TED Talk by Michael Nielsen: Open Science

The Future of Science

Read an essay on The Future of Science by Michael Nielsen.

TED: Light Buld as Data Transmitter

TED: Flying robot-bird

TED: The Math of Cities and Corporations

TED: The ethics of bio-engineering

Is the world getting crazier with bio-technology. Judge for yourself...

Facts on fasting for health...

There has been much contention in the scientific field about whether or not fasting is beneficial to one's health. Fasting is an integral part of many of the major religions including Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Many are dubious as to whether the physiological effects are as beneficial as the spiritual promoted by these religions. There is a significant community of alternative healers who believe that fasting can do wonders for the human body. This paper will look at the arguments presented by these healers in an attempt to raise awareness of the possible physiological benefits that may result from fasting.

Fasting technically commences within the first twelve to twenty-four hours of the fast. A fast does not chemically begin until the carbohydrate stores in the body begin to be used as an energy source. The fast will continue as long as fat and carbohydrate stores are used for energy, as opposed to protein stores. Once protein stores begin to be depleted for energy (resulting in loss of muscle mass) a person is technically starving.

The benefits of fasting must be preceded by a look at the body's progression when deprived of food. Due to the lack of incoming energy, the body must turn to its own resources, a function called autolysis. Autolysis is the breaking down of fat stores in the body in order to produce energy. The liver is in charge of converting the fats into a chemical called a ketone body, "the metabolic substances acetoacetic acid and beta-hydroxybutyric acid", and then distributing these bodies throughout the body via the blood stream. "When this fat utilization occurs, free fatty acids are released into the blood stream and are used by the liver for energy." The less one eats, the more the body turns to these stored fats and creates these ketone bodies, the accumulation of which is referred to as ketosis.

Detoxification is the foremost argument presented by advocates of fasting. "Detoxification is a normal body process of eliminating or neutralizing toxins through the colon, liver, kidneys, lungs, lymph glands, and skin." This process is precipitated by fasting because when food is no longer entering the body, the body turns to fat reserves for energy. "Human fat is valued at 3,500 calories per pound," a number that would lead one to believe that surviving on one pound of fat every day would provide a body with enough energy to function normally. These fat reserves were created when excess glucose and carbohydrates were not used for energy or growth, not excreted, and therefore converted into fat. When the fat reserves are used for energy during a fast, it releases the chemicals from the fatty acids into the system which are then eliminated through the aforementioned organs. Chemicals not found in food but absorbed from one's environment, such as DDT, are also stored in fat reserves that may be released during a fast. One fasting advocate tested his own urine, feces and sweat during an extended fast and found traces of DDT in each.

A second prescribed benefit of fasting is the healing process that begins in the body during a fast. During a fast energy is diverted away from the digestive system due to its lack of use and towards the metabolism and immune system. The healing process during a fast is precipitated by the body's search for energy sources. Abnormal growths within the body, tumors and the like, do not have the full support of the body's supplies and therefore are more susceptible to autolysis. Furthermore, "production of protein for replacement of damaged cells (protein synthesis) occurs more efficiently because fewer 'mistakes' are made by the DNA/RNA genetic controls which govern this process." A higher efficiency in protein synthesis results in healthier cells, tissues and organs. This is one reason that animals stop eating when they are wounded, and why humans lose hunger during influenza. Hunger has been proven absent in illnesses such as gastritis, tonsillitis and colds. Therefore, when one is fasting, the person is consciously diverting energy from the digestive system to the immune system.

In addition, there is a reduction in core body temperature. This is a direct result of the slower metabolic rate and general bodily functions. Following a drop in blood sugar level and using the reserves of glucose found in liver glycogen, the basal metabolic rate (BMR) is reduced in order to conserve as much energy within the body as can be provided. Growth hormones are also released during a fast, due to the greater efficiency in hormone production.

Finally, the most scientifically proven advantage to fasting is the feeling of rejuvenation and extended life expectancy. Part of this phenomenon is caused by a number of the benefits mentioned above. A slower metabolic rate, more efficient protein production, an improved immune system, and the increased production of hormones contributes to this long-term benefit of fasting. In addition to the Human Growth Hormone that is released more frequently during a fast, an anti-aging hormone is also produced more efficiently. "The only reliable way to extend the lifespan of a mammal is under-nutrition without malnutrition." A study was performed on earthworms that demonstrated the extension of life due to fasting. The experiment was performed in the 1930s by isolating one worm and putting it on a cycle of fasting and feeding. The isolated worm outlasted its relatives by 19 generations, while still maintaining its youthful physiological traits. The worm was able to survive on its own tissue for months. Once the size of the worm began to decrease, the scientists would resume feeding it at which point it showed great vigor and energy. "The life-span extension of these worms was the equivalent of keeping a man alive for 600 to 700 years."

