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Brian Cox – Lecture on Science and Quantum Mechanics

Posted on December 27, 2011  Comments (0)

Brian Cox gave a wonderful lecture at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. This is one more great thing the internet makes possible: have great fun while you learn. Enjoy.

With the help of Jonathan Ross, Simon Pegg, Sarah Millican and James May, Brian shows how diamonds – the hardest material in nature – are made up of nothingness; how things can be in an infinite number of places at once; why everything we see or touch in the universe exists; and how a diamond in the heart of London is in communication with the largest diamond in the cosmos.

Related: Quantum Mechanics Made Relatively Simple Podcasts by Hana Bethe – Brian Cox Particle Physics Webcast – Physicists Observe New Property of Matter

A Possible Explanation for the Faster Than Light Result Anomaly

Posted on October 14, 2011  Comments (2)

Faster-than-Light Neutrino Puzzle Claimed Solved by Special Relativity

So what is the satellites’ motion with respect to the OPERA experiment? These probes orbit from West to East in a plane inclined at 55 degrees to the equator. Significantly, that’s roughly in line with the neutrino flight path. Their relative motion is then easy to calculate.

So from the point of view of a clock on board a GPS satellite, the positions of the neutrino source and detector are changing. “From the perspective of the clock, the detector is moving towards the source and consequently the distance travelled by the particles as observed from the clock is shorter,” says van Elburg.

By this he means shorter than the distance measured in the reference frame on the ground.

The OPERA team overlooks this because it thinks of the clocks as on the ground not in orbit.

How big is this effect? Van Elburg calculates that it should cause the neutrinos to arrive 32 nanoseconds early. But this must be doubled because the same error occurs at each end of the experiment. So the total correction is 64 nanoseconds, almost exactly what the OPERA team observes.

It is great to see the scientific process at work. Those is support of the scientific method support open access science and this explanation is available via arxiv: Times Of Flight Between A Source And A Detector Observed From A GPS Satellite.

Related: Faster Than Light Speed Anomaly Reported by CERN – More Dark Matter Experiment Results – The Architecture of Access to Scientific Knowledge

2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Posted on October 9, 2011  Comments (1)

photo of Dan Shechtman

Dan Shechtman, Israel Institute of Technology, 2011 Nobel Laurette in Chemistry

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2011 to Dan Shechtman, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel for the discovery of quasicrystals.

In quasicrystals, we find the fascinating mosaics reproduced at the level of atoms: regular patterns that never repeat themselves. However, the configuration found in quasicrystals was considered impossible, and Dan Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 has fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter.

On the morning of 8 April 1982, an image counter to the laws of nature appeared in Dan Shechtman’s electron microscope. In all solid matter, atoms were believed to be packed inside crystals in symmetrical patterns that were repeated periodically over and over again. For scientists, this repetition was required in order to obtain a crystal.

Shechtman’s image, however, showed that the atoms in his crystal were packed in a pattern that could not be repeated. Such a pattern was considered just as impossible as creating a football using only six-cornered polygons, when a sphere needs both five- and six-cornered polygons. His discovery was extremely controversial. In the course of defending his findings, he was asked to leave his research group. However, his battle eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter.

Aperiodic mosaics, such as those found in the medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra Palace in Spain and the Darb-i Imam Shrine in Iran, have helped scientists understand what quasicrystals look like at the atomic level. In those mosaics, as in quasicrystals, the patterns are regular – they follow mathematical rules – but they never repeat themselves.

When scientists describe Shechtman’s quasicrystals, they use a concept that comes from mathematics and art: the golden ratio. This number had already caught the interest of mathematicians in Ancient Greece, as it often appeared in geometry. In quasicrystals, for instance, the ratio of various distances between atoms is related to the golden mean.

Following Shechtman’s discovery, scientists have produced other kinds of quasicrystals in the lab and discovered naturally occurring quasicrystals in mineral samples from a Russian river. A Swedish company has also found quasicrystals in a certain form of steel, where the crystals reinforce the material like armor. Scientists are currently experimenting with using quasicrystals in different products such as frying pans and diesel engines.

