Astronomers Pinpoint World’s Best Stargazing Site

Ever wonder where in the world humans have the absolute best view of all the stars in the sky? Astronomers say they’ve found it – the coldest, driest, calmest place on earth, which is expected to yield images three times sharper than any ever taken from the ground.

A research team used data from satellites, ground stations and climate models to determine the factors that can affect astronomy, like cloud cover, sky brightness, water vapor and wind speeds.

From Science Daily:

The researchers pinpointed a site, known simply as Ridge A, that is 4,053m high up on the Antarctic Plateau. It is not only particularly remote but extremely cold and dry. The study revealed that Ridge A has an average winter temperature of minus 70ºC and that the water content of the entire atmosphere there is sometimes less than the thickness of a human hair.

It is also extremely calm, which means that there is very little of the atmospheric turbulence elsewhere that makes stars appear to twinkle: “It’s so calm that there’s almost no wind or weather there at all,” says Dr Will Saunders, of the Anglo-Australian Observatory and visiting professor to UNSW, who led the study.

“The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers,” says Dr Saunders. “Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope there would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth.”

It doesn’t look like much – just a wide swath of frigid, snow-covered land – but putting an observatory here could provide some stunning images. And, there’s nothing like a really clear view of the stars to make you appreciate the vastness of the universe.

Link [Science Daily]
Photo credit: Flickr user Coda

A Virtual Toast, in Honor of Darwin’s 200th Birthday

200 years ago today, a man was born who would change scientific thought forever. Charles Darwin was among the first – and certainly the most prominent – to challenge the Biblical view of creation, giving rise to a controversy that still rages on to this day (particularly in America). 2009 is also the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of the Species, which had the single biggest impact on the natural and social sciences of any book written even to this day.  As biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky stated, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

Celebrations of Darwin’s birthday are taking place all over the world, with more than 300 planned in Britain alone.  Shrewsbury, the British town where Darwin was born and raised, is holding a month-long celebration of Darwin’s life and work and a permanent exhibition recreating some of his most famous experiments is opening at Down House, his former home near London. A list of events can be found at Darwin200.org.

MSNBC’s Cosmic Log has a detailed analysis of “how evolution evolved”, explaining how Darwin came to formulate his ideas on the origin of life and how evolution has been integrated into modern scientific knowledge.  Scientific American’s January 2009 issue also examined how Darwin’s theory “survives, thrives and reshapes the world” – check it out online.

Those who believe in the literal word-for-word Biblical account of an invisible sky wizard creating earth, Man and everything else in the universe in 7 days may hold contempt for Darwin, but people of science and reason celebrate the contributions he has made to the world. So let’s all raise a glass today to Charles Darwin, a man who not only helped us gain a deeper understanding of how life on Earth began but also inspired so many people to take a closer look at nature.

Link [MSNBC] + [SciAm] + [Darwin200.org]

Amateurs Experimenting with Genetic Engineering at Home

Hobbyists are playing around with genetic engineering in their garages, tinkering with DNA to produce things like glow-in-the-dark yogurt. They’re making their own lab equipment and turning to the internet for how-to guides and supplies.  Many of them don’t even have a background in science.

Some have the best of intentions, believing that they might just innovate the cure for cancer or save millions of people from hunger.  From The Huffington Post:

In her San Francisco dining room lab, for example, 31-year-old computer programmer Meredith L. Patterson is trying to develop genetically altered yogurt bacteria that will glow green to signal the presence of melamine, the chemical that turned Chinese-made baby formula and pet food deadly.

“People can really work on projects for the good of humanity while learning about something they want to learn about in the process,” she said.

Some so-called ‘biohackers’ see the ability to experiment with genetic engineering at home or in community laboratories as opportunity for creativity to run wild, possibly producing some important discoveries.

It’s understandable that people want to make some major contribution to the world – or just have fun conducting science experiments in their basements. But, genetic engineering is not something to play around with. Imagine the sort of unintended consequences that such experiments could have. They’d be bigger and more potentially damaging than anything we’ve ever seen before.

Biology is complex, and it would be far too easy to accidentally create an organism that wreaks havoc on the earth. Imagine wannabe scientists in every American neighborhood creating their very own Frankenstein’s Monsters. It would get out of hand far, far too quickly.

Have we not learned anything from the countless comic books, horror movies and sci-fi novels that are based entirely on the consequences of humans playing God? How naïve to believe that this is harmless – that nothing but good could come of it.

If you want to work with biotechnology, do us all a favor and go to college and learn the right way to do it – in controlled environments with stringent safety protocol.

