White House Issues Long-Delayed Science Guidelines

          White House Issues Long-Delayed Science Guidelines, by Kenneth Chang, explains the new government guidelines put forth by the Obama administration regarding governmental scientific research. The four page document covers scientists’ ability to share their findings publicly and how they administer and document research. This document arose from issues with inaccurate scientific knowledge being shared with the public under the Bush administration. For example, Dr. Grifo discovered that carbon dioxide emissions were a major cause of the rise in global temperatures. However, because the Bush administration did not want to take on the task of global warming with such a breakthrough in the cause, they censored his findings from the public. Even with this step forward in political-scientific openness, many are still cynical as to how much the government still has censorship over what findings are released. Dr. Grifo told the NYT that,  “I don’t like the ambiguities. I don’t like the discretion it gives to the agencies.” For now, this short, overdue document will have to do and perhaps serve as a stepping stone for what is to come.

          I thought this article was interesting and related to chemistry in that it emphasizes the importance of two major subjects we discussed earlier this year: the importance of being an informed citizen and the ability for scientists to share information with one another and the public.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/science/18research.html

CHANG, KENNETH. "White House Issues Long-Delayed Science Guidelines." New York Times 18 Dec. 2010: A13. Web. 21 Dec. 2010.

Posted for L. Connor

Female chimps play with ‘dolls’

            In this article, it discusses the gender preferences of a certain chimpanzee community. A group of scientists studying a certain chimp community within the Ugandan forest for 14 years has discovered the young females attraction to ‘dolls;’ whereas, young males showed little to no interest. In referring to dolls, the scientists meant sticks. The young female would often pick up sticks and carry them anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours cradling it and holding it in a maternal fashion.

             

           This article suggests that chimpanzees and humans alike may be innately drawn to ‘toys’ associated with one’s respective gender, revealing that it isn’t just society that pushes dolls on girls and trucks on boys. While, indeed society does influence major gender assignments, this study of the chimpanzees proves that females, especially as infants, have a natural inclination towards ‘dolls.’ 

            This article was well written and clear. It effectively communicated its point without extraneous information. It also clearly revealed the relationship between human and chimpanzee gender preferences. I chose this article because it was a clear example of nature v. nurture and whether girls are raised to like dolls or it’s their innate inclination.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/67892/title/Female_chimps_play_with_dolls

Bower, Bruce. "Female chimps play with 'dolls' Youngsters mimic mothering by cradling sticks." Science News 20 Dec. 2010. Google. Web. 21 Dec. 2010.

posted for A. Corbat

A Yale physics professor has come up with a new golf club that can help teach you how to fix your swing. The way the club helps you is by giving off sounds into the headphones of the golfer, the higher and louder the pitch the faster the swing. The professor from Yale has found that hearing a sound is more beneficial to the change of your swing than just getting told it by someone else. Self correction is the best way to learn something because you know what you need to change and you are the only one who can actually change it. Golf is a mixture of physical skills and physics, from the swing speed to the flex of the shaft. Robert Grober's Sonic Golf tool uses motion-detecting sensors. When a player swings the club, sensors located in the shaft send wireless signals to a small base station receiver placed a few feet away. The receiver contains a microprocessor and a sound card that unravels the signal from the sensors and converts it into an audio "soundscape" representing the various speeds of the club during the backswing and downswing. A slow swing produces soft, low-pitched notes; a fast swing produces loud, high-pitched tones. These are transmitted back to the player through a set of wireless headphones. The golfer can then adjust his or her motion to generate the sound of a perfect swing. This could seriously revolutionize golf as we know it.
The frustrating part of this article is that I don’t know when the club would be available for purchase because something like this could seriously help my golf game. Also, you are never really told statistics on how hearing your swing is actually more beneficial for your learning then hearing someone critique it. This makes the article a little less fulfilling for me and I wish that the article contained these few bits left out.
I picked this article because I enjoy playing the game of golf in my spare time. Something like this could really boost my game and I like to get any edge that I can over my opponents. Even though this product isn’t totally proven yet, but it still sounds like it could be a great and useful product down the road.


“Sonic Golf Club.” Science Daily. July 5, 2010. http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2005/0701-sonic_golf_club.htm.

Rooting For Swarm Intelligence in Plants

            In this article, Susan Milius discusses the recent findings of František Baluška from the University of Bonn in Germany. The main idea of the article that that roots may have swarm intelligence because of the various amounts information that proves they can work as a group. Swarm intelligence is mainly found in animals, and it is their ability to work together as a group to solve problems and make their living environment better. Honeybees are a usual example of an animal that uses swarm intelligence in order to find a new home.

             

          Baluška believes that roots could have swarm intelligence for many reasons. It is believed that root tips gather information individually, and then that information gets processed. When the roots are tangled with each other, the information gets shared. Therefore, when a problem exists, the roots can fix it together with cognitive intelligence instead of a lone root struggling to solve its own problem. “Applying the notion of swarm intelligence to plants, and not just to animals,” Krause (another scientist) says, “is interesting in the sense that swarm intelligence might provide a drive for group living in organismal life in general.”

