Category Archives: Science

News, Science, Tech

Goodbye, Blue Monday

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Goodbye, Blue Monday!
Goodbye, Blue Monday!

A few tidbits from the world of science this morning:

How Sex Is Like Your Thermostat.   The point being, apparently, is that sex is a self-reinforcing behavioral feedback loop.

Having studied animal behavior (and no, that is not how I came to pick up the nickname that forms my user ID and the title of this blog) I can state with some certainty that almost all behavior consists of self-reinforcing feedback loops, so I guess I fail to see the point here.

Except, of course, sex.

Women’s Farts Smell Worse.  Well, I’m not going to try to convince Mrs. Animal of that.  Especially not if I want to keep a certain behavioral feedback loop in play.

Don’t Mess With The Steamer Duck.  He’ll f**k you up.

And, finally, on a more serious note, it seems DARPA is getting into the fusion energy research game.  Excerpt:

Smiling BearA US government agency has launched a new $30m programme to support alternative approaches to generating energy from nuclear fusion. The initiative has been created by the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), which falls under the auspices of the Department of Energy (DOE). In August, the DOE invited researchers to “develop and demonstrate low-cost tools to aid in the development of fusion power”. Research teams need to outline their proposals by 14 October with three-year grants ranging from $250,000 to $10m up for grabs.

Fusion reactors, should they ever prove feasible, are a major energy game-changer.  But will they ever prove feasible?  We won’t know unless we try, although I suspect (and this is a personal bias in play here) that a breakthrough is more likely from the private sector than from government.

Deep Thoughts, Science

Animal’s Daily Martian News

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Martian Native.
Martian Native.

Could we terraform Mars, and make it habitable for humans?  Maybe so.  Excerpt:

Today, Mars has little atmosphere to speak of, sports an average temperature of -76 degrees Fahrenheit around the equator, and is pelted by ultraviolet radiation. It’s little more than a desert pockmarked by craters. And yet, there are some who think that Mars can live again.

“You don’t build Mars,” Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA says. “You just warm it up and throw some seeds.”

It’s that simple.

Here are three easy steps to terraform Mars and make it habitable for humans.

Read the whole thing for an outline of the three necessary (and time-consuming – we’re talking thousands of years) steps.

Forgetting the astronomical cost (pun intended) and the time frame for a moment, and think about the implications of a population of humans living on a successfully terraformed Mars.  No, they aren’t likely to turn green, nor will they encounter thoats, exotic red princesses or any other boojums or boogers.  But they will change, as generations are born and grow on a planet with only a little over a third of Earth’s gravity.

The new Martians will be taller and thinner, most likely, as they adjust through growth on a low-gravity environment.  They will probably have to adjust to a colder planet, even after terraforming, but we can Silver Beardo that through technology as prosaic as coats; but gravity will have a more lasting impact.

Not least of which is this:  Native Martians may never be able to visit the home planet.  A 1G gravity field may kill them.

So, while this is interesting and may someday actually happen, any human population on Mars will probably have to be permanent.

Check out Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy for an interesting bit of speculation as to how this might actually work.

Guns, Science

Animal’s Right-Handed (Phrasing!) Hump Day News

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Happy Hump Day!
Happy Hump Day!

Is it still Hump Day when it’s a short week?  Well, close enough.

Here’s an interesting science-ey tidbit:  On The Other Hand.  Excerpt:

With almost complete certainty, I can predict that you, dear reader, are right-handed. If I were a betting man, I’d put money on it. I’d make the same bet if you were reading this in India or Iowa, Kansas or Kathmandu. And a hundred years from now, I’d make the same bet again.

I can be so sure of myself not because I am some prodigious prognosticator, but because about 90 percent of humans are right-handed. That phenotypic ratio—nine right-handed people for every lefty—is relatively stable, not just across cultures and geographic regions, but perhaps across the span of human evolution. The archaeological record suggests that hominins were predominantly right-handed as far back as 2 million years ago, and a 2010 study of the wear patterns on 32,000-year-old Neanderthal teeth found that this extinct cousin of Homo sapiens was likely about 88 percent right-handed.

Apparently since the right-to-left ratio holds up in antipodal locations like Australia, the Coriolis Effect is not responsible for the great skew in human handedness.  Go figure.