Link [The Huffington Post]

Obama Chooses Climate Specialist as Science Adviser

President-elect Obama has chosen an energy and climate specialist as the new White House science adviser. John Holdren is a Harvard University physicist whose work has focused on the causes and consequences of climate change. Holdren has also advocated policies aimed at sustainable development and has done extensive research on the dangers of nuclear weapons.

From Yahoo News:

Obama pledged to put a priority on encouraging scientific breakthroughs in areas such as alternative energy solutions and finding cures to diseases, as he announced the pick of Holdren and other top science advisers in the Democratic weekly radio and video address.

“Today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation,” Obama said. “It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.”

Science is back in the White House!  What a relief. We were really sliding into an abyss of ignorance and religious dogma, two things that have absolutely no place in American government.  We now have the opportunity to move forward once again, to be leaders in renewable energy, the fight against global warming, and so many other areas of science in which we’ve fallen behind these long eight years.

Link [Yahoo News]
Photo credit: AAAS

The Republican War on Science

America is already known across the world for having an irrational disdain for science. Not to mention the fact that our country produces so few scientists of its own, we’ve depended on foreign-born scientists to help as along our treasured road of progress for decades. Isn’t it ironic that, despite all of the ‘progress must continue’, ‘don’t take away our technology’ anti-global warming talk, our leaders look down their noses at those who produce this technology?

The past seven and a half years under Bush have made the situation (as with many other situations – really, can we name one thing he actually improved?) much worse. The ‘war on terror’ has produced a convenient cover for the Bush administration to attack foreign-born scientists.

The Huffington Post quotes William A. Wulf, Ph.D., president of the National Academy of Engineering:

Between 1980 and 2000, the percentage of Ph.D. scientists and engineers employed in the United States who were born abroad has increased from 24% to 37%. The current percentage of Ph.D. physicists is about 45%; for engineers, the figure is over 50%. One fourth of the engineering faculty members at U.S. universities were born abroad. Between 1990 and 2004, over one third of Nobel Prizes in the United States were awarded to foreign-born scientists. One third of all U.S. Ph.D’s in science and engineering are now awarded to foreign born graduate students. We have been skimming the best and brightest minds from across the globe, and prospering because of it; we need these new Americans even more now as other countries become more technologically capable.

Dr. Moniem El-Ganayni is one of the scientists you’d think America would want to hold on to. The nuclear physicist has been an American citizen for 20 years and worked at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory – that is, until his security clearance was revoked. The reason? He’s an Egyptian-born Muslim. Dr. El-Ganayni’s efforts to get his clearance back have been fruitless, and he thinks he’ll have to move back to Egypt with his American-born wife.

The decision to revoke Dr. El-Ganayni’s clearance without holding a hearing was made by acting Deputy Secretary of Energy Jeffrey F. Kupfer, a Bush administration insider …. [who] certified that the appeals process set forth in DOE regulations “cannot be made available … without damaging the interests of national security by revealing classified information. …

Furthermore, he stated, his decision is “conclusive,” meaning the matter is officially closed.

Dr. El-Ganayni is far from alone. According to the ACLU, an “untold number of Middle Eastern immigrants and Muslims across the country have been quietly ensnared by measures aimed at strengthening national security in a post-9/11 world.”

In post 9/11 America, the worlds ‘national security’ have been used to shut people up when they question the government’s actions. The Bush administration has enjoyed a free-for-all where silly things like proof, trials, fairness and justice are put aside in the name of ‘protecting our country from terrorists’. And, as we all know, as far as the Bush administration and Republican lawmakers are concerned, if your name sounds foreign, you’re suspicious.

Perhaps there’s a faith-based reason behind some of this – conservatives are certainly known for putting their religious beliefs where they don’t belong, like government policies. The faith vs. science battle that’s constantly being waged in America, from the courtroom to the classroom, from creationism to global warming denial, has made it clear how conservatives feel about science.

Regardless, the Republican war on science has only put America in a position where it’s constantly shooting itself in the foot. Bush has already lost our country vast amounts of credibility. With the lack of top shelf scientists and engineers to help keep us on top, the United States may very well continue on a dramatic slide downward on the world power scale. Obama, at this point, is truly our light at the end of the tunnel. Again, is it 2009 yet?

Link [The Huffington Post]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

High School Student Finds a Way to Biodegrade Plastic in 3 Months

Holy awesome! Some high school kid in Canada came up with a way to bio-digest plastic shopping bags. For a freaking science fair! Amazing. 500 billion plastic bags are produced worldwide every year, and they take up to 1,000 years to decompose. We’re all aware of the fact that plastic bags pose a lot of problems – they clog up landfills, choke marine life and are seen floating in water far too often. Finding a way to get rid of them is huge.

