I’ve been meaning to post this: it’s a discussion of each position in the Apollo-11 era Mission Control room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Lots of pictures.
Apollo 11-era MOCR Explained
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Tag Archives: science
Curiosity Landing
Better than John Carter of Mars, which we saw last week:
Kudus: Slashdot.
Awesome!
I love this: a 15-year old kid comes up with a new way of detecting pancreatic cancer. It’s “90% accurate, 400 times more sensitive, and 26,000 times less expensive than existing methods.” Way to go:
Make via Carpe Diem.
Brain and Brain. What is Brain?
A new hypothesis says that humans are so clever because our brain cells are the result of a copying error, or, really two copying errors:
The second, more recent, duplication seems to be incomplete, with only part of the gene being duplicated. The researchers think this partially duplicated gene is able to interfere with the actions of the original, ancestral copy of SRGAP2. When the researchers added the partially duplicated gene copy to the mouse genome (mice don’t normally have it) it seemed to speed the migration of brain cells during development, which makes brain organization more efficient.
A Sarcasm Detector
From the Smithsonian, via @HankFortener, comes this useful information:
Actually, scientists are finding that the ability to detect sarcasm really is useful. For the past 20 years, researchers from linguists to psychologists to neurologists have been studying our ability to perceive snarky remarks and gaining new insights into how the mind works. Studies have shown that exposure to sarcasm enhances creative problem solving, for instance. Children understand and use sarcasm by the time they get to kindergarten. An inability to understand sarcasm may be an early warning sign of brain disease.
It’s too late to use this insight at family Thanksgiving dinners, but Christmas is coming.
Alternative Medicine Isn’t
What was the New York Times thinking, running this piece (“Is your doctor open to alternative medicine?”).
I mean, I understand why quacks and charlatans promote “alternative” remedies: the same reason that Willie Sutton supposedly robbed banks.
I also understand why so many people are attracted to alternatives: because our healthcare delivery system is so messed up. The doctors created a system where they had a legal monopoly, in order to get rich. But it also encourages people to pursue alternatives. The poor do, of course, but even people with money, or insurance, avoid doctors. Our monopolist doctors overbook appointments, make us wait 1-2 hours after the scheduled time, and then try to cram our care into a 7.5 minute office visit. It’s like getting your medical care from the cable guy. By contrast, the quacks and charlatans have got nothing but time. They’ll listen to everything you say, nodding their heads sympathetically.
What I can’t understand is how the Times decided to run a story about being open to “alternative” medicine the same day they report Steve Jobs could have survived his cancer if he hadn’t wasted the first nine months pursuing “alternative” quackery like fruit juices, acupuncture, and herbal remedies.
Sadly, it’s not just geniuses like Jobs who fall for the nonsense that people are peddling. Just the other day, I met a woman who refused to get her kids vaccinated because of fears about mercury. She was just repeating things she heard, second-, third-, and seventeenth-hand. She is a victim of fraud, and her kids may become tragic victims.
I understand people selling these “alternative” medicines. But I don’t sympathize with them. They have a lot to answer for, and if there is any justice in the universe, someday they will.
(H/T: Althouse.)
Intelligence and Disease
Why are some places more blessed with smart people? (Yes, I assume that more smarter people is better for a society, and no, I won’t attempt to convince you.) Some recent studies suggest that disease may be the reason for uneven distribution of intelligence:
In our 2010 study, we not only found a very strong relationship between levels of infectious disease and IQ, but controlling for the effects of education, national wealth, temperature, and distance from sub-Saharan Africa, infectious disease emerged as the best predictor of the bunch. A recent study by Christopher Hassall and Thomas Sherratt repeated our analysis using more sophisticated statistical methods, and concluded that infectious disease may be the only really important predictor of average national IQ.
The researchers wondered if, since infant humans spend as much as 90 percent of their calories building and growing their brains, fighting disease detracts from that important work.
If this finding is correct, then the uneven distribution of intelligence may be a developmental matter rather than genetics or uncontrollable environmental factors like climate.
Arsenic-Based Life Controversy Keeps Bubbling
That controversy about arsenic-based life that I blogged (on my other blog) back in December is still cooking. I don’t read Science so I had to learn about it in Ars Technia:
The authors have stuck to their guns, but have reiterated arguments that their critics are likely to find unconvincing. And that’s somewhat surprising; it should have been possible for them to accept at least a few of the criticisms and indicate further work was under way that would handle them.
I am curious to find out what the facts are, here. I’d be stunned to learn that DNA’s chemistry works with arsenic as well as phosphorus, or that both forms can code for the same amino acids. But stunning me is what science is all about.
How to write thin science journalism
Ever wondered how to crank out shallow science journalism? In the Guardian‘s “Lay Scientist” column, Martin Robbins shows how it’s done:
In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.