The (Almost) Daily Link Blog

On a good day, I post quite a few of these. Some days I don’t post at all, and people burn effigies of me in protest. If you’re looking for past Link Blog entries, you can (and are encouraged to) check out the Link Blog archives.

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Wonders of the Solar System with Prof. Brian Cox

The first episode is out and can be viewed on bbc.co.uk, although I did find a 720p HDTV download *ahem* unofficially.

Glad to see some fresh faces getting into science popularisation; Cosmos is as old as I am.

Stop patting yourselves on the back for this study

The spread of news of this study around the Internet just goes to show that even atheists aren’t immune to confirmation bias. It also shows that basic statistics should probably be taught at the high school level.

Brain development infographic winner

Comic showing the development of the human brain.

This comic by Dwayne Godwin, a professor of neurobiology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and Jorge Cham, the former researcher and cartoonist who created PhD Comics, has won first place in the informational graphics category of the 2009 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

The paper regarding cats mentioned in the comic is over here. There’s other interesting stuff in it, too.

The first test that proves General Theory of Relativity wrong

According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a moving mass should create another field, called gravitomagnetic field, besides its static gravitational field. This field has now been measured for the first time and to the scientists’ astonishment, it proved to be no less than one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein’s General Relativity predicts.

This gravitomagnetic field is similar to the magnetic field produced by a moving electric charge (hence the name “gravitomagnetic” analogous to “electromagnetic”). For example, the electric charges moving in a coil produce a magnetic field – such a coil behaves like a magnet. Similarly, the gravitomagnetic field can be produced to be a mass moving in a circle. What the electric charge is for electromagnetism, mass is for gravitation theory (the general theory of relativity).

“We ran more than 250 experiments, improved the facility over 3 years and discussed the validity of the results for 8 months before making this announcement. Now we are confident about the measurement,” says Tajmar. They hope other physicists will now conduct their own versions of the experiment so they could be absolutely certain that they have really measured the gravitomagnetic field and not something else. This may be the first empiric clue for how to merge together quantum mechanics and general theory of relativity in a single unified theory.

I haven’t seen anything published in a journal yet, so I will retain judgement until it passes peer review. But if confirmed, it should be cause for celebration, not derision; scientific knowledge has been advanced.

‘Smart salad dressing’ could save Venice

Venice could be saved from sinking into the sea by releasing fat globules similar to olive oil into the water that are ‘programmed’ to form limestone reefs, say architects. The novel solution for the threatened Italian city, built on silty islands on the Adriatic coast, uses experimental technology that they have dubbed “smart salad dressing”. It would work by releasing oil droplets into the water that are chemically programmed to react with carbon dioxide in the water, precipitating an artificial limestone carbonate.

Two British architects at University College, London, are among those behind the Future Venice project. Rachel Armstrong, from UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture, explained the “protocell” technology. She said: “This technology is based on the chemistry of oil and water and has the special property of transforming carbon dioxide into a limestone-like substance.” The globules would form “solid pearls” of artificial limestone that could protect buildings from future damage, she argued.

End homeopathy funding: British MPs

The government should stop funding homeopathic products because they don’t work, a British parliamentary science group says.

The Science and Technology Committee found no evidence that homeopathy, based on herbal medicines, is effective, according to a report published Monday. The department of health says it has no position on homeopathy, but alternative medicines are routinely paid for by Britain’s health system.

The government acknowledges there is no proof that homeopathy works, but does not plan to review its policies. Britain’s National Health Service spends several million dollars on homeopathic treatments every year.

The parliamentary group also urged the drug regulatory agency not to license homeopathic treatments since they are not medicines.

I’m suddenly very curious to find out if we’re funding homeopathy on this side of the pond…

Haiti earthquake aftermath montage

Khalid Mohtaseb was hired to shoot footage in Haiti for two international networks. This is a montage of his personal footage of the aftermath shot during his spare time in and around Port au Prince. Amazing stuff. It was shot with a Canon 5D Mark II and the slow pans were made using the Kessler Pocket Dolly.

Sites where you can help and donate to Haitian relief.

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Chris Jones’ National Magazine Award-winning story from the July 2004 issue of Esquire, about three astronauts stranded on the space station when the shuttle Columbia exploded:

“I have some bad news,” Howell says, and because it’s Howell who’s delivering it, Pettit and Bowersox know exactly how bad before he gets it out: “We’ve lost the vehicle.”

Nine words. That’s all.