From The Record:

Daniel Burd’s project won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa. He came back with a long list of awards, including a $10,000 prize, a $20,000 scholarship, and recognition that he has found a practical way to help the environment.

Daniel, a 16-year-old Grade 11 student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, got the idea for his project from everyday life.

“Almost every week I have to do chores and when I open the closet door, I have this avalanche of plastic bags falling on top of me,” he said. “One day, I got tired of it and I wanted to know what other people are doing with these plastic bags.”

The answer: not much. So he decided to do something himself.

He knew plastic does eventually degrade, and figured microorganisms must be behind it. His goal was to isolate the microorganisms that can break down plastic — not an easy task because they don’t exist in high numbers in nature.

Daniel ground the plastic bags into a powder and mixed it with ordinary household chemicals, dirt, yeast and tap water to encourage microbe growth. For three months he allowed the concentration of microbes to increase, and put the culture into three flasks with strips of plastic bags. Six weeks later, he found that the bags weighed an average of 17 percent less. Not satisfied with that result, he continued working on the solution until he isolated his most effective strain of plastic-eating bacteria and got a result of 43 percent degradation in 6 weeks.

What a cool example of how innovation can come from the most unexpected places.

Link [The Record]
Photo credit: Flickr user scottwyden

After Sewage Spill Cleanup, Fish in Lake Washington Evolving in Reverse

While locals were dealing with the fallout from a sewage spill in Lake Washington in the 1960s, the little threespine stickleback fish was evolving. It seems that the cloudy murkiness from the sewage allowed the fish to move beyond its need for armor that protected it from hungry trout. Unfortunately, now that the lake has been cleaned up, the fish has been slowly devolving back to its former state.

From Seattle PI:

By dusting off samples of the fish dating to the 1950s, researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington on Thursday documented the stickleback’s “reverse evolution” triggered by the cleanup.

“This idea of reverse evolution has only been documented in a few cases in the wild,” said Katie Peichel, an author of the paper in Current Biology and scientist in the Hutch’s Division of Human Biology.

Sticklebacks originally were found in marine waters where they grew bony armor and prickly spines to ward off predators. As they migrated into freshwater and over many years, the widespread fish lost much of its skeletal shields, or plating.

That’s how they looked in Lake Washington — at least until recently.

Scientists have documented the change and done genetic studies on the fish, confirming that the armor transformation was due to genetic changes and not an influx of plated fish from the Puget Sound. It’s a stunning example of how fast some species are able to evolve, but scientists note that we shouldn’t expect such a thing from all species as the world struggles to adjust to global warming:

Take the case of polar bears, which this week were added to the Endangered Species list. The population of bears is too small, habitat needs are too specific, reproduction is too slow, genetic variability is too limited and the melting of the polar sea ice too fast for them to adjust, scientists said.

“Whether or not (polar bears) can find some different way of utilizing the environment and adapting to the changes seems improbable,” Reznick said.

“Polar bears are doomed,” he said. “Sticklebacks may not be.”

Link + Photo Credit [Seattle PI]

Big Brother Says: The Planet is A-OK! Go Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Destruction!

If you’re a conspiracy theorist like (I must admit) I am, this sort of news probably makes you want to build that off-grid cabin in the woods sooner rather than later. Reuters reports that nearly 900 scientists have told the Union of Concerned Scientists about political interference in their environment-related work:

The nonprofit environmental organization said its investigation of EPA was in line with previous probes of other U.S. agencies which found “significant administration manipulation of federal science.”

“Our investigation found an agency in crisis,” said Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency. “Distorting science to accommodate a narrow political agenda threatens our environment, our health and our democracy itself.”

Nearly 100 scientists said the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was the main offender.

One scientist wrote that the OMB and the White House decreased the stringency of proposed regulations for political reasons through hidden influence such as lobbying.

Naturally, the government denies it, saying scientific findings were “balanced with policy concerns.”

This stinks of historical revisionism. When is deception of the people ever okay? I’m waiting for the day the Thought Police start showing up at scientists’ laboratories and homes arresting them for distributing ‘propaganda’ that doesn’t fit in with the contemporary party line.

“War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.” It’s all happening, people, and no, I’m not currently wearing a hat made out of tin foil.

Link [Reuters]

Photo: 1984comic.com

Lab Grown Meat: PETA’s Contest is Lame, Pointless

PETA is at it again, and if you didn’t groan at least internally when you heard that, perhaps they’ve pushed you past your give-a-shit limit. They put out a press release announcing that they’d give a $1 million reward to the first person who can successfully ‘grow’ chicken in a lab without harming animals. From PETA.org:

In vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce. The result would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten. Some promising steps have been made toward this technology, but we’re still several years away from having in vitro meat be available to the general public.