Related: 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: the Structure and Function of the Ribosome – The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2008 – Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2006)

Read more on the science he has worked on. Our understanding of science is built on the discoveries of our predecessors and on the discoveries that counter what we thought we knew.
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2011 Nobel Prize in Physics

Posted on October 4, 2011  Comments (3)

Photos of the 2011 Physics Nobel Prize Winners: Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess.

Photos of the 2011 Physics Nobel Prize Winners.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2011 with one half to

Saul Perlmutter
The Supernova Cosmology Project, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

and the other half jointly to

Brian P. Schmidt
The High-z Supernova Search Team, Australian National University, Weston Creek, Australia

and

Adam G. Riess
The High-z Supernova Search Team, Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA

“for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae”

Once again the USA dominates the physics category, Brian Schmidt is a USA and Australian citizen. It will be interesting to see if this starts to change in the next decade. I believe it will at some point fairly soon, the question is at what point.

“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice…” Robert Frost, Fire and Ice, 1920

What will be the final destiny of the Universe? Probably it will end in ice, if we are to believe this year’s Nobel Laureates in Physics. They have studied several dozen exploding stars, called supernovae, and discovered that the Universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. The discovery came as a complete surprise even to the Laureates themselves.

In 1998, cosmology was shaken at its foundations as two research teams presented their findings. Headed by Saul Perlmutter, one of the teams had set to work in 1988. Brian Schmidt headed another team, launched at the end of 1994, where Adam Riess was to play a crucial role.

The research teams raced to map the Universe by locating the most distant supernovae. More sophisticated telescopes on the ground and in space, as well as more powerful computers and new digital imaging sensors (CCD, Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009), opened the possibility in the 1990s to add more pieces to the cosmological puzzle.

The teams used a particular kind of supernova, called type Ia supernova. It is an explosion of an old compact star that is as heavy as the Sun but as small as the Earth. A single such supernova can emit as much light as a whole galaxy. All in all, the two research teams found over 50 distant supernovae whose light was weaker than expected – this was a sign that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating. The potential pitfalls had been numerous, and the scientists found reassurance in the fact that both groups had reached the same astonishing conclusion.

For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the Universe will end in ice.

The acceleration is thought to be driven by dark energy, but what that dark energy is remains an enigma – perhaps the greatest in physics today. What is known is that dark energy constitutes about three quarters of the Universe. Therefore the findings of the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physics have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science. And everything is possible again.

As usually the Nobel committee does a great job of providing the public open scientific information. Others that claim to promote science can learn from them. They do a great job of making the science understandable to a lay person.

The discovery came as a complete surprise even to the Nobel Laureates themselves. What they saw would be like throwing a ball up in the air, and instead of having it come back down, watching as it disappears more and more rapidly into the sky, as if gravity could not manage to reverse the ball’s trajectory. Something similar seemed to be happening across the entire Universe.

The growing rate of the expansion implies that the Universe is being pushed apart by an unknown form of energy embedded in the fabric of space. This dark energy makes up a large part of the Universe, more than 70 %, and it is an enigma, perhaps the greatest in physics today. No wonder, then, that cosmology was shaken at its foundations when two different research groups presented similar results in 1998.
…

Related: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2009 – 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics – 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – Is Dark Matter an Illusion? – 5% of the Universe is Normal Matter, What About the Other 95%?
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Faster Than Light Speed Anomaly Reported by CERN

Posted on September 23, 2011  Comments (1)

The OPERA result is based on the observation of over 15000 neutrino events measured at Gran Sasso, and appears to indicate that the neutrinos travel at a velocity 20 parts per million above the speed of light, nature’s cosmic speed limit. Given the potential far-reaching consequences of such a result, independent measurements are needed before the effect can either be refuted or firmly established. This is why the OPERA collaboration has decided to open the result to broader scrutiny. The collaboration’s result is available on the preprint server arxiv.org.

The OPERA measurement is at odds with well-established laws of nature, though science frequently progresses by overthrowing the established paradigms. For this reason, many searches have been made for deviations from Einstein’s theory of relativity, so far not finding any such evidence. The strong constraints arising from these observations makes an interpretation of the OPERA measurement in terms of modification of Einstein’s theory unlikely, and give further strong reason to seek new independent measurements.

