Star Walk
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The most astonishing app I have ever seen
You just hold the iPad up to the sky... or down at the floor!... and it shows you what the sky looks like there! Jawdropping.
I did not know exactly why Cepheid variables varied the way they do
And then I heard this on a podcast and said "Doh!"
From Wikipedia
The accepted explanation for the pulsation of Cepheids is called the Eddington valve,[11] or κ-mechanism, where the Greek letter κ (kappa) denotes gas opacity.
Helium is the gas thought to be most active in the process. Doubly-ionized helium (helium whose atoms are missing two electrons) is more opaque than singly-ionized helium. The more helium is heated, the more ionized it becomes.
At the dimmest part of a Cepheid's cycle, the ionized gas in the outer layers of the star is opaque, and so is heated by the star's radiation, and due to the increased temperature, begins to expand. As it expands, it cools, and so becomes less ionized and therefore more transparent, allowing the radiation to escape. Then the expansion stops, and reverses due to the star's gravitational attraction. The process then repeats.
The mechanics of the pulsation as a heat-engine was proposed in 1917 by Arthur Stanley Eddington[12] (who wrote at length on the dynamics of Cepheids), but it was not until 1953 that S. A. Zhevakin identified ionized helium[13] as a likely valve for the engine.
Monday, August 9, 2010
LEDs go from 0 to 64% of lighting sales in Japan in one year
The Japanese economic newspapers are reporting that sales of LED light bulbs in Japan went from essentially zero in July of last year to 64% of sales now, about one out of five units sold.
The prices are dropping really fast.
The best ones I have tested so far are Panasonic EVERLEDS. At small specialty shops near Akihabara Station in Tokyo, they are now going for about $22. The warm white ones have output of 450 lumens for just 6.9 watts. Unbelievably nice. I think they are on track to drop to about $10 by next year. At the electricity rate in Tokyo of about 30 cents per kilowatt-hour, one will pay for itself in two months if used about 10 hours a day. After that, each will save $50 per year in electricity compared to a 60 watt incandescent if used about 10 hours a day.
I think there is going to be wholesale adoption in 2011 in Japan.
Next year, I think about 600 LED light bulb factories are going to come online, so prices should really drop and brightness should go up. Whatever you do, buy one first and test it. There are many issues to learn about before buying many.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
I don't understand people who lease their land for fracking natural gas production
It seems to me that many people do not understand that what makes their land worth something is a supply of water. By taking even $100,000 in exchange for fracking rights, I think they will wind up with a groundwater supply contaminated with heavy metals and volatiles for millennia, which in many cases will render their land worthless.
I think this will turn out to be The Last Delusion, the last time the US does enormous damage to itself instead of just ramping up energy efficiency and investing in alternatives. I already reduced the energy use of my house to 90% less than the energy use of the average US house with no change in living standard, so it can be done easily and for no cost in the long run if you plan what to do properly. I say this not to brag, but because people don't believe me. It can be done. It just takes a little planning. I could reduce this to zero with a $10,000 photovoltaic system, but I will wait as the price is continuing to collapse. If you think this is not possible, you will not spend the time learning how to make it possible, and then of course it will actually be impossible.
The fracking companies say there is no problem with groundwater contamination. And of course that is possible. But as we have seen, cutting corners and mistakes can lead to disaster in very short order. One way to confuse an issue is to discuss everything from a perfectly executed example that has nothing to do with actual execution in reality. During the Vietnam War, Agent Orange was sprayed over huge areas. The representatives of the manufacturers sat before Congress and said things like "Agent Orange does not cause cancer. Here is experimental proof." And what they were saying was technically true, but was a lie of distraction. What was sprayed on the jungles was not the extremely pure Agent Orange they were showing, but industrially produced Agent Orange which is far from pure and had many side products (unintended and undesirable molecules of different structure) that are impossible to completely remove at a reasonable cost. The Space Shuttle was supposed to be very safe and be lost in no more than 1 in 1,000 missions, but as we saw, the loss is more like 1 in 50.
Investing in energy efficiency is cheaper and safer and makes you way more than $100,000 in the long run.
I cannot believe that PBS Now and Bill Moyer's Journal have been cancelled. They have done us a wonderful service.
Monday, June 7, 2010
The Stanford Institute Prize proposition
“Economics is fundamentally about efficiently allocating resources so as to maximize the welfare of individuals.”
Why matter is what remains
The Fermi team sent protons and antiprotons into a head-on collision, which produced slightly more muons than antimuons.