How about you, True Believers?  Yr. obdt. is among the aforementioned 90%, but loyal sidekick and hunting partner Rat is a southpaw, and I suspect he occasionally finds his right-handed 700 Remington awkward to handle in a hurry.

But there are occasional silver linings to everything.  Some years back I found a nicely sporterized 1903 Springfield sitting on a gun show table, priced at the rather unbelievable $250, and finding no takers.   It even had a rather old but perfectly clear Weaver 3X scope mounted.

“The damn thing has that left-handed stock on it,” the seller told me, “so nobody looks twice at it.”  Sure enough, it had a nice blonde walnut stock with a cheekpiece – on what for me, was the wrong side of the stock.

Smiling BearI offered the seller $150.  He accepted.  I took the rifle home, took it apart, took a big cabinet rasp and scraped every hint of that cheekpiece off.  After sanding the stock smooth and refinishing it with a nice linseed oil finish, I took the gun to the range and discovered it was a great shooter, easily putting five shots into an inch and a half with Federal 180-grain factory loads, with the old Weaver still in place.

Eventually I took the rifle back to a show along with the targets I’d shot with it and sold it for $375.

Opportunities are where you find them.

Science

Animal’s Daily News

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bears-cute-awesome1-11Well, that solves that mystery; First Observation of Death Valley’s Sliding Rocks.  Excerpt:

A dry lake in Death Valley, called Racetrack Playa, is home to the famous “sailing stones.” These large rocks, some of which weigh up to 700 pounds, leave behind long trails in the dirt, indicating that something — or someone — has been moving them. (See photo above.) But how?

Conspiracy theorists and others with active imaginations have implicated aliens (of course), powerful magnetic fields, or just plain old magic as the culprit behind the mysterious phenomenon. More serious speculators suggested dust devils or a combination of rain and strong wind. These explanations, however, are wrong.

Death Valley is an interesting place.  Mrs. Animal, yr. obdt. and a couple of the kids visited there a few years back at the worst possible time – late July.  It was 130+ F at Badwater when we got out and walked around the big salt flats and saw the shallow, simmering waters there.

It’s hard to describe that kind of heat; at some point superlatives fail to do the place credit.  The only place I’ve felt comparable heat was in the late spring of 1991 in southern Iraq and northern Saudi Arabia.  It’s the kind of heat that makes if difficult to breathe.  Your lungs seize Science!up, crying to you “Hey!  This is way above operating specs!  Don’t you know you can’t breathe this stuff?”

Give me southern Alaska and the never-above-70 climate any time.

But it’s an interesting place, made all the more so by the fact that the mystery of the sliding rocks is due to – yes, really – ice.

Still.  If we ever visit Death Valley again, January sounds like about the right time.

News, Science

Animal’s Daily News

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Harp BearDo Animals Have True Language?  Excerpt:

From ultrasonic bat chirps to eerie whale songs, the animal kingdom is a noisy place. While some sounds might have meaning — typically something like “I’m a male, aren’t I great?” — no other creatures have a true language except for us. Or do they?

A new study on animal calls has found that the patterns of barks, whistles, and clicks from seven different species appear to be more complex than previously thought. The researchers used mathematical tests to see how well the sequences of sounds fit to models ranging in complexity.

In fact, five species including the killer whale and free-tailed bat had communication behaviors that were definitively more language-like than random.

Such studies are interesting because they may shed some light on how humans developed language, somewhere (probably) around the Homo ergaster/Homo erectus stage.

Uncle.
Uncle.

But there’s a big difference between a whale’s pattern of clicks and whistles and the works of Shakespeare – or Asimov.  The bigger part of that difference, one that makes it a difference of kind rather than one of degree, is the capacity to grasp abstract concepts – symbology.  Humans probably didn’t have that capacity until what anthropologist Jared Diamond calls the “Great Leap Forward,” about 30-35,000 years ago.

What’s that mean, pertaining to the study linked above?  Simply this: while animal communications may well be more complex than we thought, they are still a quantum leap away from human-type language.

Interesting nevertheless.