“This result comes as a complete surprise,” said OPERA spokesperson, Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern. “After many months of studies and cross checks we have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement. While OPERA researchers will continue their studies, we are also looking forward to independent measurements to fully assess the nature of this observation.”

“When an experiment finds an apparently unbelievable result and can find no artefact of the measurement to account for it, it’s normal procedure to invite broader scrutiny, and this is exactly what the OPERA collaboration is doing, it’s good scientific practice,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci. “If this measurement is confirmed, it might change our view of physics, but we need to be sure that there are no other, more mundane, explanations. That will require independent measurements.” This is a great reminder of the proper application of the scientific inquiry process. Our understanding moves forward based on evidence and incredible results require a high burden of proof before we accept them.

In order to perform this study, the OPERA Collaboration teamed up with experts in metrology from CERN and other institutions to perform a series of high precision measurements of the distance between the source and the detector, and of the neutrinos’ time of flight. The distance between the origin of the neutrino beam and OPERA was measured with an uncertainty of 20 cm over the 730 km travel path. The neutrinos’ time of flight was determined with an accuracy of less than 10 nanoseconds by using sophisticated instruments including advanced GPS systems and atomic clocks. The time response of all elements of the CNGS beam line and of the OPERA detector has also been measured with great precision.

“We have established synchronization between CERN and Gran Sasso that gives us nanosecond accuracy, and we’ve measured the distance between the two sites to 20 centimetres,” said Dario Autiero, the CNRS researcher who will give this afternoon’s seminar. “Although our measurements have low systematic uncertainty and high statistical accuracy, and we place great confidence in our results, we’re looking forward to comparing them with those from other experiments.”

“The potential impact on science is too large to draw immediate conclusions or attempt physics interpretations. My first reaction is that the neutrino is still surprising us with its mysteries.” said Ereditato. “Today’s seminar is intended to invite scrutiny from the broader particle physics community.”

The OPERA experiment was inaugurated in 2006, with the main goal of studying the rare transformation (oscillation) of muon neutrinos into tau neutrinos. One first such event was observed in 2010, proving the unique ability of the experiment in the detection of the elusive signal of tau neutrinos.

This is great stuff, wether it turns out to be an amazing result that changes our understanding of physics or even if it doesn’t (if it turns out the apparent result is not what it seems). It is great to see us attempt to learn. My guess is that we find some explanation for the anomaly that does avoids something traveling faster than the speed of light.

Brian Cox on the BBC 6: “This is the way science works, we go away and do it again and check, and then do it again and check. If it is confirmed then it will be the most significant discovery in physics in the last, at least, 100 years.”

Related: full press release – The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma – Gravity and the Scientific Method – More Mysterious Space Phenomenon – Neutrino particle traveling faster than light? Two ways it could rewrite physics

Is Dark Matter an Illusion?

Posted on September 2, 2011  Comments (2)

Open access letter asks – Is dark matter an illusion created by the gravitational polarization of the quantum vaccum? by Dragan Slavkov Hajdukovic, CERN

Assuming that a particle and its antiparticle have the gravitational charge of the opposite sign, the physical vacuum may be considered as a fluid of virtual gravitational dipoles. Following this hypothesis, we present the first indications that dark matter may not exist and that the phenomena for which it was invoked might be explained by the gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum by the known baryonic matter.

Let us start with a major unresolved problem. The measured galaxy rotation curves remain roughly constant at large radii. Faster than expected orbits, require a larger central force, which, in the framework of our theory of gravity, cannot be explained by the existing baryonic matter. The analogous problem persists also at the scale of clusters of galaxies.

The favoured solution is to assume that our current theory of gravity is correct, but every galaxy resides in a halo of dark matter made of unknown non-baryonic particles (for a brief review on dark matter see for instance: Einasto, 2010). A full list of the proposed dark matter particles would be longer than this letter; let us mention only weekly interacting massive particles and axions. In spite of the significant efforts dark particles have never been detected…

The scientific inquiry process continues to be used to try and explain the evidence we gather. Unsettled areas of science show how difficult the discovery process is. Once we have settled on theories it is so easy to explain why basic truths of evolution, geology, chemistry… result in what the evidence shows. But getting to the scientific consensus is a challenging process.