In conclusion, it seems that there are many reasons to consider fasting as a benefit to one's health. The body rids itself of the toxins that have built up in our fat stores throughout the years. The body heals itself, repairs all the damaged organs during a fast. And finally there is good evidence to show that regulated fasting contributes to longer life. However, many doctors warn against fasting for extended periods of time without supervision. There are still many doctors today who deny all of these points and claim that fasting is detrimental to one's health and have evidence to back their statements. The idea of depriving a body of what society has come to view as so essential to our survival in order to heal continues to be a topic of controversy.

- The article above is written by Will Caroll, Bryn Mawr College.

Jill Taylor's stroke of insight

Paul Dirac's Quote on Science and Poetry

“In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say ... something that everybody knows already in words that nobody can understand.”

- Paul Dirac (1902–84), British winner of the Nobel Prize in physics

Manchester's Nobel Laureate Celebration

Went to the Laureate's celebration today at the University Place Lecture Hall. The 2010 physics prizes were awarded to Professors Andre Geim, 53, and Konstantin (Kostya) Novoselov, 36, the youngest to get the prize in 40 years. It was a full house at the auditorium, which seats about 1000 people. The whole atmosphere at the ceremony was both very grand but yet very humbling, because they didn't spend excessively on unnecessary things - just a simple reception at a lecture hall followed by some talks .That's it - which should be all there is to it. Don't need to spend excessively of public taxpayers' money on some grand dinner at some extravagant five star hotel ballroom.

I'm just reflecting on how things like this would be done in Malaysia, where I bet millions of taxpayers RM would be spent just to serve dinner to some Tan Sris, Datok Seris, YBs and the like. And they don't usually finish all the food, which means all this would go to waste in the bins.

The talks were given by both Laureates, dame Nancy Rothwell (UoM VC) and Lord Martin Rees of the Royal Society. Kostya seems like a very humble guy - even saying that their students are now smarter than both of them (him and Andre), although that might be meant as a joke, but still. When asked what advice he has for other academics to get the Nobel prize at age 36 (yeah right!) he doesn't really seem to have anything to say for such questions, but then simply said "for me, don't listen to any advice, just believe in yourself".

The video for this celebration at the University of Manchester is here.

TED.com: Garrett Lisi on 'theory of everything'

Some of Garrett Lisi's thoughts...

Worth a look if you're into this kind of stuff...This guy is obviously extremely famous now, partly because of having figured out the theory of everything, but also partly because of the way he choose to live his life (as a surfer dude). By far this is the most extreme in life choices I've ever heard of that one can take...

Excerpt from SEED magazine (see the whole article here):

Garrett Lisi gets it. The couch-surfing, academia-shunning theoretical physicist grasps something that, for scientists, is possibly more elusive than illuminating the complicated behavior of subatomic particles: balance in life. Don’t want to be stuck in a lab? Get out. Want to travel the world living where you please, doing research in between surfing and snowboarding? Pack your bags. Have a problem with the scholarly journal system? Publish your own papers. To say that Lisi conducts science on his own terms tells only part of the story.

When Lisi published his physics paper, “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” to an online archive last year, it created a media buzz about his lifestyle and an onslaught of support and skepticism about his model. Although the verdict is still out on whether Lisi’s theory will prove predicatively accurate, the means by which he released and vetted his research point to a larger trend in the scientific community.

Barriers to data are falling, a cross-disciplinary community of commenters is replacing journal-selected peer reviewers, and “information to the people!” is becoming the raison d’être of the science information superhighway. The movement, combined with an evolving image of the contemporary scientist, is redefining how society interacts with science.

We checked in with Lisi recently for an update on his theory, his thoughts on publishing, and his pursuit of life.

