promote scientific literacy

some of you may already know about the Save OurSelves LiveEarth concert series this summer, “the concerts for a climate in crisis”. Ever wonder who in their right mind would do the concert in Antarctica? Turns out it’ll be the scientists themselves. us science folks are pretty versatile it turns out. Gore has personally recruited the local little band named Nunatak.

and now you know…the rest of the story.

now has a digital only subscription option (from newsstand.com). my home is cluttered with stacks of old issues that I never had time to read, and i couldn’t justify resubscribing at their increased rates. so this makes me pretty happy.

more proof that wild animals are not pets: Exotic pets pose health risks.
just ask Paris:

^{Another newly discovered threat involves a current rage among exotic pet owners: a small carnivorous mammal with sharp teeth called a kinkajou. The nocturnal, tree-dwelling animals originally from Central and South America’s rain forests have a dangerous bite — as Paris Hilton recently learned. The actress used to carry her pet kinkajou named “Baby Luv” on her shoulder as she partied. This summer, Hilton landed in an emergency room when Baby Luv bit her on the arm. The concern about a bite is real. In 2005, a kinkajou bit a zookeeper in England on the wrist. The keeper’s hand became infected, and she almost lost her fingers, said Dr. Paul Lawson, a University of Oklahoma microbiologist who first identified a new bacterium specific to kinkajous. The first antibiotics doctors prescribed didn’t work, so a combination of several was used to stop the aggressive infection.}

in a catholic high school, i took an advanced biology class and had to write an essay in response to this question: Does punctuated equilibrium exist? Yes or No and explain your answer. i wrote a brilliant essay defending the idea of punctuated equilibrium, only to have it returned to me with a failing grade and one sentence written in red: punctuated equilibrium is impossible.

and thus began my determined and defiant career in biology, and my equally determined and defiant dissection of religion.

thank God for that priest.

this sounds promising. gotta wonder how stable the system would be over the long term though.

Pumping carbon dioxide through hot rocks could simultaneously generate power and mop up the greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuel power stations, according to a new study.

source

since evolution seems to be all the rage these days.

from an article in the latest issue of Discover, called DNA is not Destiny:

^{“Gene as fate” has become conventional wisdom. Through the study of epigenetics, that notion at last may be proved outdated. Suddenly, for better or worse, we appear to have a measure of control over our genetic legacy. [...] Until recently, the pattern of an individual’s epigenome was thought to be firmly established during early fetal development. Although that is still seen as a critical period, scientists have lately discovered that the epigenome can change in response to the environment throughout an individual’s lifetime.}

The even greater surprise is the recent discovery that epigenetic signals from the environment can be passed on from one generation to the next, sometimes for several generations, without changing a single gene sequence. It’s well established, of course, that environmental effects like radiation, which alter the genetic sequences in a sex cell’s DNA, can leave a mark on subsequent generations. Likewise, it’s known that the environment in a mother’s womb can alter the development of a fetus. What’s eye-opening is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the epigenetic changes wrought by one’s diet, behavior, or surroundings can work their way into the germ line and echo far into the future. Put simply, and as bizarre as it may sound, what you eat or smoke today could affect the health and behavior of your great-grandchildren.

some issues to consider before voting next week.

^{Scientists and Engineers for America(SEA) Candidate Questions:}

Dear Candidate,

I am a registered voter in your district, and I want my government to use good science in formulating policy. Please answer the following questions, so I know how to vote on Election Day.

1. Do you support the Science and Engineering Bill of Rights (www.sefora.org)?

2. Do you support lifting the President’s ban on the use of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research given appropriate ethical guidelines?

3. Should emergency contraception as recommended by FDA scientific staff and advisory committees be available over the counter for all women of childbearing age?

4. Do you endorse immediate and significant actions to diminish the effects of global warming caused primarily by burning fossil fuel and other human activity?

5. Should the research budgets of federal research agencies be increased substantially?

6. Do you support the teaching of Intelligent Design or creationism as an alternative theory to evolution in science classes?

7. Do you support strengthening the science and engineering advice for Congress by creating an organization to replace the Office of Technology Assessment (abolished in 1995)?

8. Should the United States ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and stop all work on new nuclear weapons?

9. Should the United States adopt visa policies that encourage highly skilled scientists and engineers from around the world to study and work in the United States?

10. Should there be a significant increase in federal funding for training science and mathematics teachers and development of high-quality curricular materials – including teaching materials that use new information technologies like the Internet?

From Science Daily

^{The weathering of the mountains pulled carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, causing the opposite of a greenhouse effect—an “icehouse” effect.}

Scientists have suspected that our current ice age, which began 40 million years ago, was caused by the rise of the Himalayas. This new study links a much earlier major ice age -one that occurred during the Ordovician period - to the uplift of the early Appalachians .

It also reinforces the notion that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are a major driver of Earth’s climate.

(two physics articles.)

do the laws of physics change with time? originally from NewScientist

^{Some have been tempted to say that reality is the whole timeless history and that any sense we have of a present moment is some kind of illusion. Even if we don’t believe this, the fact that one could believe it means that there is nothing in this description of nature that corresponds to our common-sense experience of past, present and future. This is called the problem of transience. The sense of the universe unfolding or becoming in time, of “now”, has no representation in general relativity. But in truth the problem was always there in Newton’s physics and it is there in any theory in which some part of nature is described by a state that evolves deterministically in time, governed by a law that dictates change, but never changes. The philosopher Roberto Unger of Harvard University calls this the “poisoned gift of mathematics to physics”. Many believe that mathematics represents truth in terms of timeless relationships, based on logic. It allows us to formulate physical laws precisely: this is the gift. By doing so, however, mathematics represents paths in configuration space unfolding in time by logic, and this logic exists outside of time. The poison in the gift is the disappearance of any notion of the present or of becoming.}

teleportation progress from Reuters

^{“It is one step further because for the first time it involves teleportation between light and matter, two different objects. One is the carrier of information and the other one is the storage medium,” Polzik explained in an interview on Wednesday. The experiment involved for the first time a macroscopic atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms. They also teleported the information a distance of half a meter but believe it can be extended further. “Teleportation between two single atoms had been done two years ago by two teams but it was done at a distance of a fraction of a millimetre,” Polzik, of the Danish National Research Foundation Center for Quantum Optics, explained.}

^{Try stretching your mind to comprehend that reality: a technology that stretches reality to comprehend your mind. Outside the scanner, your thoughts are invisible, immeasurable, meaningless. Inside it, they’re visible, measurable, real. One minute, you aren’t there. The next, you are. Would you pull the plug on a 24-year-old relative with a rich and responsive but unconscious mental life? Go ahead, raise your hand. Or just think about raising it, and we’ll record your vote by brain scan.}

which further begs the questions: if there’s a person in there, can we get them out? if we can, what’s next? this could open a big pandora’s box of literal ghosts in machines.