January 31, 2007 1:03
Very VERY Cold People
You probably forgot to put it on your calendar, but Jan. 12 was the 40th anniversary of the first human on record--a 73-year-old man named James Bedford--being frozen solid in hopes that he could some day be revived. I forgot too, but the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz. send me a press release to remind me. Since then (all of this information comes from Alcor--I have no reason to think they'd mislead me), the company has frozen 74 more people, including (according to press reports that is; Alcor won't comment, on the theory that frozen people have privacy rights like you or I), baseball legend Ted Williams. In more than one piece. Don't ask.
Anyway, the people who get frozen aren't necessarily crazy: pretty much all of them are, or were, suffering from incurable diseases. If they hadn't been frozen, they'd be dead. Now they're...well, even Alcor doesn't claim they're alive, exactly. The idea is that someday, when their diseases are curable, someone will figure a way to thaw them safely. And maybe their brains won't have freezer burn. And maybe they'll be up and around, enjoying their golden years after a bit of a delay.
Hey, you can't prove it won't happen. That's pretty much Alcor's position. But you should check out the website; they have a fuller explanation, and you really can't trust me. Because I think the whole thing is terminally silly.
January 30, 2007 10:00
Hubble Trouble
A message went out to astronomers worldwide yesterday with some bad news: the Hubble Telescope had detected an onboard problem and shut itself down to prevent further damage while engineers figured it out.
It didn't take them long. The Advanced Camera for Surveys, installed five years ago last month by Shuttle astronauts, is pretty much fried. It's been limping along on backup electrical circuitry since last year when its main circuits went bad. Now most of its capabilities are gone--probably forever. Even though NASA said last fall that they would reverse an earlier decision and mount one last shuttle repair mission to the aging telescope, probably in the fall of 2008. But the astronauts on that mission already have plenty to deal with, replacing gyroscopes and installing new cameras. There won't be time to deal with this new problem.
That's especially sad for science and for the public: the Advanced Camera has not only generated some of the most spectacular images in Hubble's collection, but it's also been the go-to instrument for peering deep into space. Among its other discoveries have been the faintest and most distant galaxies ever seen and the strongest evidence to date for the Dark Energy that seems to pervade the cosmos and turbo-charge the Big Bang expansion of the universe.
January 16, 2007 6:15
Saving Weird Animals
Scientists are always raising money to support their research or fund programs their research tells them are important, so, just like the folks who market cornflakes or wart removers, they too hire publicists to get media attention. Sometimes it's a real uphill slog: my eyes, like those of most of my colleagues, glaze over when a press release appears touting a more efficient process for manufacturing paint or something like that (and believe me, I get them).
But sometimes a group of researchers is blessed with news release that is both scientifically justifiable and makes for a good headline. Such is the case with a new project out of the Zoological Society of London. It's called the Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered, or EDGE of Existence project. (Get it? Actually, they almost lost me there; I really hate names that are cobbled together so obviously to create a catch acronym). And it's based on the fact that while all species are valuable (just as all the children in Lake Wobegon are above average, I suppose), some would be more disastrous to lose than others.
The reason is that they represent species that are 1) seriously endangered, 2)have few or no close relatives and therefore 3) are the sole examples, or close to it, of an evolutionary line that dates back millions of years.
They also happen, in many cases, to look kind of bizarre--therefore, good visuals. So far, the biologists at the Society have come up with 564 or these beasts, of which they plan to focus on 100 especially at risk, of which they'll focus even more sharply this year on the top 10. And they are (can we get Letterman to read these?)...
1) Yangtze River dolphin
2) Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna (egg-laying mammal)
3) Hispaniolan solenodon (venomous shrew-like creature)
4) Bactrian camel
5) Pygmy hippopotamus
6) Slender Loris (a shy, nocturnal primate with gigantic eyes)
7) Hirola antelope (antelope known as “four-eye antelope”, as their preorbital glands look like a second set of eyes)
8) Golden-rumped elephant shrew (the size of a small rabbit; can run at speeds of up to 25km/h)
9) Bumblebee bat (possibly the world’s smallest mammal)
10) Long-eared jerboa (mouse-like animals with the largest ear to body ratio of any mammal)
I've taken the list directly from the society's website--their parenthetical explanations are better than any I could come up with. Unfortunately, the Malagasy giant jumping rat made the top 100, but not this year's top 10 honorees.
January 14, 2007 11:07
The Doomsday Clock is About to Move! The What?
Irrelevancy is a sad thing to see. I see it in the latest pronouncement from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (the what?) that the Doomsday Clock has moved closer to midnight (huh?).
There was a time, starting way back in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1960s, when global nuclear war seemed like a genuine threat. That's the time when school kids had to do "duck and cover" drills to be ready when the Russian Commies dropped the Bomb. And it's the time when atomic physicists, bitterly regretting their complicity in creating the atomic and hydrogen bombs, created the symbolic Doomsday Clock. Midnight represented a nuclear holocaust and the End of Civilization as We Know it.
