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Friday Fun: Aerodynamics for Sports

Posted on September 3, 2010  Comments (4)

“Impossible” Soccer Kick Leads to New Physics Equation

The amazing goal — which left French goalkeeper Fabien Barthez too stunned to react — was scored during a friendly match in the run up to the 1998 World Cup. A group of French scientists, perhaps desperate to prove that at least the laws of physics weren’t actively rooting against their national team, have been able to figure out the trajectory of the ball and, with it, an equation to describe its unusual path.
…
It all comes down to the fact that, when a sphere spins, its trajectory is a spiral. Usually, gravity and the relatively short distance the ball travels cover up this spiral trajectory, but Carlos was a mere 115 feet away and kicked the ball hard enough to reveal its true spiral-like path.

In this open access paper, the spinning ball spiral, the authors explore the science behind ball paths in different situations.

one can identify sports dominated by aerodynamics (table tennis, golf and tennis) and sports dominated by gravity (basketball and handball). In between, we find sports where both gravity and aerodynamics play a comparable role (soccer, volleyball and baseball). Indeed, in the first category of sports, the spin is systematically used, while it is not relevant in the second category, and it only appears occasionally in the third one, in order to produce surprising trajectories.

Related: Friday Fun: Amazing Goal – The Science of the Football Swerve – Engineering a Better Football

Big Bangless and Endless Universe

Posted on July 29, 2010  Comments (1)

A new the theory does away with the big bang and dark energy by having space, time and energy and no beginning and no ending.

Big Bang Abandoned in New Model of the Universe

Wun-Yi Shu at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan has developed an innovative new description of the Universe in which the roles of time space and mass are related in new kind of relativity.

Shu’s idea is that time and space are not independent entities but can be converted back and forth between each other. In his formulation of the geometry of spacetime, the speed of light is simply the conversion factor between the two. Similarly, mass and length are interchangeable in a relationship in which the conversion factor depends on both the gravitational constant G and the speed of light, neither of which need be constant.

So as the Universe expands, mass and time are converted to length and space and vice versa as it contracts. This universe has no beginning or end, just alternating periods of expansion and contraction. In fact, Shu shows that singularities cannot exist in this cosmos.

It’s easy to dismiss this idea as just another amusing and unrealistic model dreamed up by those whacky comsologists.

That is until you look at the predictions it makes. During a period of expansion, an observer in this universe would see an odd kind of change in the red-shift of bright objects such as Type-I supernovas, as they accelerate away. It turns out, says Shu, that his data exactly matches the observations that astronomers have made on Earth.
…
That’s not to say Shu’s theory is perfect. Far from it. One of the biggest problems he faces is explaining the existence and structure of the cosmic microwave background, something that many astrophysicists believe to be the the strongest evidence that the Big Bang really did happen. The CMB, they say, is the echo of the Big bang.

How it might arise in Shu’s cosmology isn’t yet clear but I imagine he’s working on it.

Science is useful in letting us understand the world better. But it also is an evolving understanding as we learn more and search for answers to more questions. Many attempts to put forth new ideas and have them gain acceptance are made. Most fail to gain traction. But even many of the ideas that are not accepted are interesting.

Read Cosmological Models with No Big Bang by Wun-Yi Shu (on the wonderful open access arXiv).

Related: Why Wasn’t the Earth Covered in Ice 4 Billion Years Ago, When the Sun was Dimmer – Why do we Need Dark Energy to Explain the Observable Universe? – The State of Physics

Being sociable is good for your health

Posted on July 28, 2010  Comments (7)

With a little help from your friends you can live longer

A circle of close friends and strong family ties can boost a person’s health more than exercise, losing weight or quitting cigarettes and alcohol, psychologists say.
…
Holt-Lunstad’s team reviewed 148 studies that tracked the social interactions and health of 308,849 people over an average of 7.5 years. From these they worked out how death rates varied depending on how sociable a person was.

Being lonely and isolated was as bad for a person’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic. It was as harmful as not exercising and twice as bad for the health as being obese.

Open access paper: Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review.

Related: How to build and maintain essential relationships – CDC Urges Reduction in Salt Intake to Save Hundreds of Thousands of Lives – Why People Often Get Sicker When They’re Stressed

Bee Colonies Continue to Collapse

Posted on May 3, 2010  Comments (2)

The activity to find the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder provides a view into the scientific inquiry process of complex living systems. Finding answers is not easy.

Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country’s estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.
…
It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination.
…
Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods.
…
“We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies,” said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS’s bee research laboratory.
…
“It’s getting worse,” he said. “The AIA survey doesn’t give you the full picture because it is only measuring losses through the winter. In the summer the bees are exposed to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix them together and no one has any idea what the effects might be.” Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running at 50% or greater.

High Levels of Miticides and Agrochemicals in North American Apiaries: Implications for Honey Bee Health (open access paper on the topic, March 2010)

The 98 pesticides and metabolites detected in mixtures up to 214 ppm in bee pollen alone represents a remarkably high level for toxicants in the brood and adult food of this primary pollinator. This represents over half of the maximum individual pesticide incidences ever reported for apiaries. While exposure to many of these neurotoxicants elicits acute and sublethal reductions in honey bee fitness, the effects of these materials in combinations and their direct association with CCD or declining bee health remains to be determined.

Related: Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees – Virus Found to be One Likely Factor in Bee Colony Colapse Disorder – Bye Bye Bees

Gravity Emerges from Quantum Information, Say Physicists

Posted on April 1, 2010  Comments (1)

Gravity Emerges from Quantum Information, Say Physicists

One of the hottest new ideas in physics is that gravity is an emergent phenomena; that it somehow arises from the complex interaction of simpler things.
…
perhaps the most powerful idea to emerge from Verlinde’s approach is that gravity is essentially a phenomenon of information.
…
Over recent years many results in quantum mechanics have pointed to the increasingly important role that information appears to play in the Universe. Some physicists are convinced that the properties of information do not come from the behaviour of information carriers such as photons and electrons but the other way round. They think that information itself is the ghostly bedrock on which our universe is built.

Gravity has always been a fly in this ointment. But the growing realisation that information plays a fundamental role here too, could open the way to the kind of unification between the quantum mechanics and relativity that physicists have dreamed of.

This speculative physics is fascinating. Open access paper: Gravity from Quantum Information.

Related: Does Time Exist – Quantum Mechanics Made Relatively Simple Podcasts – Laws of Physics May Need a Revision – Open Science: Explaining Spontaneous Knotting

Open Science: Looking at Dust

Posted on November 12, 2009  Comments (0)

Open access paper: Migration of Contaminated Soil and Airborne Particulates to Indoor Dust.

Indoor dust is a mixture of soil tracked into a residence, particulate matter derived from ambient outdoor air, and importantly, organic matter. Indoor dust is about 40% organic matter by weight in residential housing. Particles tracked into a residence are redistributed on floor surfaces account for over 60% of the dust mass on floors.

Related: Untidy Beds May Keep us Healthy – Open Science: Explaining Spontaneous Knotting – Electron Filmed for the First Time – Waste from Gut Bacteria Helps Host Control Weight

White Paper on Engineering Leadership Education

Posted on November 3, 2009  Comments (4)

Engineering leadership education is emerging as a topic in engineering institutions worldwide. But the review of international “best practices” in engineering leadership education says a lack of resources, expertise, and formal networks in the nascent field is causing concern in a profession threatened by a diminishing focus on the notion of the “engineer-as-doer.”

Commissioned by the Bernard M. Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program, the new white paper, Engineering Leadership Education: A Snapshot
 Review
 of International Good
 Practice, reveals that the vast majority of engineering leadership education programs are based within the U.S. and most are relatively new (developed in the last five years). The white paper highlights the distinct divide between the U.S. and the rest of the world in both attitude and approach to engineering leadership education.

“As a sub-discipline, engineering leadership education is not yet on the radar of most engineering education experts outside the U.S.,” said Dr. Edward Crawley, Director of the Bernard M. Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program. “Certainly for many of the programs outside the U.S., there’s some discomfort with the notion of ‘leadership education’, as they feel this concept runs counter to their educational culture of inclusiveness and equality.”

The report was conducted by Dr. Ruth Graham in a series of interviews between September 2008 and March 2009. Dr. Graham investigated more than 40 programs, seeking to provide an insight into current practice, highlight international variations in approach, and identify examples of good practice.