Dark Matter Is an Illusion, New Antigravity Theory Says

Physicist David Evans called the new study a “very interesting theoretical exercise,” but he said he isn’t ready to abandon dark matter just yet. “The evidence for dark matter is now very compelling,” said Evans, of the University of Birmingham, who leads the U.K. team for the ALICE detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

For example, in 2006 astronomers unveiled a photo of two colliding galaxies known as the Bullet cluster that purportedly showed the separation of matter from dark matter. A similar effect was observed in the Pandora cluster earlier this summer, said Evans, who was not involved in the study.

Hajdukovic said he is currently expanding his theory to account for these observations. His preliminary calculations, he said, suggest that “what is observed in the Bullet cluster and more recently at the Pandora cluster may be understood in the framework of the gravitational polarization of the quantum vacuum.”

CERN physicist Michael Doser agreed that Hajdukovic’s ideas are “unorthodox” but did not immediately dismiss the new theory…
“In a few years,” Doser said, “we should definitely be in a position to confirm or refute [Hajdukovic's] hypothesis.”

Related: The Mystery of Empty Space – Why do we Need Dark Energy to Explain the Observable Universe? – Dark Matter Experiment Results – Looking for Signs of Dark Matter Over Antarctica

Cutting the Boarding Time of Planes in Half

Posted on August 31, 2011  Comments (3)

I thought I wrote about this several years ago, but I guess I didn’t (I can’t find it, if I did). Experimental test of airplane boarding methods:

The Ste en method, on the other hand, orders the passengers in such a way that adjacent passengers in line are sitting in corresponding seats two rows apart from each other (e.g., 12A, 10A, 8A, 6A, etc.). This method trades a small number of aisle interferences at the front of the cabin, for the benefit of having multiple passengers stowing their luggage simultaneously. Other methods, such as Wilma and the Reverse Pyramid also realize parallel use of the aisle in a natural way as adjacent passengers are frequently sitting in widely separated rows.
…
We have seen experimentally that there is a marked difference in the time required to board an aircraft depending upon the boarding method used. The evidence strongly supports the heuristic argument from Ste en that methods that parallelize the boarding process by more efficiently utilizing the aisle (having more passengers stow their luggage simultaneously) will board more quickly than those that do not. The relative benefit of the application of this theory will grow with the length of the aircraft. Here, we used a 12-row mock airplane, but a more typical airplane with twice that number of rows will gain more by the implementation of parallelized boarding methods.

How this improvement scales with the cabin length is different for each method. For the Ste en method, the benefit will scale almost linearly. If the airplane is twice as long, the time savings will be nearly twice as much since the density of luggage-stowing passengers will remain the same and the boarding will still be maximally parallel. For Wilma and random boarding the benefit will not be as strong since the benefits of parallel boarding are randomly distributed along the length of the cabin instead of being regularly distributed.

I am not optimistic that airlines will even test out this method. People tend to think companies apply sensible, proven concepts and methods. But that is much less likely to be done than people think. The failure of many places to use simple queuing theory improvement (customers should form one line and be served the next available person not form many individual lines) is one example of failures by companies to apply decades old proven better methods. The poor adoption of multivariate designed experiments is another. Applying better ideas is a process that is not done very efficiently in business, health care, education or even science and engineering – in fact in any human endeavor. This is a waste that impacts each of us every day. It is also an opportunity for you to gain advantages just by applying all the good ideas lying around that others are ignoring. You need to test the ideas out in your setting (using the PDSA cycle in an organizational context a good method).

Related: Engineering the Boarding of Airplanes – Successful Emergency Plane Landing in the Hudson River – Checklists Save Lives – Improving Engineering Education

MIT Scientists Find New Drug That Could Cure Nearly Any Viral Infection

Posted on August 17, 2011  Comments (1)

New drug could cure nearly any viral infection

The drug works by targeting a type of RNA produced only in cells that have been infected by viruses. “In theory, it should work against all viruses,” says Todd Rider, a senior staff scientist in Lincoln Laboratory‘s Chemical, Biological, and Nanoscale Technologies Group who invented the new technology.
…
There are a handful of drugs that combat specific viruses, such as the protease inhibitors used to control HIV infection, but these are relatively few in number and susceptible to viral resistance.