So, for some reason, there is a slight excess of matter over antimatter, and when the matter and antimatter subsequently annihilate each other, a tiny excess of matter remains. And so The Glorious Accident was set in motion.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
In 1968...
"There can be no gain saying of the fact that our nation has brought the world to an awe inspiring threshold of the future. We've built machines that think and instruments that peer into the unfathomable ranges of interstellar space. We have built gargantuan bridges to span the seas and gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. And through our spaceships we have penetrated oceanic depths and through our airplanes we have dwarfed distance and placed time in chains. This really is a dazzling picture of America's scientific and technological progress. But in spite of this something basic is missing. In spite of all of our scientific and technological progress we suffer from a kind of poverty of the spirit that stands in glaring contrast to all of our material abundance.
...
Expediency asks the question, is it politic?
Vanity asks the question, is it popular?
But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right."
MLK
Monday, May 31, 2010
A thousand times better
You can tell we are getting to the sweet part of the exponential advance curve. Just look at how different the world is from around 2000.
No Google.
No YouTube.
Clunky computers.
Barely functional Internet.
Many things really expensive, like it cost $300,000,000 to sequence a genome. By around 2015, it will be around $1,000.
Note that things don't get slightly better these days, say twice as good; they get 10 times or 1,000 times better.
This pattern of obvious order(s)-of-magnitude improvement, OoMI (let's say it's pronounced "Oh, my!"), will be noted on this blog from time to time.
I have seen many examples of this recently, but so many things are happening that I cannot keep up even my reading... so posts have suffered recently.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Herbicide resistance
After 20 years of heavy use of herbicides such as Roundup, surprise! evolution! and the weeds have become so resistant that the herbicide is useless.
(I originally came across this story in the New York Times, but since they will soon be putting their stories behind a pay wall, I will no longer link to their articles. While they sit overestimating their own importance, the rest of the world will just move on.)
Adjusting dosage for an individual
You will soon, say by 2015 at the latest, be easily and cheaply be able to determine whether you need a low dose or a high dose for many drugs.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Audible audiobook quality 2, 3, 4, and e
If you are using an iPod with a lot of memory, audio file size is probably not an issue.
When you buy an audiobook at Audible.com, you can download the book at four separate sound qualities. The differences are quite apparent. At the lower qualities, when you listen at 2x, there is significant distortion and fluttering. However, at the highest quality, e, the sound is good even at 2x. Your default quality is probably set to 4, so you may want to try downloading an audiobook twice at different qualities to hear the difference. My default is now set at e.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
An iPod Touch is not just an iPod
I did not understand until I had had an iPod Touch for a while that it is not just an iPod. It is actually a completely independent computer.
The two major advantages for me:
It can play podcasts and audiobooks at double speed.
Apps!
I wish I had gotten one years ago. I had no idea it was like this... actually, maybe it should be called an iPadlet. That might better convey what it can do.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Maybe we can find extant lifeforms similar to the first life on Earth!
The world’s deepest drill is about to get taller—tall enough to dig into Earth's mantle. Already, the Chikyu research vessel is capable of fetching samples at depths of 23,000 feet below the seabed, two to four times that of any other drill. In 2007, off the coast of Japan, it became the first mission to study subduction zones, the area between tectonic plates that is the birthplace of many earthquakes. Over the next three years, scientists will tack on at least an extra mile of drill and attempt the most ambitious mission ever: piercing the Earth’s mantle. There, scientists expect to find the same conditions as those in the early Earth—and perhaps the same life-forms that thrived then.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/deepest-drill
The Swine Flu Really is worse
While seasonal flu deaths are in people aged 76 on average, the average age of people killed by swine flu was 37. So Simonsen also decided to calculate years of life lost to swine flu, a common measure for the impact of disease. She used the ages of people who died in 2009 and their life expectancy to calculate that the US lost nearly 2 million years of life to the pandemic - more than in the 1968 pandemic. By contrast, she calculates that 600,000 years of life are lost on average to seasonal flu.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Spitzer Space Telescope
The Spitzer Space Telescope site is jaw-dropping terrific!
Videos are available in good quality and also in high definition through iTunes.
For example, using the Spitzer Space Telescope, it was possible for astronomers to determine that, around a young Sunlike star 500 light-years away, dust in the circumstellar disc was undergoing melting and crystallization to form olivine crystals!
Although these are "podcasts", they are "video podcasts".