One major 
current 
trend
 in 
engineering
 leadership 
education
 is 
the 
development 
of
 the 
students’
 global 
awareness
 and
 their 
ability 
to 
work 
on 
complex
cross‐national
 projects
 – 
which
 is
 seen 
by many
 as
 the 
environment
 within 
which
 the
 engineering 
leader
 of 
the 
future 
will 
need 
to 
operate. 

Many
 of 
the 
programs 
which 
were 
most 
highly 
rated 
by 
interviewees 
incorporate 
some
 global
 elements 
either 
through 
international 
travel, 
remote
 link‐ups
 with
 overseas
 universities/companies 
or 
project
 briefs
 involving 
an
 international 
or
 cross‐cultural
 context.
 
The trend 
towards
 a 
more
 ‘global’ 
view
 of 
leadership 
education
 was 
seen 
by 
many 
of 
the
 interviewees
 as
 one
 that 
would
 continue.

Continue reading →

Smokers with High Blood Pressure and High Cholesterol Lose 10 Years

Posted on September 18, 2009  Comments (5)

By examining data from the Whitehall Study researchers have found smokers with high blood pressure and high cholesterol in middle age died 10 years earlier than the others after reaching age 50. This is independent of changes after later in life (quiting smoking, etc.). Life expectancy in relation to cardiovascular risk factors: 38 year follow-up of 19,000 men in the Whitehall study

At entry, 42% of the men were current smokers, 39% had high blood pressure, and 51% had high cholesterol. At the re-examination, about two thirds of the previously “current” smokers had quit smoking shortly after entry and the mean differences in levels of those with high and low levels of blood pressure and cholesterol were attenuated by two thirds. Compared with men without any baseline risk factors, the presence of all three risk factors at entry was associated with a 10 year shorter life expectancy from age 50 (23.7 v 33.3 years). Compared with men in the lowest 5% of a risk score based on smoking, diabetes, employment grade, and continuous levels of blood pressure, cholesterol concentration, and body mass index (BMI), men in the highest 5% had a 15 year shorter life expectancy from age 50 (20.2 v 35.4 years).

Conclusion Despite substantial changes in these risk factors over time, baseline differences in risk factors were associated with 10 to 15 year shorter life expectancy from age 50.

Another conclusion: if you don’t want to live a shorter life, don’t smoke. Not a new idea but given how many people continue to smoke it seems some don’t understand this conclusion.

Related: Global Cancer Deaths to Double by 2030 – Leading Causes of Death – more posts on open access papers – Study Finds Obesity as Teen as Deadly as Smoking

Albert Einstein, Marylin Monroe Hybrid Image

Posted on June 15, 2009  Comments (7)

Albert Einstein, Marylin Monroe Hybrid ImageThis image looks like Albert Einstein up close. If you back up maybe 3-5 meters it will look like Marylin Monroe. Image by Dr. Aude Oliva.

Hybrid images paper by Aude Oliva, MIT; Antonio Torralba, MIT; and Philippe G. Schyns University of Glasgow.

We present hybrid images, a technique that produces static images with two interpretations, which change as a function of viewing distance. Hybrid images are based on the multiscale processing of images by the human visual system and are motivated by masking studies in visual perception. These images can be used to create
compelling displays in which the image appears to change as the viewing distance changes. We show that by taking into account perceptual grouping mechanisms it is possible to build compelling hybrid images with stable percepts at each distance.
…
Hybrid images, however, contain two coherent global image interpretations, one of which is of the low spatial frequencies, the other of high spatial frequencies.
…
For a given distance of viewing, or a given temporal frequency a particular band of spatial frequency dominates visual processing. Visual analysis of the hybrid image still unfolds from global to local perception, but within the selected frequency band, for a given viewing distance, the observer will perceive the global structure of the hybrid first, and take an additional hundred milliseconds to organize the local information into a coherent percept (organization of blobs if the image is viewed at a far distance, or organization of edges for close viewing).

Very cool stuff.
Albert Einstein, Marylin Monroe Hybrid ImageThis is just a smaller image of the above (all I did was shrink the size). For me, this already looks like Marilyn Monroe, but also needs a shorter distance to see the image seem to change.