At first when I heard this, I thought it was just another one of PETA’s publicity stunts: putting out something shocking to draw attention to an issue. As a vegetarian since the age of 12 and someone who cares deeply about animal rights, I’ve never been a fan of PETA and this sort of thing is exactly why. PETA frustrates me because they have a noble goal but they’re turning the entire animal rights issue into a freak show replete with naked celebrities, buckets of blood and gross-out tactics that turn off the general public rather than achieving anything real.

Unfortunately, they’re serious. They really want someone to make this work. So, why is this lab-grown chicken contest a bad thing? You may wonder why a vegetarian would be anything less than thrilled about the idea of fewer animals being harmed on a daily basis (and, after all, livestock farms are certainly not good for the planet).

Basically, this contest isn’t going to accomplish anything. First of all, $1 million wouldn’t even cover the expenses required to pull this off. Not only would researchers have to spend literally years working on this project, the contest requires them to do near-impossible sales and marketing tasks beyond the scope of science. Daniel Engber of Slate describes it well:

…they need to move 2,000 pounds of the stuff at supermarkets and chain restaurants spread out across 10 states during a period of three months. And the Franken-meat can’t cost more than regular chicken…

To make matters worse, PETA’s commercial requirements saddle researchers with demands that have nothing to do with science. Any company that wants to sell artificial chicken for public consumption will probably face a lengthy government-review process.

In short, PETA is asking for the impossible. Any researcher who puts a serious amount of thought into this contest will most likely realize that they simply don’t have the time or funds to accomplish the lab-meat feat.

This ‘lab grown meat’ stunt is just another example of PETA making vegetarians look bad, in my opinion. I can’t imagine that ‘Franken-meat’ would be all that appetizing to meat-eaters anyway, but you tell me: would you eat it?

Link [PETA] + [Slate]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons & Flickr user karindalziel

How Now See Through Cow- Front Row View on a Bovine Stomach

Behold the fistula.

It’s guaranteed to creep people out, but in the world of cows and other such creatures, it’s routine. “Animals can live a surprising amount of time with a permanent hole to their stomach, especially if it is a surgically made fistula.” There is a reason:

Agricultural scientists learn about the digestive system of cattle by putting holes in cows–and the cows stay alive and well. These cows (fitted with a sealing cover called a “cannula”) each have a hole into their stomach. Through this hole one can extract food caught mid-stream through the digestive system.

Fistulated cows are used to research the digestibility of different foodstuffs for cattle. One can feed the cow, then later catch the food while it’s digesting to see how it’s doing. Without fistulated cows, one would have to look at external factors in order to garner information about the best food for cows–none of which are as accurate as food sampled right from the stomach.

The site explains that cows with fistulas live longer since it’s easier to treat them when they have illnesses in their digestive systems. I can add that a fistulated cow is liable to have a long life because she’s more valuable. Apart from giving milk, having a fistula is the nearest thing, in a cow, to having a useful talent.

I know about these things because it so happens that, in my life, fistulas are pretty routine. I work at UC Davis, where we have a big experimental dairy herd, and a number of the cows are fistulated. Although, jeez–the fistulas in these photographs are huge compared to ours. They’re like portholes. You expect to see someone inside the cow, peering out.

Link [Oddity Central]

Watch Five Hours of Cable News, Get One Minute of Environmental or Science Coverage

We’re pleased to welcome new writer Anders Porter, a blogger, journalist, and Swedish/English translator from California currently living in Sweden. He blogs on his person website at Anders Porter dot com. This is his first post, so feel free to verbally haze his noob ass.

When I think of cable news, I think of broad, fair, and unbiased reporting. (Insert Fox News joke here.)

I take comfort in knowing that when I flip over to my MSNBC or my CNN, that the talking heads are going to take care of me, that they will dish out what I need, spoon feed me with my news food groups, if you know what I mean.

Well, according to the analysis of cable TV news coverage as reported in the 2008 Annual Report on American Journalism, the cable news networks are definitely living up to their promise of feeding their peeps. That is, of course, if you’re the kind of peep that munches on nothing nothing but politics, foreign policy debate and crime. If you’re looking for a little lettuce and tomato, that’s right – coverage of education, science and, oh yeah – THE ENVIRONMENT – then you gonna be sitting in front of that box for a long, long, long, long time. Uh-huh. Long time.

Turns out that during a five hour non-stop cable news marathon, it is likely that you will see 35 minutes about campaigns and elections and 1 minute and 25 seconds about the environment.

Sweeeeet. Nice to know we have our priorities worked out.

Link [2008 Anual Report on American Journalism] Via Framing Science