Science News

« Previous Entries

Millions of lawyers, yet not many are astronomers, too

You have to wonder, given the millions of lawyers in the civilized world (maybe millions just in the U.S.?), how many of them are recognized not only for their legal work — but for their accomplishments in astronomy, too?

I know a guy named Richard Hammar who has made his mark in the legal world, by authoring some groundbreaking, authoritative books on law and the Church, and has cast his name into the night sky for award-winning astronomical photography. (You can see one of his pictures of a comet at the Sky and Telescope website; he’s also had a galaxy photo honored as a NASA “Astronomy Picture of the Day.”)

So how many eager lawyer wannabes do you think expect to find a career as part-time astronomers when they do their lsat prep studies and look forward to law school??

Attorney/Astronomer Hammar spoke many years ago to a class I was teaching. He told the students that too many undergrads looking at law school focus their major studies on 1) political science, and, 2) history. At the time, he suggested the best undergrad prep work to handle law school and the legal profession would be an undergrad emphasis on 1) political science, and, 2) English or communications. He said his experience was that communicating effectively in writing, as well as experience in public speaking, was invaluable for any would-be attorney.

I wonder these days whether he includes advice to purchase a telescope and good camera and to start looking to the night skies? Good work, Rich!

Are alternative power sources starting to make sense yet?

Are the many alternative energy and power sources out there that scientists and politicians have been preaching about starting to make sense yet? More importantly, are they any more practical and usable than they were, say, 10 years ago? Are the next great thing in batteries or wind turbines or even nuclear power plants on the horizon yet?

As with most answers to complex questions, you could say both “yes” and “no.” The nature of mankind’s power needs and energy technology is too complex to find quick, easy solutions.

I have a son who’s a research scientist. I’ve never fully understood what he does for a living, but I do know that some of the government-funded-private-industry research he’s involved in has to do with “green” energy technologies, including the quest for better batteries to put in vehicles. To make a long story short, he says upcoming battery technology may involve such things as making storage batteries out of cloth or thin plastic substances that could be used directly in the manufacture vehicle bodies and motors. Think about that one!

He, as with any scientists I’ve spoken with or heard about, agrees that technology has a long, long way to go if we’re going to replace dependence on fossil fuels, whether we’re talking about vehicles or power plants.

We may some day be able to drive across country and light our homes without any reliance on fossil fuels. But that “some day” probably is a few decades away at the earliest. Good to know we’re making the journey, though.

Now I’ve heard it all: Injection may someday cure phobias

Now I’ve heard it all, I think. I just read an article that researchers in Japan are trying injections into the brain of goldfish that seem to cure their phobias.

Okay, so at this stage they’re just experimenting on tiny-brained goldfish. But if that works and they move up the animal scale and eventually find it works on humans — wow!

The substance the researchers inject is a very common anesthetic used in humans, lidocaine. They trained the fish to react with fear to a bright light. They did the injection about half an hour before using the bright light on the fear-conditioned goldfish. The goldfish showed absolutely no reaction to the light.

All pretty preliminary research, sure. But just think about ramifications of this if they develop such injections for humans. They say one of the most common, strongest phobias people experience is public speaking anxiety. (Personally, I could easily and calmly speak to a crows of hundreds of thousands. But I quake in fear and threaten to crawl under the bed and hide during thunderstorms.) Maybe the day will come when you, John Q. Citizen, can get a simple shot in the brain (or arm? or butt?) that will turn you into a golden-tongued orator who can sway millions.

Or, maybe not.

Speaking of addictions — vaccine could solve cocaine addictions

I see from a recent story, Baylor University is testing a vaccine which may cause people to lose interest in cocaine. Some reports have said it only works well with people who really want to quit, while others who try the vaccine simply try more cocaine to feed their addiction.

The big news is what this does for the whole concept of addiction treatment. Usual methods of treating addictions rely on psychological/psychiatric counseling, possibly using a “12-Step” program and supplemented with some psychiatric drugs. If this vaccine proves effective and gains FDA approval — BAM! The whole method of treating cocaine addiction might come down to getting a shot.

The whole area may prove more fascinating as time goes on, given the possibilities of genetic research and treatment. Who knows what the future holds for treating addictions?