Related: Illusions, Optical and Other – How Our Brain Resolves Sight – Seeing Patterns Where None Exists – Magenta is a Color – posts on scientific explanations of what we experience – Computational Visual Cognition Laboratory at MIT


USA Losing Scientists and Engineers Educated in the USA

Posted on March 20, 2009  Comments (7)

The USA continues to lose ground, in retaining the relative science and engineering strength it has retained for the last 50 plus years. As I have said before this trend is nearly inevitable – the challenge for the USA is to reduce the speed of their decline in relative position.

A new open access report, Losing the World’s Best and Brightest, explores the minds of current foreign science and engineering students that are studying in the USA. This is another in the list of reports on similar topics by Vivek Wadhwa and Richard Freeman. And again they point out the long term economic losses the USA is setting up by failing to retain the talent trained at our universities. It is a problem for the USA and a great benefit for countries like India and China.

“Foreign students receive nearly 60% of all engineering doctorates and more than half of all mathematics, computer sciences, physics and economics doctorates awarded in the United States. These foreign nationals end up making jobs, not taking jobs,” said Wadhwa. “They bring insights into growing global markets and fresh ideas. Research has shown that they even end up boosting innovation by U.S. inventors. Losing them is an economic tragedy.”

According to the study’s findings, very few foreign students would like to stay in the United States permanently—only 6% of Indian, 10 percent of Chinese and 15% of Europeans. And fewer foreign students than the historical norm expressed interest in staying in the United States after they graduate. Only 58% of Indian, 54% of Chinese and 40% of European students wish to stay for several years after graduation. Previous National Science Foundation research has shown 68% of foreigners who received science and engineering doctorates stayed for extended periods of time, including 73% of those who studied computer science. The five-year minimum stay rate was 92% for Chinese students and 85% for Indian students.

The vast majority of foreign student and 85% of Indians and Chinese and 72% of Europeans are concerned about obtaining work visas. 74% of Indians, 76% of Chinese, and 58% of Europeans are also worried about obtaining jobs in their fields. Students appear to be less concerned about getting permanent-resident visas than they are about short-term jobs. Only 38% of Indian students, 55% of Chinese, and 53% of Europeans expressed concerns about obtaining permanent residency in the USA.

On the tonight show yesterday, President Obama said

we need young people, instead of — a smart kid coming out of school, instead of wanting to be an investment banker, we need them to decide they want to be an engineer, they want to be a scientist, they want to be a doctor or a teacher.

And if we’re rewarding those kinds of things that actually contribute to making things and making people’s lives better, that’s going to put our economy on solid footing. We won’t have this kind of bubble-and-bust economy that we’ve gotten so caught up in for the last several years.

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, recently expressed his frustration with the policies discouraging science and engineering graduates staying in the USA after they complete their education.

That is a brilliant [actually not brilliant at all] strategy take the best people hire them in American universities and then kick them out” It happens. “Its shocking.” It happens. “I know we are fighting against it.” “We America remain, by far the place of choice for education, particularly higher education.”

Related: Invest in Science for a Strong Economy – Science, Engineering and the Future of the American Economy – USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates – Losing scientists and engineers will reduce economic performance of the USA – Diplomacy and Science Research

Resurrection of the Human IRGM Gene

Posted on March 8, 2009  Comments (0)

Interesting open access paper on Death and Resurrection of the Human IRGM Gene. Author summary:

The IRG gene family plays an important role in defense against intracellular bacteria, and genome-wide association studies have implicated structural variants of the single-copy human IRGM locus as a risk factor for Crohn’s disease. We reconstruct the evolutionary history of this region among primates and show that the ancestral tandem gene family contracted to a single pseudogene within the ancestral lineage of apes and monkeys.

Phylogenetic analyses support a model where the gene has been “dead” for at least 25 million years of human primate evolution but whose ORF became restored in all human and great ape lineages. We suggest that the rebirth or restoration of the gene coincided with the insertion of an endogenous retrovirus, which now serves as the functional promoter driving human gene expression. We suggest that either the gene is not functional in humans or this represents one of the first documented examples of gene death and rebirth.

Related: 8 Percent of the Human Genome is Old Virus Genes – Old Viruses Resurrected Through DNA – One Species’ Genome Discovered Inside Another’s – posts on genes – Gene against bacterial attack unravelled – Gene Duplication and Evolution

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