Baluška believes the best evidence of swarm intelligence comes from the roots’ ability to bombard areas high in nutrients. Roots also swarm areas with water. Roots from the same plant compete with roots from other plants for these nutrients, and therefore it would make sense for roots to have root intelligence so the roots of the same plant could help each other.

 
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/67424/title/Rooting_for_swarm_intelligence_in_plants

posted for N. Carpenter

Thought for Food: Imagining Food Consumption Reduces Actual Consumption Review by Henry Palermo

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101209141134.htm

          According to a Carnegie Mellon study, imagining the food you crave is the best way to stay healthy during the holiday season. The study says that when you imagine eating a certain food you are more apt to avoid consuming it. The professors from CMU determined that people were eating less of the imagined food due to a mixture of neural machinery and the habituation that results from people’s thoughts. They came to this conclusion after testing people who had been thinking about a varied number of M&M’s (33, 30, and 3) and the people who were thinking about the 30 M&M’s seemed less apt When searching for an article I thought that this one was a good one to choose because people always seem to have concerns for how much weight they are going to gain over the holiday season, so I chose this in order to give a possible solution to people’s holiday eating habits.

          The biggest disappointment of the article for me was that although the tests they used for this experiment were described that was really the only proof presented to the reader. This lack of evidence led to my conclusion that although the experiment showed people had a tendency to not consumer M&M’s after thinking of the candy. I was more than skeptical about this experiment because I’ve recalled times where a food has been on my mind and I feel like I can’t settle until I stuff myself with that certain type of food. Other than that one flaw I didn’t really have any other conundrums from this article.

          I picked this article because during this time of year people become so concerned about how much they eat and I figured that giving a possible solution to this issue would be helpful to more than just our class but also the extended reach of the classroom. I thought that the article was very informative and came around at just the right time of year with the holidays around the corner. Even though I may have some reservations about the validity of this experiment I still thought that it was very interesting and was worth me looking into.

Using Waste, Swedish City Cuts its Fossil Fuel Use

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/science/earth/11fossil.html

          Kristianstad, a town in Sweden, vowed a decade ago to stop using fossil fuels. It was a big goal, but the city’s population of 80000 uses no gas or oil to heat houses during the winters. While the people have installed solar panels and wind turbines, it generates energy mostly from an assortment of ingredients, like potato peels, stale cookies, and pig intestines. An old plant takes these items and turns them into a form of methane called biogas. The gas is burned to create heat or electricity, and can be refined for use as car fuel. Over the past several years, European countries have relied more on renewable energy, mostly because of fossil fuels are expensive and overuse of fossil fuels leads to taxation. However, Kristianstad has reduced its fossil fuel use by a quarter. Biogas systems are rare in the United States, with only 151 biomass digesters that only use manure. These systems have been limited due to high costs and little financing. However, a number of companies are considering investment, and two California companies filed for permission to turn organic waste into biogas. The costs for the Swedish plants were substantial at first, but the payback has been significant due to the fact that biogas is less expensive to run and creates jobs for people. Kristianstad is now hoping that by 2020, local emissions will go down by 40 percent, which would eliminate emissions completely. They are also trying to build more biogas filling stations.

          I chose this article because fossil fuels are becoming harder to find and use, and using biogas may be a way of delaying or preventing the loss of fossil fuels. If biogas becomes more widely used, Kristianstad will become known as the town that first used biogas.

          Overall, this article was well written, but it had a few flaws. The explanation of “district heating” was confusing and unnecessary, as it was worded in a way that was unclear. I enjoyed this article and hope to learn more about biogas. This technology may become more widespread and useful in the future.

Rosenthal, Elisabeth. "Using Waste, Swedish City Cuts Its Fossil Fuel Use." NY Times 10 Dec. 2010. NY Times. 10 Dec. 2010. Web. 11 Dec. 2010. .

“This Is Your Brain on Metaphors”

            In his article “This Is Your Brain on Metaphors”, Robert Sapolsky explains the effect metaphors have on the brain and how they can twist our reality. He begins by explaining the basics of neurology: that electrical messages are carried throughout our brain and nervous system by particles called neurons. While the human has the same neurons as most other living organisms (same electrical properties, many of the same neurotransmitters, and the same protein channels that allow ions to flow in and out), we have billions more. Over the time we have evolved, our brains have increased in capacity and neuron count. However, we have not developed new “chambers” for storing and processing information, which is why, Sapolsky believes, we have a hard time differentiating between reality and ideals or metaphors. To explain his theory, Sapolsky concentrates on one “chamber” of the brain in particular; the insula. This area of the brain is responsible for processing both physical and psychic feeling. So if you were to smell hot sauce (and let’s say you don’t like hot sauce), then the insula would formulate a feeling of disgust. The same thing happens if you see hot sauce, taste hot sauce, or even think about hot sauce. When humans developed morals and ethics, those feelings were not put into a new “chamber” but instead were packed into the insula. So if one were to read a story about slavery in the 1700’s they would feel (in most cases) disgusted. Our feelings of disgust, pride, anger, etc. are therefore based solely on the part of the brain in which they are processed (the insula). The same can be said for pain, which we know is both physical and psychic from experience, and is processed by neurotransmitters called Substance P, located in the anterior cingulated (AC). The pain you feel when you are punched is directly related to the indirect pain you feel when you witness loved one being hurt. Sapolsky mentions numerous tests that have been conducted regarding this theory. For example, when subjects were made to hold a stack of heavy books and told to give their opinions on their peers, they judged without congenial interest. However, subjects the were given a cup of warm coffee to hold gave kind, friendly profiles of their peers. While these circumstances may not dictate our overall decisions and opinions, Sapolsky believes they do play a major role.