Technorati Tags: , ,

If you haven’t seen Pausch’s ‘Last Lecture’ — don’t wait another minute

If you haven’t yet seen the YouTube video of Prof. Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” — don’t wait another minute. I’ve put it in this post so you don’t even need to locate it on YouTube. You can watch it right here.

Prof. Pausch was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and told he had only 3-6 months left to live shortly before he did this video as part of a “Last Lecture” program at the university. As it turns out, he lived almost a year after the lecture — and you’ll discover watching this video that he REALLY knew how to live.

On a personal note, my wife and I watched this hour-and-a-quarter-long video for the first time just this afternoon. We procrastinated even though we’ve had more than one friend and family member tell us it was truly “life changing” for them. I don’t know if it was exactly life changing for us — but it was one of those events that will have a lasting impact on me and the way I approach life in general.

But don’t waste your time listening to me explain what’s going on, get started with the video and find all that out for yourself:

What’s your computer of choice? Laptop? Desktop? Cell phone? Netbook?

What’s your computer of choice? Do you use mainly a laptop or a desktop? Or do you rely on your cell phone and wireless service for all your “computer” needs? Are you far more up to speed than I — probably! — and rely on one of the “netbooks” mini-computers coming on the market?

I confess technology has gotten way past me on this one. My son purchased a new laptop a few months ago, a Sony Vaio, and got a really good deal on his new machine. (His previous computer was a very old desktop he gave to a friend and one ancient, almost non-functioning laptop I gave him when I replaced it with a newer model.) And just today, I read a review that Sony “shocked” the technology world when it unveiled a new “VAIO P” netbook small enough to easily fit in a jacket pocket.

Netbooks are a new frontier for me. I would love to see how they develop in the next couple of years. It would be wonderful — my Old Guy eyesight permitting — to make my next business computer something small enough to fit in a pocket. When I was a Young Guy, the now old-fashioned PDAs were just coming into vogue. Now look what technology has done. The PDAs appear to be joining the dinosaurs and technology has “lapped” me once again in the race of life.

So — what’s your cutting edge computing solution? Laptop? Desktop? Cell phone? Or, here’s that term again, netbook?

Does it REALLY make sense to use food products for alternative fuels?

A year or two ago, everyone where I live was excited about the prospects of a plant opening nearby to produce ethanol fuel from corn. Ethanol, as I’m sure you know, is a type of alcohol created from “biomass” products (currently, most often corn and corn byproducts) then blended with gasoline. The theory is that such fuel will reduce consumption of crude oil by reducing the amount of actual gasoline in the fuel we use in our cars, mopeds, motorcycles, or whatever.

The theory, at least in the case of our still-not-started production plant, was a bad one. Builders trying to start the ethanol plant quickly ran into opposition. I don’t know all the details, but it had to do with the enormous drain on local communities’ water table and water supplies to run the plant.

It also had to do with cattle farmers, chicken farmers, and other animal farmers who didn’t like the way feed prices would skyrocket if corn and corn byproducts were diverted to the ethanol plant. Turns out there are lots of cattle supplies needed to raise a calf and bring it to market — and corn and other feed grains are high up on the list.

After all that fuss over the nearby ethanol plant, I had a couple of conversations with my son the engineer. (NOT a specialist in environmental sciences specifically, but very well informed nonetheless.) He explained that ethanol not only is very hard to produce in quantity, and hence expensive, but it really is a very poor-mileage fuel when used to power a gasoline engine in a car.

Having said all that, I would ask this: Does it REALLY make sense to use food products for alternative fuels? I would think finding ways to turn various weeds that flourish nationwide and threaten food crops makes more sense.

Or, better yet, maybe we could take practical steps to combat gasoline consumption like 1) driving less and walking more, 2) mass transit, and, 3) reviving our once glorious nationwide rail transport and passenger systems.

As I mentioned in a post last week, ultimately oil-based energy is doomed because ultimately oil will run out. We’d best be taking conservation AND research steps to deal with it. But corn??

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Energy policies based primarily on oil are ALL ultimately flawed beyond fixing

There’s no getting around it, America (for that matter the whole world) needs a solution to the “energy crisis” we have become painfully aware of in recent months because of the high price of gasoline and the outrageous (obscene?) amounts of profit raked in by the oil companies.

I won’t get on a rant against Big Oil, but I simply must do my small bit at helping America think about a sane “energy policy,” whatever that is.