So ever since 1947 the people in charge of the clock have moved the hands closer or farther from that ultimate tick depending on how much danger they thought the planet was in--closer during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, and farther as the Soviet Union broke apart in the late 1980s.
But as far as I can tell, nobody pays much attention any more. When was the last time, for example, that it came up in conversation at a dinner or around the water cooler at work? "Hey, I'm worried--did you see that the Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight?" "No way!"
No, I didn't think so. It isn't that the reasons for the move aren't real. According to the press release issued by the group, they include: "growing concerns about a
"Second Nuclear Age" marked by grave threats, including: nuclear
ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in
Russia and elsewhere, the continuing "launch-ready" status of 2,000 of
the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by theU.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate
change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase
proliferation risks."
OK, I'll buy those (except for the status of nukes in the U.S. and Russia--do they really imagine any circumstance where these will be use? I don't). But we know about all this stuff already. We don't need Stephen Hawking, the celebrity spokes-scientist who'll be participating in the press conference coming Wednesday, to tell us. We don't need Lawrence Krauss or Martin Rees (two less well known but equally eminent astrophysicists). And we don't need the Doomsday Clock to explain to us with faux precision how close we are to Ultimate Doom.
It's these folks' right to have an opinion, of course, and to move the hands of their clock any way they want. But they oughtn't delude themselves into thinking that as scientists they have a better grasp on the state of the world than the rest of us do.
January 11, 2007 3:04
Here's a reason to give your kid French lessons
...or Spanish, or Serbo-Croatian. Or better still, to marry someone who's a native speaker of these, or any other language. You already know it's great for showing up the neighbors, or showing off for waiters in ethnic restaurants, or getting into Harvard (if that's your goal in life--or theirs).
But it turns out a second language will also keep the child from developing dementia later in life (Alzheimer's being only the best known form of cognitive decline that falls under that heading). Or at least, it'll delay the onset.
The information comes from a study out of Toronto, published today in the journal Neuropsychologia; it's based on 184 patients at the Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain, who showed up complaining of cognitive impairment. Turns out that the ones who spoke at least two languages developed their problem on average four years later than those who spoke only one.
This isn't a huge shock, of course, considering that older people have been encouraged for years to keep the mind active in order to stave off memory and other cognitive problems--but it's also a reminder that, just like physical exercise, mental exercise is most effective when it's a lifelong practice. Sure, beginning an exercise program at 70 is better than nothing, but ideally you should be keeping your cardiovascular system and your muscles and bones toned up throughout your life.
The same evidently goes for mental exercise. That's why I regret I didn't keep up my high-school French (which, I don't mind telling you, was good enough that they didn't ignore me or laugh at me when I visited Paris in 1974). And why I regret that I haven't learned Spanish, as I began intending to do about 20 years ago. I have recently taken up Hindi, having to my good fortune acquired some Indian in-laws a few years ago. And I'm pleased to report that, with its unfamiliar alphabet and sounds that are elusive to the Western ear, it makes my brain hurt.
Must mean I'm getting a good workout.
January 9, 2007 6:05
As If Global Warming Weren't Bad Enough
Rising sea level, new diseases, widespread drought, the possibility that the Gulf Stream could shut off and freeze Europe solid...global warming has enough possibly awful consequences as it is. But a study in the latest Science suggests there could be even more trouble ahead. Isabel Montanez, a geologist at the University of California, Davis, along with several colleagues, used fossils and carbon deposits preserved in ancient rocks, soils and coal to figure out how carbon dioxide, the most worrisome greenhouse gas, might have affected temperatures during the Permian period about 300 million years ago, when a major ice age ended.
One finding wasn't very surprising: as carbon dioxide rose, its heat-trapping properties warmed the Earth, melting miles-thick glaciers that covered higher latitudes and eventually turning the planet into a hot, dry place. But it didn't happen in a steady way, it turns out. On the way to a warmer world, both CO2 and global temperatures oscillated wildly between hot and cold; glaciers came and went, and the predominant vegetation changed from lush tropical plants to cold-weather conifers over relatively short periods--and then went back again.
It isn't a direct parallel to today's global warming, because these changes took place over millions of years. But the ancient record may still be worth worrying about: the rise in carbon dioxide due to human activity--burning oil, coal and forests, mostly--is a lot faster than it was in those prehistoric times. Which could mean, say the scientists, that oscillations between hot and cold could happen a lot faster as well. Steady warming might be catastrophic, But wrenching as it might be to adapt to a warming world, it would be far worse to make that adjustment, then turn around quickly and re-adapt to a world that's suddenly cooling--and then warming--and so on.
January 8, 2007 4:36
There's Life on Mars, and We Killed It!!!
...or so you might believe, given some of the headlines out there. What actually happened is this: a geologist from Washington State University presented a paper at the American Astronomical Society's winter meeting in Seattle yesterday. He argued that life-detecting experiments on the Viking landers during the 1970s might have looking for the wrong thing. On Earth, all life incorporates salty water as a means of transporting dissolved nutrients within cells and through bodies, and that's the kind of life NASA looked for.
