Tag: science

Friday News Chum

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

With everything going on this week, and the financial gloom-and-doom, there hasn’t been much interesting chum out there on the newswires. But I do have a little for you:

  • From the “Insert Your Hillary Clinton Joke Here” Department: We’ve all heard about stem cells, and their potential benefit to curing diseases. We’ve also all heard about how research on them has been stymied because their primary source was human embryos, and we all know how the current administration feels about that. Well, according to the LA Times, a new source has been found: Testicles. Specifically, using the testicular cells of adult men, researchers have grown muscle, nerve and other kinds of tissue. Scientists have also derived flexible adult stem cells from skin, amniotic fluid and menstrual blood.They are theoretically superior to traditional embryonic stem cells because they can be obtained directly from male patients and used to grow replacement tissue that their bodies won’t reject. However, they do result in a lot of wincing.
  • From the “You Know the Economy is Bad When…” Department: The New York Times is reporting that as the economy has been tanking, sales of safes have gone up. The metal vaults are so popular in some parts of the country that shoppers are depleting store supplies. True, safes don’t pay interest, but they also don’t lose major value overnight. Unless, of course, someone breaks into them.
  • From the “That’s The Way The Cookie Crumbles” Department: I’m sorry to report another casualty of the economy: Mother’s Cookies is going bankrupt after 92 years (the filing also includes Archway Cookies). As mark_evanier notes, Mothers was best known for its Sugar Cookies, Double Fudge Cookies, Oatmeal Cookies, Flakey Flix and a childhood fave of mine, Circus Animal cookies. Circus Animal Cookies were animal crackers with a layer of magenta or vanilla frosting plus a sprinkling of rainbow sugar nonpareils. Children will sorely miss them.
  • From the “And Another One Takes the Cake” Department: Older children also have something to miss. Chucko, the Birthday Clown, has died. Now this is one icon of LA Children’s TV that I don’t remember, but I have read about. Chucko was on KABC-TV Channel 7 from 1955 to 1963 and on KTTV Channel 11 from 1963 to 1964 (translation: I was 4 when he went off the air). Chucko was known for a spinning merry-go-round hat with his name on it, a half red and half red-and-white-striped clown suit with a fluffy Elizabethan-style collar and cuffs, and white gloves; and he had arching blue eyebrows on a white face with a rhinestone-tipped nose and an upturned red smile. In this outfit, he walked the streets of San Francisco unnoticed. (crickets). His primary sponsors were Barbara Ann bread and Flex Straws–and I have a vague memory of Chucko on packages of those straws. Yes, just like the Sheriff, he had a birthday song: “Here’s a hap, hap, happy birthday from me (that’s me), to you (that’s you). . . .” Now, you’re probably asking yourself: Why a Birthday Clown? Isn’t it obvious? The idea behind Chucko, as his wife Millie once put it, was “if Christmas has Santa Claus, and Halloween has a witch, and Easter a bunny, why shouldn’t kids’ birthdays have a clown?”
  • From the “Baby, Remember my Name” Department: Casting has been announced for the upcoming remake of the movie “Fame”. The MGM film, according to the Hollywood Reporter, will feature Kristy Flores as a dancer named Rosie, Paul Iacono as filmmaker Neil, Paul McGill a gay dancer named Kevin, Naturi Naughton as a classical pianist named Denise, Kay Panabaker as actress Jenny, Kherington Payne as ballerina Alice, Collins Pennie as an artist named Malik, Walter Perez as a musician named Victor and Anna Maria Perez de Tagle as Joy Moy. Thomas Dekker is currently in negotiations to play Marco, a singer, and Debbie Allen, who played strict dance teacher Lydia in the original Alan Parker film, may have a cameo in the remake. The adult roles have yet to be cast. I, for one, am hoping they do the clever thing, and get some of kids who were in the original movie and TV series to show up as teachers in the remake. The new “Fame” is scheduled for release in September 2009.
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Bwah-ha-ha-ha. I’m Just a Mad Science Judge!

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Today I did the annual ritual of spending a vacation day to volunteer as a judge at the California State Science Fair. As I always say, this is a tiring but rewarding experience, exhilerating to see the quality and talent of our kids these days. If you are free to be in SoCal in late May, please volunteer. We need you.

Today, I was the panel chair for the Junior Math and Software panel. We had 26 projects and 11 judges. Let me talk about some of the projects in my panel that piqued my interest or were otherwise noteworthy:

Read More …

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Govt Standards Organization Proposes to Shorten the Inch

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Today in History…

Dr. Lyman J. Briggs, director of the United States Bureau of Standards, wants to shorten the inch. It is too long, he says, and furthermore, the difference between the length of the inch in this country and in Great Britain “is intolerable.”

In line with Dr. Briggs recommendation, the House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, has reported out a bill which would fix the length of the inch and the weight of a pound. The bill proposes to establish the inch to equal 25.4 millimeters exactly. This would shorten the inch by two parts in a million. It is now 25.40005 millimeters, as against 25.39996 in Great Britain.

Dr. Briggs, in urging the legislation, hastened to assure industry that the change would not be disturbing.

“I wish to emphasize,” he said, “the fact that the change will not disturb industry in any way. Industry, from a practical standpoint, will not realize that a change has been made, because the change is too small; it is far within the limits of tolerance permitted in making industrial measurements.”

Note that this was in February 1938. Note that this proposal must have gone through, for in the US an inch is still defined to be 25.4 millimeters (to be precise, 1/36th of a yard, which is 0.9144 meters. This definition was standardized on July 1, 1959 (so the 1938 proposal took a long time to be adopted). Given that a meter is defined as the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second, this means than an inch is, oh, you do the math!.