Roger Ebert is dying in increments, and he is aware of it

Chris Jones for Esquire:

Roger Ebert can’t remember the last thing he ate. He can’t remember the last thing he drank, either, or the last thing he said. Of course, those things existed; those lasts happened. They just didn’t happen with enough warning for him to have bothered committing them to memory — it wasn’t as though he sat down, knowingly, to his last supper or last cup of coffee or to whisper a last word into Chaz’s ear. The doctors told him they were going to give him back his ability to eat, drink, and talk. But the doctors were wrong, weren’t they? On some morning or afternoon or evening, sometime in 2006, Ebert took his last bite and sip, and he spoke his last word.

A moving piece, reminding us that nothing is static; everything is falling apart. The key is finding that bit of grace in life, and it looks as though Mr. Ebert has found just that.

From Ebert’s response:

I knew going in that a lot of the article would be about my surgeries and their aftermath. Let’s face it. Esquire wouldn’t have assigned an article if I were still in good health. Their cover line was the hook: Roger Ebert’s Last Words. A good head. Whoever wrote that knew what they were doing. I was a little surprised at the detail the article went into about the nature and extent of my wounds and the realities of my appearance, but what the hell. It was true. I didn’t need polite fictions.

An in-depth look at the federal budget

This week, the president announced the creation of a panel to look at the federal budget. As such, it seems appropriate to look at the federal budget in detail to get a sense of what’s there. All of the information contained in the graphs that follow is available from the CBO. Please click on all images to see a larger image. Also, all data starts in 1970 and goes through fiscal 2009.

Great Lakes fixup plan developed by U.S.

The Obama administration has developed a five-year blueprint for rescuing the Great Lakes after more than a century of environmental damage. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the document, which Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, will release at a news conference on Sunday in Washington. It pledges a “zero tolerance policy” toward future invasions by foreign species such as the Asian carp, a huge fish threatening to enter Lake Michigan. Other goals include cleanup of heavily polluted sites, restoring wetlands and other wildlife habitat, and improving water quality in shallow waters where run-off pollution has led to beach closings. The $2.2-billion US plan also promises to measure progress toward restoring the lakes and hold the government accountable for getting results.

Research ties diabetes drug to heart woes

Hundreds of people taking Avandia, a controversial diabetes medicine, needlessly suffer heart attacks and heart failure each month, according to confidential government reports that recommend the drug be removed from the market.

The reports, obtained by The New York Times, say that if every diabetic now taking Avandia were instead given a similar pill named Actos, about 500 heart attacks and 300 cases of heart failure would be averted every month because Avandia can hurt the heart. Avandia, intended to treat Type 2 diabetes, is known as rosiglitazone and was linked to 304 deaths during the third quarter of 2009.

Think Twice: How the Gut’s “Second Brain” Influences Mood and Well-Being

A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body.

[…]

Given the two brains’ commonalities, other depression treatments that target the mind can unintentionally impact the gut. The enteric nervous system uses more than 30 neurotransmitters, just like the brain, and in fact 95 percent of the body’s serotonin is found in the bowels. Because antidepressant medications called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) increase serotonin levels, it’s little wonder that meds meant to cause chemical changes in the mind often provoke GI issues as a side effect. Irritable bowel syndrome—which afflicts more than two million Americans—also arises in part from too much serotonin in our entrails, and could perhaps be regarded as a “mental illness” of the second brain.

On Crete, New Evidence of Very Ancient Mariners

Crete has been an island for more than five million years, meaning that the toolmakers must have arrived by boat. So this seems to push the history of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000 years, specialists in Stone Age archaeology say. Previous artifact discoveries had shown people reaching Cyprus, a few other Greek islands and possibly Sardinia no earlier than 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

Mental health clinic filled optical illusions

“Japanese designers Nendo have completed the interior of a mental health clinic in Akasaka, Tokyo, where none of the doors open and patients and staff instead move around the building by opening sections of the walls.

I think if I was insane and had to seek treatment there, I might go more insane.

Oxytocin may help relieve autism symptoms

Oxytocin, a hormone often referred to as the “cuddle chemical” for its role in helping to foster intimate relationships—particularly between mothers and their newborns—may help people with autism to read and react to social cues, according to the preliminary results of a small study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Individuals with autism spectrum disorders often have trouble engaging and interacting in social situations, frequently avoiding eye contact, for example, and previous research has also shown that people who are autistic often have lower levels of the hormone oxytocin. In this recent study, researchers from France’s Center of Cognitive Neuroscience used nasal inhalers to give oxytocin to 13 individuals with high-functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome. Afterwards, the researchers examined the study participants’ reactions to social stimuli. They found that, after the oxytocin, the subjects showed significant improvement on social tasks—including making more eye contact when shown pictures of faces, and responding to other players in a ball tossing game.