          This article presents a theory that can only be proven scientifically by neurologists who must have a comprehensive understanding of chemistry. Neurology is a theoretical/factual stem from chemistry in that the conclusions drawn from research in this field are often based on the chemical makeup of the human brain. While therapists and psychologists set the foreground into the study of the brain, only using chemistry and biology will neurologists be able to factually understand the most complex component to human anatomy and behavior; the brain.

          I enjoy learning about neurology because it explains how we come about our opinions, thoughts, and theories. Sapolsky also explained the linguistic aspect of the brain, which was composed of nuanced observations. He stated that humans have the ability to distinguish what we see/read from what is actually being said. One of his examples was of Russian composer Tchaikovsky and his music rendition of Napoleon being defeated outside of Moscow. While we can relate this jumble of noise to an event in history, we also understand that “Napoleon” relates not just to a man on a horse, but thousands of starved soldiers fighting in the cold, far from home (or more depending on how much one knows). I found these observations to be, although obvious, nonetheless, very interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Ilyich_Tchaikovsky

posted for L. Connors

“How Many Stars? Three Times as Many as we thought, Report Says”

          This Wednesday, scientists reported that the number of stars in the universe has been way under counted. They recently estimated there to be three times as many stars in the universe than people had previously thought.  The starts being under counted were a bunch of cool, dim dwarf stars in certain galaxies. “It’s very problematic,” said Pieter Van Dokkum, referring to the facts that this led to the misunderstanding of how galaxies formed and grew over the eons. Astronomers are not actually able to count the number of dwarf stars, which have masses less than a third of the sun in galaxies outside of the milky way. Instead, the astronomers counted the brighter sun-like stars and were able to assume that there were about 100 unseen dwarfs for each larger sun-like star.

          

            I chose this article because I found it to have a lot of interesting information. People don’t usually doubt astronomers and scientists but this article proves that they do make major mistake. They miscounted the number of stars by a huge number which I found to be both astounding and ridiculous.

             

            The author did a very nice job writing this article. Although I really enjoyed reading this, I found some of the information to be pointless. For instance, some of the specific statistics I did not think were needed. Also, I would of liked to know what led the scientists to discover the numerous undiscovered starts in the universe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/science/space/02star.html?ref=science

"Food Security Wanes as World Warms"

Claudia Nagy 12-2-10
Chem II Honors


Raloff, Janet. "Food Security Wanes as World Warms" ScienceNews. 12-1-10. 12-2-10



In this article Raloff explains that as global warming increases, food security rapidly declines. In recent years, it has been a universal goal for harmful green house gases to be reduced, however, since 2009, the number has only decreased by 1.3%, the equivalent of four days of emissions. As the temperature climbs, farmers have more difficulty adapting to the climate changes, resulting in food shortages, riots, and price increases by "five to ten fold." Russia, the world's 4th leading cereal producer sold 17 million metric tons throughout the world in 2009, yet this year will only be exporting 4 million metric tons. Such shortages are predicted to increase the cost of food imports by more than 11% than in 2009, and will affect low-income food-importing countries the most. Because of global temperature change, the prices of staple items will continue to rise, and the number of people who are malnourished will climb exponentially.
I chose this article because I recently read a New York Times article detailing how the FDA has recently decided to more closely monitor food safety, as thousands of people suffered from illnesses contracted from eating vitiated eggs, spinach, or meat products earlier this year, because the FDA has been spending more time regulating pharmaceuticals, neglecting the "Food" in "Food & Drug Administration." "Food Security Wanes as World Warms" is an important article to society because it adds another perspective as to how the food industry today is too big and too reliant on climates that have recently turned too capricious for farmers to handle. It is ironic, however that as food regulation and safety procedures are increased, the quantity of food to regulate is becoming more scarce.
Though the article is well written, it is plenary of some gratuitous facts. There are copious statistics, and predictions that seem to serve only as scare tactics to readers. The article neglects to include the numerous technological advancements from recent years that may help reduce green house gases in greater quantities than ever before, or how more countries are moving to sustainable energy than ever before. Including these details may have given readers a more optimistic view of a foreboding topic.