Rider drew inspiration for his therapeutic agents, dubbed DRACOs (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizers), from living cells’ own defense systems. When viruses infect a cell, they take over its cellular machinery for their own purpose — that is, creating more copies of the virus. During this process, the viruses create long strings of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), which is not found in human or other animal cells.

As part of their natural defenses against viral infection, human cells have proteins that latch onto dsRNA, setting off a cascade of reactions that prevents the virus from replicating itself. However, many viruses can outsmart that system by blocking one of the steps further down the cascade.

Rider had the idea to combine a dsRNA-binding protein with another protein that induces cells to undergo apoptosis (programmed cell suicide) — launched, for example, when a cell determines it is en route to becoming cancerous. Therefore, when one end of the DRACO binds to dsRNA, it signals the other end of the DRACO to initiate cell suicide.

Combining those two elements is a “great idea” and a very novel approach, says Karla Kirkegaard, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University. “Viruses are pretty good at developing resistance to things we try against them, but in this case, it’s hard to think of a simple path pathway to drug resistance,” she says.

Each DRACO also includes a “delivery tag,” taken from naturally occurring proteins, that allows it to cross cell membranes and enter any human or animal cell. However, if no dsRNA is present, DRACO leaves the cell unharmed.

Very cool stuff and potentially hugely beneficial. Just a reminder: this works against viruses – not bacteria (just as antibiotics do not work against viruses).

image showing the results of cultures treated with DRACO v. those not treated

Related: Science Explained: RNA Interference – 8 Percent of the Human Genome is Old Virus Genes – Virus Engineered To Kill Deadly Brain Tumors
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Quantum Information Theory Postulated As Source of Emergent Theory of Gravity

Posted on August 15, 2011  Comments (0)

I love the advances we have made using our understanding of science and engineering, like the internet, air conditioning and antibiotics. I also love the discussion of research where we really have only educated guesses about what the scientific inquiry process is telling us about the way things are. This research from the University of York is very interesting.

Escaping gravity’s clutches: the black hole breakout

Professor Braunstein says: “Our results didn’t need the details of a black hole’s curved space geometry. That lends support to recent proposals that space, time and even gravity itself may be emergent properties within a deeper theory. Our work subtly changes those proposals, by identifying quantum information theory as the likely candidate for the source of an emergent theory of gravity.”
…
Dr Patra adds: “We cannot claim to have proven that escape from a black hole is truly possible, but that is the most straight-forward interpretation of our results. Indeed, our results suggest that quantum information theory will play a key role in a future theory combining quantum mechanics and gravity.”

It is too bad the University of York supports closed science and allows work to be withheld from the public to support outdated publishers business models. Luckily scientists often support open science and publish material openly – I have provided a link for those interested in science instead of the link the University of York gives to a publishers closed system.

Black Hole Evaporation Rates without Spacetime

Verlinde recently suggested that gravity, inertia, and even spacetime may be emergent properties of an underlying thermodynamic theory. This vision was motivated in part by Jacobson’s 1995 surprise result that the Einstein equations of gravity follow from the thermodynamic properties of event horizons. Taking a first tentative step in such a program, we derive the evaporation rate (or radiation spectrum) from black hole event horizons in a spacetime-free manner. Our result relies on a Hilbert space description of black hole evaporation, symmetries therein which follow from the inherent high dimensionality of black holes, global conservation of the no-hair quantities, and the existence of Penrose processes. Our analysis is not wedded to standard general relativity and so should apply to extended gravity theories where we find that the black hole area must be replaced by some other property in any generalized area theorem.

Related: Gravity and the Scientific Method – Gravity May Emerge from Quantum Information – Does Time Exist – Webcast of Astronaut Testing Gravity on the Moon – support open science

What Happens If the Overuse of Antibiotics Leads to Them No Longer Working?

Posted on August 9, 2011  Comments (2)

Antibiotics have been a miraculous tool to keep up healthy. Like vaccines this full value of this tool is wasted if it is used improperly. Vaccines value is wasted when they are not used enough. Antibiotics lose potency when they are overused. The overuse of anti-biotics on humans is bad (especially the huge amount of just lazy, not scientific use). But the massive overuse in livestock is much worse, it seems to me.