You left academia to study physics on your own. Why?
Freedom. When I got my PhD, I really loved general relativity, quantum field theory, and differential geometry, and I wanted to continue my research in these areas. But at that time the only funded research options available in these combined fields were in string theory, which was and still is the dominant research program in theoretical particle physics. I had learned a bit about string theory, and some things about it are pretty cool, but I thought string models were kind of far-fetched and probably not relevant to our universe. So I took off for Maui — the most beautiful part of the world I could find — and worked on the physics I wanted to, while squeaking by financially. Recently, research grants from small private foundations (FQXi and SubMeta) have allowed me to travel a bit and talk with other physicists, but I still spend most of my time on Maui.

...

Why did you choose not to submit your paper to a traditional peer-reviewed journal?
I think peer review is important, but the journal-operated system is severely broken. I suspected this paper would get some attention, and I chose not to support any academic journal by submitting it. Under the current system, authors (who aren’t paid) give ownership of their papers to journals that have reviewers (who aren’t paid) approve them before publishing the papers and charging exorbitant fees to view them. These reviewers don’t always do a great job, and the journals aren’t providing much value in exchange for their fees. This old system persists because academic career advancement often depends on which journals scientists can get their papers into, and it comes at a high cost — in money, time, and stress. I think a better peer-review system could evolve from reviewers with good reputations picking the papers they find interesting out of an open pool, such as the physics arXiv, and commenting on them. This is essentially what happened with my paper, which received a lot of attention from physics bloggers — it’s been an example of open, collaborative peer review.

What is the alternative to the way problems in physics are typically approached?
I don’t think there is a typical way physics is being done; there’s a great deal of variation. But there does seem to be more pressure on young researchers than there should be, especially on post-docs and new professors. Science shouldn’t be a grind to publish more papers and advance a career — we’re supposed to be doing this because we love it and find it fascinating. High-quality work and interesting projects should be valued, not just a lengthy publication record. And since science helps society, I think society should be better to scientists and support them in doing the research they want, rather than requiring them to jump through so many hoops.

American's Large Scale Effort to Promote Science and Math Education

Original article on NYTimes: White House Pushes Science and Education.

To improve science and mathematics education for American children, the White House is recruiting Elmo and Big Bird, video game programmers and thousands of scientists.

President Obama will announce a campaign Monday to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, especially in middle and high school, to pursue science, technology, engineering and math, officials say.

The campaign, called Educate to Innovate, will focus mainly on activities outside the classroom. For example, Discovery Communications has promised to use two hours of the afternoon schedule on its Science Channel cable network for commercial-free programming geared toward middle school students.

Science and engineering societies are promising to provide volunteers to work with students in the classroom, culminating in a National Lab Day in May.

The MacArthur Foundation and technology industry organizations are giving out prizes in a contest to develop video games that teach science and math.

“The different sectors are responding to the president’s call for all hands on deck,” John P. Holdren, the White House science adviser, said in an interview.

The other parts of the campaign include a two-year focus on science on “Sesame Street,” the venerable public television children’s show, and a Web site, connectamillionminds.com, set up by Time Warner Cable, that provides a searchable directory of local science activities. The cable system will contribute television time and advertising to promote the site.

The White House has also recruited Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space, and corporate executives like Craig R. Barrett, a former chairman of Intel, and Ursula M. Burns, chief executive of Xerox, to champion the cause of science and math education to corporations and philanthropists.

Dr. Ride said their role would be identifying successful programs and then connecting financing sources to spread the successes nationally. “The need is funding,” she said. “There is a lot of corporate interest and foundation interest in this issue.”

Administration officials say that the breadth of participation in Educate to Innovate is wider than in previous efforts, which have failed to produce a perceptible rise in test scores or in most students’ perceptions of math and science. In international comparison exams, American students have long lagged behind those in much of Asia and Europe.

But some education experts said the initiatives did little to address some core issues: improving the quality of teachers and the curriculum.

“I think a lot of this is good, but it is missing more than half of what needs to be done,” said Mark S. Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research organization in Washington. “It has nothing to do with the day-to-day teaching,” said Dr. Schneider, who was the commissioner of education statistics at the Department of Education from 2005 to 2008.

Dr. Holdren said the initiatives, which are financed almost entirely by the participating companies and foundations and not the government, complement the Race to the Top program of the Department of Education, which will dispense $4.35 billion in stimulus financing to states for innovative education programs. The Race to the Top rules give extra points to applications that emphasize science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the so-called STEM subjects.

Continue reading the article at NYTimes.

A good site to learn about acoustics...