Phobos gets extreme closeup from Mars Express

The Mars Express, which the agency launched in 2003, has begun a series of flybys of Phobos, the largest moon of Mars, that will ultimately set a new record for the closest pass to Phobos, skimming toward the surface at 50 km - or about 31 miles, the ESA said.

Study finds that bonobos share like humans

New research suggests that the act of voluntarily sharing something with another may not be entirely exclusive to the human experience. A study published in the March 9th issue of Current Biology, observed that bonobos — a sister species of chimpanzees and, like chimps, our closest living relatives — consistently chose to actively share their food with others.

When I go back to school in a few years to study ethology, I would really love to work at some point with bonobos. They’re fascinating creatures. While we may have more in common — genetically — with chimpanzees, bonobos are so much closer to humans in terms of intelligence and social behaviour. The can even play video games and actually understand what they were doing in them. Whereas shoving my Nintendo DS in my cat’s face results in nothing more than him sniffing it.

Why the media seems biased when you care about the issue

Research shows both pro-Arabs and pro-Israelis watching the same news reports think it is biased against their own side.

The media may well be biased, in fact it would be a miracle if it were permanently and perfectly balanced, that isn’t what this post is about. Instead this is about how you and I perceive the presence or absence of bias in the media.

This study, conducted in the 1980s, helps to explain a lot of the heat and light that gets produced by those commenting on media bias across the political spectrum, including the remarkably vitriolic outpourings often seen in the comment sections of newspaper websites and across the internet.

Teenage headaches not related to gadgets

Use of most electronic media is not associated with headaches, at least not in adolescents. A study of 1025 13-17 year olds, published in the open access journal BMC Neurology, found no association between the use of computer games, mobile phones or television and the occurrence of headaches or migraines. However, listening to one or two hours of music every day was associated with a pounding head.

TED 2010: Mark Roth on Mice and Men and Suspended Animation

In 2005, cell biologist Mark Roth made headlines when he published the results of studies showing that exposing mice to small amounts of hydrogen sulfide would put them into a state of “suspended animation,” or hibernation, that could be reversed without ill effect.

The hydrogen sulfide, or H2S, slowed their metabolic activity by 90 percent, dropping their core temperature from 37 degrees Celsius to 11 degrees and reducing their respiration from 120 breaths a minute to less than 10 breaths a minute. The mice survived six hours in this state and, when re-animated, exhibited no signs of damage.

Roth, a biochemist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and recipient of a MacArthur “genius” award, will be speaking on Thursday at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference about the possible medical benefits of H2S for humans and the results of new unpublished tests he’s conducted on suspended animation.

The article also has an interview with Roth, discussing the subject of his TED talk, which is that he’s demonstrated that if you make certain animals cold in an animated state, you kill them. But if you make those same animals cold, but in a suspended state, they all survive.

Chinese herbal “medicine” gave woman cancer

A civil servant suffered cancer and kidney failure after taking pills sold by a Chinese herbal shop to clear up spots on her face, a court heard today. Patricia Booth took the medicine bought at a shop in Chelmsford, Essex, for five and a half years, a jury was told.

The Chinese Herbal Medical Centre advertised its products as “safe and natural and without side effects”, the Old Bailey heard. Mrs Booth was taken ill months after she stopped taking the pills, and they were found to contain a banned substance, aristolochic acid, the court was told. Mrs Booth’s health deteriorated to such an extent that her kidneys were “destroyed”, she had cancer, and suffered a heart attack. She now has to go to hospital three times a week for dialysis and would be unable to come to court, instead giving evidence via videolink, jurors heard.

Julian Christopher, prosecuting, said Wu was employed as a “Chinese doctor” at the shop, which was in business from late 1996 until August 2003. He said: “The case is concerned with pills which the prosecution allege were given by Susan Wu to one particular patient to take every day to clear up spots on her face and which the patient continued to take for five and a half years. “They did indeed clear up her skin but turned out to have disastrous consequences. They completely destroyed her kidneys and gave her cancer.”

Why do we have an FDA again?

Placebo effect explained

You don’t have to be bipolar to be a genius — but it helps

Scientists have for the first time found powerful evidence that genius may be linked with madness. Speculation that the two may be related dates back millennia, and can be found in the writings of Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. Aristotle once claimed that “there is no great genius without a mixture of madness”, but the scientific evidence for an association has been weak — until now.

A study of more than 700,000 adults showed that those who scored top grades at school were four times more likely to develop bipolar disorder than those with average grades.

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