, to be built by 2017, is part ultramodern masterpiece—sleek solar panels, a facade made of energy-conserving fluoropolymer “pillows,” spiraling green spaces—and part 11th-century castle. West Point professor Clifford J. Rogers, an expert in medieval military history, walks us through some features that the Normans would find quite normal.

Raglan Castle started 1435

1// Keep
If the central edifice (or keep) looks familiar, it’s because the Tower of London was built in the same style. “Square keeps were common in England after the Norman Conquest,” Rogers says. Rounded structures, which are better at deflecting arrows, were adopted in the 12th century. But with archery attacks on the decline, the floor-space-maximizing cube is again ideal.

2// Motte
“Castle builders needed to prevent enemies from attacking the base with a battering ram, which would have an effect similar to a small shaped charge today,” Rogers says. A sloped approach called a motte would slow the advance of any invading army or angry mob. In this case, it also covers additional underground facilities.

3// Bailey
The low wall at street level and the larger circular landscaped perimeter is reminiscent of a bailey, an enclosed courtyard that doubles as a first line of defense. “It’s not necessarily meant to stop the enemy dead,” Rogers says, “but to give you time to react and man the inner defense.” As in the Middle Ages, this wall can be patrolled by guards.

4// Moat
The reflecting pool evokes a castle moat. “To keep a medieval fortress secure, you needed to prevent people from taking pickaxes to the base or undermining it,” Rogers says. “A moat was one of the best ways to do that.” In olden days, they were also used to raise eels and fish for food. We imagine the US embassy will forgo that tradition.

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US Recession officially over – but what about the second dip

September 20, 2010

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/the-recession-has-officially-ended/?hp

The recession officially ended in June 2009, according to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of such dates.

As many economists had expected, this official end date makes the most recent downturn the longest since World War II. This recent recession, having begun in December 2007, lasted 18 months. Until now the longest postwar recessions were those of 1973-5 and 1981-2, which each lasted 16 months. Recession and expansion dates are based on various economic indicators, including gross domestic product, income, employment, industrial production and wholesale-retail sales. The Business Cycle Dating Committee typically waits to declare that the economy has turned until well after the fact, when it has a longer track record of economic data to confirm a new trend.

But the double-dip remains a distinct possibility even if the OECD believes the US may just escape it.

A graph of the Early 1980s recession in the Un...

Triple-dip in the 1980's

The United States will experience a slow, jobless recovery from its deepest and longest downturn since the 1930s but will avoid a double-dip recession, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said today. In its annual health check of the world’s biggest economy, the Paris-based OECD said that it expected activity to expand by 2.6% in both 2010 and 2011 without having a marked impact on the country’s near double-digit jobless rate.

But the optimism is speculative and not shared by everybody. Some believe that jobs growth is not happening at a speed sufficient to avoid the double-dip.

The U.S. economy has a “significant likelihood” of entering a double-dip recession if the government doesn’t step in to help the unemployed, economist Robert Shiller told MarketWatch News Break in August. The Yale University professor and author of the best-selling book “Irrational Exuberance” pinned the probability of a double-dip recession at more than a 50-50. Shiller pointed to the nation’s stubbornly-high unemployment as a root cause of lingering economic woes. And with the Federal Reserve running out of bullets to fight a second recession, he urged Congress to join the battle and focus on putting people back to work.

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Japan’s mighty whale mountain – to be consumed by school children

September 20, 2010
The flukes of a sperm whale as it dives into t...

Sperm whale flukes

It has become an annual ritual between Sea Shepherd and Japanese whalers, a ritual that only gets stronger, louder, and more dangerous over the years.  The Japanese claim that their whaling program is for research purposes.  However, whale meat ends up on the shelves of almost every counter in Japan, leading many activist groups to believe that it is a cover-up.

It is a series of cat and mouse games between the two sides, more often than not resulting in violence and even injuries.  Earlier that day before the collision occurred, Sea Shepherd activists threw stink bombs at the ships and dropped ropes in an effort to snarl their propellers. In the past, they have lobbed missiles including paint and rancid butter. The Japanese whalers have responded with water cannon, flash grenades (usually used for crowd control), and military-grade acoustic weaponry.

But how effective are Sea Shepherd’s tactics?  It is a question that has no answer.  Many media sources criticize Sea Shepherd for their violent demeanor.  Perhaps one of the most well known activist groups, Greenpeace, has openly pointed out that Sea Shepherd’s tactics are “morally wrong” and counter-productive as violent means only harden the Japanese public opinion and ensures whaling continues.

The Japan Times reports:

Stocks of frozen whale meat in Japan have reached 4,000 tons. That means there are about 40 million portions of whale meat being expensively stored under refrigeration ready for eating. But not enough people eat kujira (whale), and far from dwindling, Japan’s whale mountain is growing. It’s just not popular enough as a food. The Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) — a branch of the government’s Fisheries Agency that outsources and oversees Japan’s whaling operations — urgently needs to reduce the size of the mountain. It wants Japan to eat more whale, and it has targeted school children as important consumers.

Whale meat for schools

Whale meat has been eaten for centuries in Japan, even millennia, but it was not consumed on a large scale until after World War II. Post 1945, as the country was being rebuilt, whale meat became an important source of protein. The children who ate it in their school lunches back then are now the venerable policymakers in the ICR and in government. The first potential problem with whale meat concerns its possible contamination with mercury.

A study conducted by Tetsuya Endo at the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido, and Koichi Haraguchi at the Daiichi College of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Fukuoka, investigated methyl mercury levels in whale meat on sale in Taiji, and in hair samples taken from 50 residents of the town. They found methyl mercury levels of 5.9 micrograms per gram in the red meat. For comparison, the United States Food and Drug Administration sets an “action level” of 1 microgram. In the U.S., any food with more than 1 microgram of methyl mercury is not allowed to be sold or consumed.

In residents who often ate whale meat, on average their hair contained 24.6 micrograms of mercury per gram. The figure from residents who do not consume whale meat was 4.3 micrograms, and in the Japanese population as a whole the figure is about 2 micrograms. The study was published earlier this year in Marine Pollution Bulletin.

n the September 2010 issue of the journal Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care, a group of public health researchers made an extensive review of the evidence for the effect of mercury exposure on children’s health. “Mercury,” the team write, “is a highly toxic element; there is no known safe level of exposure. Ideally, neither children nor adults should have any mercury in their bodies because it provides no physiological benefit.” ( DOI reference  is: 10.1016/j.cppeds.2010.07.002.).

In a paper to come in October 2010’s issue of Environmental Research (DOI: 10.1016/jenvres.2010.07.001) researchers based at Tohoku University conducted a “birth cohort” study on almost 500 mothers-to-be, and the children they gave birth to. They looked at the amount of seafood consumed by the women, the amount of mercury in the women’s hair, and then they measured the child’s behavior at age 3 days using the standard Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale.

They found that the greater the amount of mercury in the mother’s hair, the worse the child performed on the behavioral test. “In conclusion,” the team write, “our data suggest that prenatal exposure to methyl mercury adversely affects neonatal neurobehavioral function.”

This seems to be a not insignificant risk to subject school children to.

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