Here's a good website if you want to learn about acoustics (how sound travels, interact, etc) complete with animations. Plus other animations on other things related to physics.

http://paws.kettering.edu/~drussell/demos.html

Something about neuroscience...

15 cigarette smokes equal to 1 DNA mutation

(Original article: Guardian.co.uk)

Scientists have reconstructed the biological history of two types of cancer in a genetic tour de force that promises to transform medical treatment of the disease.

The feat, a world first, lays bare every genetic mutation the patients have acquired over their lifetimes that eventually caused healthy cells in their bodies to turn into tumours.

The procedure gives doctors a profound insight into the biological causes of a patient's cancer and marks a major milestone in progress towards personalised anticancer therapies and strategies to prevent the disease.

"This is a really fundamental moment in the history of cancer research. We have never seen cancer revealed in this way before," said Mike Stratton, a co-leader of the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge.

The researchers took diseased cells from a 45-year-old man with a type of skin cancer called malignant melanoma, and from a 55-year-old man with small cell lung cancer. They then used advanced genetic sequencing machines to read the full genomes of both the cancer cells and healthy tissues taken from the same patients.

By comparing the genetic makeup of the diseased and healthy cells, the scientists created catalogues of all the mutations found only in the cancerous tissues. Most of these genetic glitches are harmless, but every once in a while a mutation causes major damage that pushes a cell closer to becoming cancerous.

The scientists focused on skin and lung cancer because the environmental causes are well known. Most melanomas are triggered by overexposure to ultraviolet rays in sunlight as a child, while almost all small cell lung cancer is caused by smoking.

In the case of the lung cancer patient, scientists discovered 23,000 mutations that were exclusive to the diseased cells. Almost all were caused by the 60 or so chemicals in cigarette smoke that stick to DNA and deform it. "We can say that one mutation is fixed in the genome for every 15 cigarettes smoked," said Peter Campbell, who led the lung cancer part of the study. "That is frightening because many people smoke a packet a day."

Lung cancer accounts for one in seven deaths in the UK and is almost untreatable. Fewer than 10% of patients in the UK survive more than five years after being diagnosed. The risk of developing the disease falls dramatically in smokers who have quit for more than 10 years.

Genetic sequencing of the skin cancer cells revealed 33,000 mutations caused by exposure to direct sunlight.

Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes that carry all of our genetic material in the form of three billion pairs of letters. In both patients, scientists saw a variety of mutations. The most common were point mutations, which flip one letter of the genetic code into another. More complex mutations involved missing or extra sequences of DNA. Occasionally, chromosomes had broken apart or fused together in the wrong way.

"It's like doing archaeological excavation. You've got traces and imprints of all these processes that have been operative for decades before the cancer arose," said Stratton. The work is reported in two studies published in the journal Nature.

The rapid advance of genetic technology is likley to make the technique a routine procedure for cancer patients within 10 years. The Sanger Institute scientists costed the procedure at $100,000 per person a few months ago, but they expect that to fall to $20,000 in the next 18 months.

"In the long term, every cancer patient will have this done in a clinically relevant timeframe, so in the six weeks it takes to be seen, biopsied and taken into the clinic," said Stratton.

The research is the first to emerge from a global consortium that is analysing the genetic makeup of 50 different types of cancer. The 10-year project will help cancer specialists unravel the particular mutations that drive each variety of tumour.

By understanding the genetic flaws behind common cancers, scientists hope to develop more powerful and precise anti-cancer drugs. In the near term, researchers expect to develop blood tests that pick up signs that a cancer is returning in patients who have already had surgery or chemotherapy.

Water's Strange Bulk Properties

ScienceDaily (Aug. 12, 2009) — Water is familiar to everyone—it shapes our bodies and our planet. But despite this abundance, the molecular structure of water has remained a mystery, with the substance exhibiting many strange properties that are still poorly understood. Recent work at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and several universities in Sweden and Japan, however, is shedding new light on water's molecular idiosyncrasies, offering insight into its strange bulk properties.

In all, water exhibits 66 known anomalies, including a strangely varying density, large heat capacity and high surface tension. Contrary to other "normal" liquids, which become denser as they get colder, water reaches its maximum density at about 4 degrees Celsius. Above and below this temperature, water is less dense; this is why, for example, lakes freeze from the surface down. Water also has an unusually large capacity to store heat, which stabilizes the temperature of the oceans, and a high surface tension, which allows insects to walk on water, droplets to form and trees to transport water to great heights.