The health system in the USA is broken in a huge way in which it is broken is the failure to address creating systemic behavior that promotes human health and instead just treating illness. It is much better to avoid a situation where we breed super bugs and then try to treat those super bugs that have evolved to be immune to the antibiotics we have to use.

When antibiotics no longer work

While the source of the current salmonella outbreak remains murky, we can reasonably speculate about the genesis of the bug’s drug-resistance: the reportedly endemic overuse of antibiotics by the agricultural industry.

Drugs are given to livestock for multiple reasons. An obvious one is for the treatment of diseases. When livestock are sick, veterinarians administer a significant dosage in hopes of eliminating the animal’s affliction. Another reason is preventative. Animals in close quarters are more susceptible to infection, so farmers will often administer medicine to healthy animals in order to nip anything nasty in the bud. Most controversially, though, members of the agricultural industry use antibiotics for the express purpose of promoting livestock growth.

It’s a well-known, if not entirely intuitive, fact that healthy animals who are fed small, or “sub-therapeutic,” doses of antibiotics will wind up larger than their unmedicated counterparts. In many such cases, these drugs are given to livestock through their feed or water, and without the prescription or oversight of a veterinarian, according to Dr. Gail Hansen, a senior officer at the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming.

An estimated 80 percent of all antibiotics in the U.S. are given to food-producing livestock, according to the FDA. And approximately 83 percent of that medicine is “administered flock- or herd-wide at low levels for non-therapeutic purposes, such as growth promotion and routine disease prevention,” according to a lawsuit filed against the FDA in May. These figures could have very real consequences for public health, because the Catch-22 of this antibiotic abandon is the widespread development of drug-resistant bacteria, colloquially referred to as “super-bugs.”
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In 2006, the European Union banned all use of antibiotics on livestock for growth promotion. And the U.S. Senate will consider similar legislation this year. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., reintroduced the “Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act” last month, which would significantly rein in agricultural drug use, and strictly prohibit the application of sub-therapeutic doses of drugs that have benefits for humans.

Still, the agricultural industry disputes data about its use of antibiotics and the rise of super-bugs, and it has aggressively fought efforts to legislate the matter. As a result, it’s hard to tell how far the legislation might proceed.

Related: Antibiotics Too Often Prescribed for Sinus Woes – Overuse of Antibiotics (2005) – FDA May Make Decision That Will Speed Antibiotic Drug Resistance (2007)

The end of the era of antibiotics

How did this happen? The driving forces are Darwin and human carelessness. Bacteria are constantly evolving, adapting to the changing conditions they face. Antibiotics usually kill bacteria. But sometimes a bacteria will develop a biological defense – particularly if too small a dose is used.
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Antibiotics require a prescription in America, but our nation is still very much a part of the problem. Patients routinely demand these drugs, and doctors acquiesce, for respiratory infections and other ailments that will not respond to antibiotics because they are caused by a virus. We use soap with antimicrobial agents when regular soap does equally well. And we allow farmers to feed antibiotics to livestock in horrifying amounts, not to treat illnesses but to make farming more efficient.

The Potential Role of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations in Infectious Disease Epidemics and Antibiotic Resistance

This working group, which was part of the Conference on Environmental Health Impacts of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations: Anticipating Hazards—Searching for Solutions, considered the state of the science around these issues and concurred with the World Health Organization call for a phasing-out of the use of antimicrobial growth promotants for livestock and fish production. We also agree that all therapeutic antimicrobial agents should be available only by prescription for human and veterinary use.

Antibiotic Resistance in Livestock: More at Risk Than Steak
Continue reading →

The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma

Posted on August 4, 2011  Comments (2)

They Might be Giants once again provide an enjoyable view into the wonders of science. Previously they published the video, The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas. They published an updated video, a couple years ago, which captures the best current understanding based on the scientific inquiry process: Why Does the Sun Really Shine? (The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma).

I really do love, They Might be Giants. Even before their focus on science I enjoyed their music. But they have done wonders with all their recent work. Go Giants. Get their DVD: Here Comes Science.

Related: How Science is Unmasking the Secrets of the Sun (Science magazine, 1974) – The problem with hot gas = Test it Out, Experiment by They Might Be Giants – Here Comes Science by They Might Be Giants

Their previous video, The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas, Continue reading →

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