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Gee, Mr. Wizard, What Are We Going To Do Today?

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Well, Tommy….

The Los Angeles Times is reporting the death of Mr. Wizard, Don Herbert. Yunguns today probably have no idea who that is: they probably remember better Bill Nye the Science Guy or Beakman’s World. And while Mr. Wizard didn’t have Beakman’s cute assistants, he was matter-of-fact, and probably influenced many many kids to go into science and engineering.

So, as you go about your way today, remember Mr. Wizard, and raise a glass of baking soda and vinegar in his honor. And what ever you do, don’t confuse Mr. Wizard with Dr. Science. Mr. Wizard was a wizard, whereas Dr. Science has a master’s degree … in science.

P.S.: It was damn untimely of him to die when he did. We need all of our weird scientists if we are going to battle today’s zombie uprising. Haven’t you been reading about it?

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So How Soon Will We See the Spam?

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

According to the San Francisco Chronicle (via the NYTimes), scientists have found a promising treatment for hypoactive desire in women (i.e., low sexual desire). The compound, called bremelanotide, is a synthetic version of a hormone involved in skin pigmentation, and it was initially developed by Palatin Technologies of New Jersey as a potential tanning agent to help prevent skin cancer. Studies in rodents demonstrated that the drug not only gave male rats spontaneous erections, but also fomented sexual excitement in female rats, prompting them to wiggle their ears, hop excitedly, rub noses with males and otherwise display unmistakable hallmarks of rodent arousal.

(1) How quickly will we be seeing spam for international sales of bremelanotide? While researching the links for this page (a quick google), there is already one for the “yes-yes-yes pill”. Sometimes, I think many representatives of my gender are slime.

(2) Given the number of i’s, l’s, o’s, and a’s, how many different permutations of the word will be created to avoid spam filters

(3) Just what I needed… an article on rodent arousal.

(4) Ladies… I would be careful if that male rat invites you to a tanning parlour.

Sigh.

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If You’re Emo and You Know It, Slit Your Wrists (slit, slit)

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

My daughter sang the title of this post to me the other day, and many folks have found it funny. Yet as the father of a tween, I’ve been seeing the tendancy to “emo” more and more… and those of us on LJ or MySpace see it all the time in postings.

Well, according to Science Daily (there’s also a good article on it here), scientists may have found an explanation. In the current edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers led by Sheryl S. Smith, PhD, professor of physiology and pharmacology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, report findings demonstrating that a hormone normally released in response to stress, THP, actually reverses its effect at puberty, when it increases anxiety. The hormone normally acts like a tranquilizer, acting at sites in the brain that “calm” brain activity. In the adult, this stress hormone helps the individual adapt to stress, with a calming effect produced half an hour after the event. Tests were performed on mice of all ages. It was discovered that, during adolescence, mice have the usual receptors, but also extra-high levels of a second kind that brings an anxious, rather than calming, response when THP attaches to it.

Well, the engineer likes having the explanation. However, it does nothing to help me deal with the “emo” teen in the house. How many years is it now until she calms down?

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Perception vs. Reality

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Today, you’re going to be seeing a lot of posts about how today is the Winter Solstice, the “start of winter”, the “shortest day of the year”. Both of the latter two statements are true in reality, but your perception will tell you otherwise.

Let’s start with the “shortest day of the year”. It is true that, on the solstice, there is the shortest amount of time between sunrise and sunset. But for most of us, the day doesn’t seem any shorter. Why is this? It is due to the tilt of the earth. There was a fascinating piece on the Miami PBS station related to this. During the year, due to the tilt of the earth, the sun moves from rising at true east and setting at true west. It is at its northernmost position on the winter solstice, and its summermost position on the summer solstice (I could have this backwards). This affects the length of the day. However, as we approach this position, the sunrise and sunset times don’t contract equally… and we perceive the length of the day by when it gets dark in the evening. Most of us get up after the sun has risen, so if the sunset time isn’t moving in, we don’t think the day is any shorter. The days with the earliest sunset are actually in early December. However, if you’re an early riser like me, you are affected more by the sunrise time, and that doesn’t reach its latest point until early January… when the days are actually getting longer. So our perception of the shortest and longest days is based on sunrise and sunset, not the actual length of the day.

Similarly, the “start of winter” is usually not the coldest day, just as the “start of summer” is not the hottest day. Usually those days appear to occur about half-way to two-thirds-of-the-way between the solstice and the equinox.

If you want some more details on the scientific basis behind this, see this article.

Yet another reminder that the perception of the situation is often more important than the reality of the situation.

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Getting Teed Off

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

According to Yahoo! News, the astronauts at the International Space Station will be conducting a spacewalk next week. During this spacewalk, among other things, they will conduct a Russian commercial demonstration by hitting a golf ball teed up on the exterior of Pirs. We were talking about this on the van home. A number of questions arose.

  • How do they keep the ball on the tee?
  • When the astronaut swings, will he start to rotate in space?
  • What happens to a golf ball in space? Does the core (liquid or cork) make a difference? The color? The dimples?
  • Will the golf ball reenter the atmosphere, or just become orbiting space junk?

The lesson we learned from this? Never have a discussion of this nature on a van of people that work in the space industry.

One additional note from the article:

Working hundreds of miles away from home didn’t stop [Astronaut] Lopez-Alegria from participating in this week’s general election. Texas law permits residents who happen to be in orbit on Election Day to cast a ballot from space. This was first done by David Wolf from the Mir space station in 1997. Lopez-Alegria made his choices on an encrypted computer ballot that was downlinked to Mission Control and forwarded to the county clerk’s office in Houston for tabulation.

I wonder if he had a paper trail?

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