"Understanding these anomalies is very important because water is the ultimate basis for our existence: no water, no life," said SLAC scientist Anders Nilsson, who is leading the experimental efforts. "Our work helps explain these anomalies on the molecular level at temperatures which are relevant to life."

More of this at ScienceDaily.com.

Supercontinent by Ted Nield

Just finished reading this book. Picked it up in a bookstore after the earthquake in Italy April 2009.

Great book to get you started to know about everything you want to know about how the earth evolves over thousands, millions, billions of years. Nield describes the evolution of the earth from the beginning, about 4.7 billion years ago. How geologists and anthropologists interpret fossil, sedimentary and other evidences to see what has happened in the past. How the continents were built and evolved into different formations over millions of years. How oceans and mountains are built over thousands of years in the same processes that cause earthquakes and tsunamis and volcanoes.

Evidences on early life suggests that simple single-celled life started around 4.4 billion years ago, but did not evolve into complex life until about half a billion years ago. Dominant life before this time, known as the Precambrian time, were mostly algae-like forms living for about a billion years or so. But changes in the continent distribution from separated islands into one large mass called Rodinia situated in the equator changed the earth atmosphere and transformed earth into a large snowball of ice.

Here's more on this book on Amazon:

To understand continental drift and plate tectonics, the shifting and collisions that make and unmake continents, requires a long view. The Earth, after all, is 4.6 billion years old. This book extends our vision to take in the greatest geological cycle of all—one so vast that our species will probably be extinct long before the current one ends in about 250 million years. And yet this cycle, the grandest pattern in Nature, may well be the fundamental reason our species—or any complex life at all—exists.

This book explores the Supercontinent Cycle from scientists' earliest inkling of the phenomenon to the geological discoveries of today—and from the most recent fusing of all of Earth's landmasses, Pangaea, on which dinosaurs evolved, to the next. Chronicling a 500-million-year cycle, Ted Nield introduces readers to some of the most exciting science of our time. He describes how, long before plate tectonics were understood, geologists first guessed at these vanishing landmasses and came to appreciate the significance of the fusing and fragmenting of supercontinents.

He also uses the story of the supercontinents to consider how scientific ideas develop, and how they sometimes escape the confines of science. Nield takes the example of the recent Indian Ocean tsunami to explain how the whole endeavor of science is itself a supercontinent, whose usefulness in saving human lives, and life on Earth, depends crucially on a freedom to explore the unknown.

He ended the book with a description on the Indonesian earthquake 26 December 2004 that created the tsunami around the Indian ocean.

Book: Evolution - A theory in crisis

Currently reading this book now, by a molecular biologist Michael Denton. Really interested to know what the fuss is about on the Darwin theory of evolution. It's like this single theory has made and is making so many people atheists more than any other things in life.

I do believe that evolution works to a certain extent to produce genetic variations at small and large scales (this is now done easily on laboratory environments). But I don't think that the Theory of Evolution intrinsically applies that the universe has no Creator. It's just that many people who think so desperately wants to interpret the theory as such, that everything naturally comes about and changes gradually without any need to be created or even controlled.

I'll add more on this later...

Cooking With Sound: Stove Converts Heat Into Electricity

ScienceDaily (July 20, 2009) — A low-cost generator with the potential to transform lives in the world's poorest communities is now being tested across the UK and in Nepal. The Score project, led by The University of Nottingham, is developing a bio-mass burning cooking stove which also converts heat into acoustic energy and then into electricity, all in one unit.

The £2 million Score project (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity) brings together experts from across the world to develop the biomass-powered generator. By developing an affordable, versatile domestic appliance Score aims to address the energy needs of rural communities in Africa and Asia, where access to power is extremely limited.

Researchers in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Nottingham are working on the generator's Linear Alternator — the part which turns the sound energy into electricity. The system uses special configurations of magnets which generate electrical energy from sound. Computer simulations of the linear alternator have proved successful, and test models are currently being constructed in the department's workshops.

Nottingham researchers are working with Dai-ichi, one of Malaysia's largest loudspeaker manufacturers, to bring down production costs through good design practice. Though the Score unit does not physically resemble the average loudspeaker, it is compatible with the Dai-ichi manufacturing process.

More on this at ScienceDaily.com.