But on Mars, where it's colder, life--IF it exists--might instead use a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide. IF it did, then the Viking experiments would not only have failed to detect life; by heating and dousing it with water, the experiments would have killed the microbes.
That's two big "IF's," though, and without the slightest actual evidence to support them, the paper is an interesting but utterly theoretical exercise. Future Mars missions may well be able to eliminate the uncertainty, though.
January 8, 2007 12:05
Are the Stem Cell Wars Over?
It's always dangerous to use the word "breakthrough," especially in an area of science haunted by contentious politics and the risk of false hope. But a new report in the latest issue of Nature Biotechnology makes it hard to resist. Researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard have just announced that they've derived stem cells and used them to grow an amazing variety of cells, including liver, bone, fat, blood vessel, muscle and nerve cells. And they did it without even touching an embryo.
That's always been the problem with stem cells, of course. Embryos at the very earliest stages of development are made up of these un-specialized cells, which go on to become every cell type in the human body. In theory, you could use them to cure any disease involving cell death, by replacing whatever has been lost--a huge deal, considering that heart disease, diabetes, cirrhosis, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, spinal cord injuries and dozens of other terrible ailments involve the death of cells.
The catch is that to get the stem cells, you generally have to destroy the embryo--anathema to the right-to-life crowd. Which is why President Bush created the current policy in which federal funds can only be used to support research on embryonic stem cell lines created before the policy began in 2001--a pitifully small and essentially useless number. It's why California, New Jersey and other states have passed their own laws supporting that research. It's why supporters of embryonic stem cell research often exaggerate the promise without dwelling on the fact there could be big scientific roadblocks along the way--and why opponents exaggerate the promise of adult stem cells, which are partially specialized. Those are all you need, say some right-to-lifers--essentially a lie, since they have no way of knowing.
This newest source of stem cells, though, comes from the amniotic fluid that surrounds a developing fetus. So unlike adult stem cells, they're very close to a complete state of non-specialization. But unlike embryonic stem cells, they don't affect the embryo at all.
Not only that: the scientists used this type of cells from mice to grow neural, liver and bone cells that functioned properly when implanted in actual animals.
It'll be years before anyone is ready to test this technique in humans--but someday, historians of medicine may look back on this as the first step in a complete transformation of healing.
January 5, 2007 1:50
Google Goes Cosmic
One of the most exciting new telescopes being designed to explore the universe is something called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or LSST; its mission, once it goes into operation in 2013, will be to take snapshots of the universe in what the website calls a relentless "campaign of 15 second exposures." That lets the telescope cover the entire sky visible from its future home in Northern Chile once every 3 days. And that means the LSST will be able to see the heavens change on an unprecedented scale as stars explode, quasars flicker, previously unknown asteroids move across the sky and more. It'll be almost 30 ft. across, too, which means it can see excruciatingly faint objects, halfway to the edge of the observable universe and more.
But to do so, the LSST will have to gather and process extraordinary amounts of data--and that's where Google evidently comes in. The telescope has until now been under development by a partnership of universities and other research organizations--but it was announced earlier today that Google is signing on. Its role, says the press release, will be "organizing the massive ingestion of information, processing and analyzing the continuous data streams in a 24/7 fault tolerant manner, enabling the new discoveries coming out of the LSST to be made available to the public and researchers in real time, and working with and managing large parallel data systems."
No word yet on whether the company gets naming rights, though. If you want my two cents, the Google Telescope sounds so much better than the Large Synoptic...you get the idea.
January 4, 2007 7:14
A Rock Falls on New Jersey
My favorite headlines are "Space Rock of Doom Hits House," from the British website metro.co.uk, and "Unidentified metal object puzzles police," from msnbc.com--the former because nobody was even scratched and the latter because since when would you expect the police in Freehold Township, NJ, to be anything else but puzzled when a chunk of metal falls from the sky, crashes through a roof and lodges in a wall?
In any case, the oblong, plum-sized object was most likely a meteorite--a chunk of space debris, either rocky or metallic, that's too big to burn up from friction in Earth's atmosphere. It sounds bizarre, but in fact, scores of meteorites like this hit the planet every year. Most of them hit the ocean, or deserts, or Antarctica, or somewhere else where nobody's there to see it. But not always. One crashed through a roof in Auckland, New Zealand in 2004. One hit a parked car in Peekskill, NY, in 1992. One smashed into a house in Weathersfield, Connecticut, in 1982 while the occupants were watching M*A*S*H. Nobody, as far as we know, has ever been killed. That takes a bigger meteorite, like the one, several miles across, that wiped out the dinosaurs.
The Freehold police are still on the case.
About Eye On Science
TIME contributing writer Michael D. Lemonick fills you in on what's hot, what's cool, what's controversial and what's just plain silly in the world of science. Comments encouraged.
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