News, Science, Totty

Rule Five Friday

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2014_08_08_Rule Five Friday (2)The 800 Pound Gorilla in the room for rare earth sustainability in North America – Thorium.  Excerpt:

James Kennedy works closely with the Thorium Energy Alliance to promote US legislation for the commercial development of thorium energy systems and rare earths. And when he asked me to review a video where he presents a paper entitled “Creating a Multinational Platform, Thorium, Energy and Rare Earth Value Chain – a Global Imbalance in the Rare Earth Market” – it occurred to me that Tracy’s frequently referenced ‘800 lb. gorilla’ in the proverbial rare earth room was overdue for discussion: thorium.

2014_08_08_Rule Five Friday (3)Kennedy’s essential argument is that the rare earth imbalance is largely the result of regulations with unintended consequences: “Rare earths and thorium have become linked at the mineralogical and geopolitical level.” In other words, thorium should be considered as a rare earth mineral.

The article concludes:

There are currently two bills before the US Congress “that if enacted would create a federally-chartered multinational rare earth cooperative that’s privately funded and operated, and it would be authorized to accept monazites and other thorium-bearing minerals. The thorium would be removed and stored on what Kennedy calls a federally-chartered ‘thorium bank’ for safekeeping. This will help mining companies, which help place liability to the bank, leaving the miners to 2014_08_08_Rule Five Friday (1)produce higher value HREE’s.

My question is this:  If, in our quest to be rare-earth independent, we start upping production of thorium – why not use it in a liquid fluoride thorium reactor to generate electricity?

The country badly needs more electrical power generation.  We need to lessen our dependence on foreign sources (especially China) for rare earths.  We can accomplish both by developing thorium 2014_08_08_Rule Five Friday (5)reactor capacity and refining our own rare earths from monazite.

Or does this just make too much sense for the Imperial Federal government to buy in on?

Of course, we can always start aggressively developing our own traditional domestic energy sources as well – again, if the folks in the Imperial City deign to allow it.  A common argument states that it would take X number of years to bring these domestic sources on line.

And that common argument has been in play for thirty years or more.  It’s time to push that one into its long-overdue grave.

2014_08_08_Rule Five Friday (4)

Science, Tech

Animal’s Daily News

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PeTA-bearLet’s examine a couple of tidbits from the world of science this morning.

First up:  The Radical Plan To Eliminate Earth’s Predatory Species.  No, it’s not what you think; this dipshit actually wants to micromanage the ecosystem of an entire planet – this one, by the way – so as to stop predators from killing and eating other animals.  Money quote:  “I look forward to a future where all sentient beings enjoy life animated by gradients of bliss.”

I look forward to a future where all sentient humans stop wasting valuable time dreaming up laughable horseshit.

Next, and possibly excluding the nutbar mentioned above and most members of Congress, scientists appear to be closing in on what consciousness actually is.  Excerpt:

Recently, researchers discovered a brain area that acts as a kind of on-off switch for the brain. When they electrically stimulated this region, called the claustrum, the patient became unconscious instantly. In fact, Koch and Francis Crick, the molecular biologist who famously helped discover the double-helix structure of DNA, had previously hypothesized that this region might integrate information across different parts of the brain, like the conductor of a symphony.

Derp BearOr, in the case of Paris Hilton (or Joe Biden, if you prefer) like a five-year old playing “Chopsticks” on a toy piano.

But I digress.

Is it a tremendous leap to intuit that, once we fully understand consciousness, we might be able to duplicate it?  Could this be the first step towards a sentient, self-aware Artificial Intelligence (AI?)

Rampant speculation, I grant you.  But interesting all the same.

Culture, News, Science

Animal’s Hump Day News

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Happy Hump Day!
Happy Hump Day!

Let’s talk about more science stuff today; Anti-GMO Activists Are Harming Hungry Africans.  Excerpt:

African crop yields lag well behind those of the world’s developed countries, and the continent’s food security is shaky at best. Starvation is an ever-present threat for many, and the impending effects of climate change loom ominously in the distance. But scientists have solutions, genetically modified crops that are resistant to droughts, pests, and disease, that, pending government approval, are ready for planting. Dismayingly, Luddite anti-GMO campaigners have smeared these potential problem-solvers as unsafe and unnatural, and as a result, to-date no African government has approved the use of GM crops.