My son (he’s an engineer so very direct by nature) has put it as well as I could regarding the myriad plans for reducing oil consumption, hybrid vehicles, “clean coal” plants, and all the rest: “You know, it’s all fossil fuel and no matter what we do to cut back, conserve, drill, or not drill, it will someday run out.”

That, really, is the bottom line: Oil and coal, completely apart from any advantages or disadvantages, will some day run out. It may be 10 years, 30 years, or 100 years, but there is only a finite supply of oil in the world. Measures to formulate any energy policy based on oil are ultimately doomed. Or, to look at it another way: the best acne treatment plan in the world only covers up the blemishes if it fails to treat the underlying disease(s).

The best energy policy in the world, likewise, only covers up the problem if it fails to SERIOUSLY develop non-oil energy sources to power our vehicles, heat/cool our homes, and run our industries.

Here’s a thought, I believe, in the right direction: Hydrogen powered vehicles are not really far out of reach. At least two major automakers (BMW and Honda, I think) already make usable hydrogen powered vehicles. The challenge mostly is to provide affordable, widely available hydrogen “stations” where they can fuel up.

Wake up, folks. Don’t let any politician of any political party play “the energy card” and fool you into thinking more drilling for oil is the answer. That’s only covering up the blemish. Alternative fuel sources will always and only be the “answer” to America’s and the world’s energy future.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

World’s nations simply won’t get serious about tackling world climate problems

I remember how amazed I was as a kid to see one of the NASA launches canceled because there were storm clouds within X number of miles of the Florida launch site: If we could send people to the moon, shouldn’t we be able to launch rockets even if there were storms??

Fast forward to my adult years, and I am beginning to learn a lesson all the world needs to take more to heart: The weather, everything related to Climate Earth, is awesome and cannot be controlled — but it appears that we can do stuff as puny little human beings that isn’t HELPING the climate/weather/global warming crisis we appear to be facing.

One of the things we can do that’s very harmful, and we do it every day, is pump pollutants and so-called “greenhouse gases” (chiefly carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere, hoping somehow it will just go away and all will be well.

All is not well, and with the G8 and G5 nations — arcane labels for the world’s leading and second-leading industrialized nations — addressing such issues, things are not looking much better. You see, there’s a price attached to cleaning up the gases we release into the atmosphere that no one really wants to pay. If you’re an “industrialized” nation, you risk slowing or even shutting down your economy if you restrict greenhouse gas emissions significantly. If you’re an “emerging” industrial power, you’ll likely not get there if you restrict industry enough to make significant cuts in greenhouse emissions.

What’s it gonna be? We have two choices, it seems, in the end: 1) stifle or even cripple the economy, or, 2) boil/roast in our own pollutants and take a good deal of the world down the tubes with us.

Gee, what I wouldn’t give for a quick, easy answer to this one. But, as I often said here in the past, I’m just a guy who reads the papers. So, what are we going to do about this mess? Anyone??

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

What was the object the astronauts saw? Do they still take souvenir stuff into space?

Do astronauts still take souvenir or memorabilia stuff into space then bring it back to earth for friends, family, sponsors, etc.? Maybe that would explain the unidentified object about a foot to a foot-and-a-half long the astronauts reported floating away from the shuttle as they did their routine check for landing on Saturday.

Uh, excuse me — an unidentified flying object? Isn’t that the actual definition of a UFO??

If it were small and sparkly, you might think it perhaps ice crystals, maybe angel feathers or something. (Kidding.) Or perhaps something sparkly and shiny would be some gold chain from a family member, girlfriend, or celebrity friend of one of those celebrity astronauts. Ah, well, my age is showing now — “celebrity astronaut”? Sure, back in the 1960s astronauts were celebrities, were famous enough that the general public knew their names and some of their history. (Remember the book and movie, “The Right Stuff”?)

Nowadays, most people couldn’t name a single space shuttle astronaut. No John Glenn, no Alan Shepard, nobody, really, that the average American would know.

We’ve long ago lost the glamor that was in the U.S. space program. We don’t think of them as “rocket ships,” with all the mythical aura of ancient sailing ships venturing into the unknown. They are “shuttles,” like something we’d take every day back and forth to work.

Maybe angel feathers and celebrity gold chains belong in that mythological past we set aside when the Apollo program ended. Maybe unidentified object, sort of a ho-hum generic nothing, really is fitting for the space program we have today.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

« Previous Entries