Gene for poor science journalism discovered
Pitch perfect.
A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.
Tag Archives: science
America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead
America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead
Interesting piece about the evidence that lead exposure and crime reates are highly correlated. I recommend reading it. Although I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being taken for a ride.
“Are you also opposed to the wheel because because it is marketed by the big auto companies?”
“Are you also opposed to the wheel because because it is marketed by the big auto companies?”
Mark Lynas:
I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.
As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.
So I guess you’ll be wondering – what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.
Really great piece.
Why You Won’t Be the Person You Expect to Be
Why You Won’t Be the Person You Expect to Be
John Tierney, the New York Times:
When we remember our past selves, they seem quite different. We know how much our personalities and tastes have changed over the years. But when we look ahead, somehow we expect ourselves to stay the same, a team of psychologists said Thursday, describing research they conducted of people’s self-perceptions.
They called this phenomenon the “end of history illusion,” in which people tend to “underestimate how much they will change in the future.” According to their research, which involved more than 19,000 people ranging in age from 18 to 68, the illusion persists from teenage years into retirement.
Approval for gene-modified salmon spawns controversy
Approval for gene-modified salmon spawns controversy
Sara Reardon, New Scientist:
Fast-growing salmon have cleared another hurdle in an upstream battle to be the first genetically modified animal approved for human consumption. After a long and possibly politically motivated delay, federal regulators have released preliminary documents declaring the fish safe to eat and environmentally harmless.
Their safety precautions seem extensive but it’s also the case that living things have an intense, deep-seated need to reproduce. We’ll see what happens.
Mysterious Itch Cells Found
Tia Ghose, LiveScience:
Certain nerve cells are specialized to detect itchy sensations, and those receptors don’t detect painful sensations, according to a new study.
The finding, published Dec. 23 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, helps resolve a long-standing debate over whether itchiness is just a weird form of pain. Additionally, now that they have pinpointed the responsible nerve fibers, researchers could silence those nerves to develop better anti-itch treatments, said Ethan Lerner, a neuroscientist at Harvard University who was not involved in the study.
Bodies are weird.
Thorium
Peter Reinhardt:
About a century ago, an adventurous Scandinavian discovered the first black thorium rock on a remote island in the Norwegian Sea. Now thorium is slowly heating up debates about the future of nuclear power, energy independence, and global warming.
I wanted to get to the bottom of this surge in nuclear enthusiasm, and I was inspired by Peter Thiel’s lecture on energy markets. This post encapsulates the surprising things I learned about thorium and nuclear reactors.
Great piece.
Data teleportation: The quantum space race
Data teleportation: The quantum space race
Great profile piece from Zeeya Merali published in Nature:
Three years ago, Jian-Wei Pan brought a bit of Star Trek to the Great Wall of China. From a site near the base of the wall in the hills north of Beijing, he and his team of physicists from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei aimed a laser at a detector on a rooftop 16 kilometres away, then used the quantum properties of the laser’s photons to ‘teleport’ information across the intervening space. At the time, it was a world distance record for quantum teleportation, and a major step towards the team’s ultimate aim of teleporting photons to a satellite.
The piece details both Pan and also his relationship with frenemy Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna. Great human story and also the science is fucking mindblowing holy shit.
The Embedded Dangers of Untested Stem Cell Cosmetics
The Embedded Dangers of Untested Stem Cell Cosmetics
Ferris Jabr, Scientific American:
When cosmetic surgeon Allan Wu first heard the woman’s complaint, he wondered if she was imagining things or making it up. A resident of Los Angeles in her late sixties, she explained that she could not open her right eye without considerable pain and that every time she forced it open, she heard a strange click—a sharp sound, like a tiny castanet snapping shut. After examining her in person at The Morrow Institute in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Wu could see that something was wrong: Her eyelid drooped stubbornly, and the area around her eye was somewhat swollen. Six and a half hours of surgery later, he and his colleagues had dug out small chunks of bone from the woman’s eyelid and tissue surrounding her eye, which was scratched but largely intact. The clicks she heard were the bone fragments grinding against one another.
Turns out she had an unapproved stem cell treatment. This is some serious William Gibson shit — sounds like something that would happen in the darkened alleyways of Chiba City.
IBM creates first cheap, commercially viable, electronic-photonic integrated chip
IBM creates first cheap, commercially viable, electronic-photonic integrated chip
Sebastian Anthony, writing for ExtremeTech:
There are two key breakthroughs here. First, IBM has managed to build a monolithic silicon chip that integrates both electrical (transistors, capacitors, resistors) and optical (modulators, photodetectors, waveguides) components. Monolithic means that the entire chip is fabricated from a single crystal of silicon, on a single production line; i.e. the optical components are produced at the same time as the electrical components, using the same process. There aren’t two separate regions on the chip that each deal with different signals; the optical and electrical components are all mixed up together to form an integrated nanophotonic circuit.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, IBM has manufactured these chips on its 90nm SOI process — the same process that was used to produce the original Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii CPUs. According to Solomon Assefa, a nanophotonics scientist at IBM Research who worked on this breakthrough, this was a very difficult step. It’s one thing to produce a nanophotonic device in a standalone laboratory environment — but another thing entirely to finagle an existing, commercial 90nm process into creating something it was never designed to do. It sounds like IBM spent most of the last two years trying to get it to work.
This could potentially be a really big deal. The power and heat profiles of optical systems are different from those of electrical systems.