Looking for a logical argument coming from the kind of eco-Luddites who oppose things like GMO crops and vaccines is like looking for a piece of straw in an enormous stack of needles, but even that isn’t the worst of it.  The thing is this:  Africa should be a wealthy continent.  The place is huge; you could drop the United States and Russia into Africa and have room left over for a Europe or two.  It has enormous mineral wealth, some of the world’s best farmlands, and plenty of manpower.

So, what’s holding Africa back?

Sleepy-bearGenerations of fundamentally corrupt governments, for one thing.  In some places – like Sudan – Islamic nutballery is a big part of the problem.  But the West has limited ability to affect those things.  What can we affect?

We could – and should – stop helping them.

Heartless?  Not at all.  The GMO controversy is just one way in which well-meaning but ignorant outsiders are preventing the spread of technology that could revolutionize African agriculture.  And yes, the anti-GMO protestors are ignorant; no reputable study has ever found a threat to human health from GMO crops (see here and here.)

What’s interesting is that the anti-GMO nuts are almost invariably members of the political Left.  I thought the political Left was supposed to be pro-science?

In all candor, in our country at least, this is probably more a symptom of the United States’ utter failure in basic science education than anything else.

Culture, Science, Tech

Animal’s Daily News

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Smiling BearThanks as always to The Other McCain for our inclusion in the Sunday Rule Five index!

This morning, let’s look at some tidbits from the world of science.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is a Fucking Idiot.  ‘Nuff said.

Check out the vehicle that people could drive on Mars.  I doubt you’ll see one at a showroom near you any time soon.  Too bad.

The Secret of Natural Sandstone Arches.  Sandstone arches, not Golden Arches; the only secret to the latter is how they manage to stay in business while serving such crappy food.

What Happened When A State Accidentally Legalized Prostitution.  Thumbnail:  Rape cases decreased.  Specifically:  “The statewide incidence of gonorrhea among women declined by 39 percent, and the number of rapes reported to police in the state declined by 31 percent, according to the paper.”

Finally, in answer to a question that nobody had ever asked until now:  Scientists Use MRI to Measure Precisely How Your Butt Deforms When You Sit Down.  Excerpt:

“The complex deformation of buttocks tissue seen in this case study may help explain the inconsistent results reported in finite element models. 3D imaging of the seated buttocks provides a unique opportunity to study the actual buttocks response to sitting.”

Uh… OK?

And on that note, we return you to your Tuesday, already in progress.

Deep Thoughts, Science

Animal’s Hump Day News

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Happy Hump Day!
Happy Hump Day!

This just in from the wonderful world of astro-science – or, perhaps, astro-speculation.  NASA: Humans Will Prove ‘We Are Not Alone In The Universe’ Within 20 Years.  Excerpt:

Speaking at NASA’s Washington headquarters on Monday, the space agency outlined a plan to search for alien life using current telescope technology, and announced the launch of the Transiting Exoplanet Surveying Satellite in 2017. The NASA administrators and scientists estimate that humans will be able to locate alien life within the next 20 years.

“Just imagine the moment, when we find potential signatures of life. Imagine the moment when the world wakes up and the human race realizes that its long loneliness in time and space may be over — the possibility we’re no longer alone in the universe,” said Matt Mountain, director and Webb telescope scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018.

Let’s forget the technical aspects of this for a moment, and let’s also forget the likelihood of NASA actually finding life – in fact, let’s forget about intelligent life altogether, since we’re still looking for that right here on Earth in the Imperial City.  Instead:  Imagine the consequences if NASA (or anyone else) were to find evidence of life somewhere other than Earth.  Some good candidates are present right here in our own solar system, after all – plenty of biologists are just dying to know what might be lurking under Europa’s ice pack.

Space ChicksFirst:  Earth loses it’s one-of-a-kind status.  We’re no longer the special exception.  Life exists elsewhere, and presumably – since in all the vastness of the Universe, we have found it on another world in our tiny little sphere of perception, life exists lots of places.

Second:  Imagine the consequences for the world’s religions.  Not being religious myself it’s probably easier in some ways to imagine the impact, but in other ways it’s doubtlessly harder.  What happens to adherents to mainstream religions when it is proven that Earth’s life-bearing status is not unique?

Finally:  If life is found elsewhere, how long will it be before the not-so-intelligent life in the Imperial City tries to a) tax it and b) regulate it?

Thoughts?