To subscribe in iTunes, click on the iTunes button below the video.
Earthquake in Chile
The damage to buildings in the recent earthquake in Chile was far worse than expected given the extremely strict building codes.
This does not bode well for the Pacific Northwest and for Japan.
Hayabusa might make it back to Earth!
This is unbelievable! The Hayabusa spacecraft, which was thought to be lost, is on its way to an Earth rendezvous this summer!
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Oh, oh... Export land model
As an energy exporter gains foreign exchange, its economy booms, and it consumes progressively more of the energy it produces. There is therefore less for sale on the world market, even if there is no change in production level.
Saudi Arabia’s booming economy and soaring demand for electricity is increasing the kingdom’s reliance on oil to produce power. By 2012, it may be using 1.2 million barrels a day – more than twice current levels -- to meet its electricity needs. This increasing use of oil is occurring because the Saudis’ natural gas production cannot keep up with power demand.
Compression of Morbidity
People are afraid of living a long time because they are afraid that that means they will be disabled for a long time, but it seems that what is happening is that the period of disability is remaining the same (or even shortening), while the functional lifespan is increasing.
And the average lifespan is increasing by 6 hours per day.
"We're living longer because people are reaching old age in better health," said demographer James Vaupel, author of a review article appearing in the March 25 edition of Nature. But once it starts, the process of aging itself -- including dementia and heart disease -- is still happening at pretty much the same rate. "Deterioration, instead of being stretched out, is being postponed."
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Red dwarfs
On one hand, they have very long lifespans.
On the other hand, they tend to flare a lot, which would not be good for the atmosphere of a planet in the habitable zone or the life on that planet.
Another complication is that cool red stars seem not to form certain chemicals which would favor life.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
LED lights are almost ready for a major transition
Within a few years, the prices of LED lights for general illumination will go way down, and the performance will go way up. There will then be a huge transition, and if there is minimum Jevon's paradox, we might actually get energy savings!
A kind of Jevon's paradox
If you make something more efficient, sometimes people just use more of it.
The US no longer controls the price of oil
...the twin peaks of oil production in 2005 and 2008 reveal that while the world was able to respond to a moderate price advance coming out of 2002, nearly all of the price action above 40.00 dollars a barrel starting in late 2004 did not produce more supply.
http://www.oilprice.com/article-the-us-no-longer-controls-the-price-of-oil-in-a-peak-oil-world.html
http://www.oilprice.com/article-the-us-no-longer-controls-the-price-of-oil-in-a-peak-oil-world.html
Hilarious
Critics have remained unconvinced, despite the fact that many still can't differentiate between Emily Howell's work and that of a human. For instance, one music-lover who listened to Emily Howell's work praised it without knowing that it had come from a computer program. Half a year later, the same person attended one of Cope's lectures at the University of California-Santa Cruz on Emily Howell. After listening to a recording of the very same concert he had attended earlier, he told Cope that it was pretty music but lacked "heart or soul or depth."
Thursday, March 18, 2010
More evidence of life on Mars as soon as 2012
Biological reactions often favor one isotope of an element over others. Such reactions can therefore leave signatures in the isotope ratios.
The Mars Science Laboratory rover is scheduled to land in 2012. It has a mass spectrometer that will be able to measure sulfur isotope abundances.
If sulfur 34 is depleted in sulfides compared to in sulfates, this would, on Earth, be an indication that microbes had converted the sulfates into sulfides.
If an asteroid is a threat to Earth
Instead of blowing it up, which might result in it reaggregating in a matter of hours,
If a sizeable asteroid is found heading towards Earth, one option is to nuke it. But too small a bomb would cause the fragments to fly apart only slowly, allowing them to clump together under their mutual gravity.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527514.700-terminator-asteroids-could-reform-after-nuke.html
mine it out of existence instead!
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
We overeat because food is now designed to make us overeat
"Higher sugar, fat and salt make you want to eat more."
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Maybe the banksters think the easy growth is over because the cheap oil is gone
I wonder if one reason the banksters are so intent on looting the system, in what at first glance seems to be unenlightened self-interest, is that they know really serious energy supply problems are coming, and there wont be any recovery in the future anyway, so they might as well get what they can get now and get in the lifeboats...
http://energyassociation.blogspot.com/2010/01/matthew-simmons-latest-presentation.html
http://energyassociation.blogspot.com/2010/01/matthew-simmons-latest-presentation.html
Tokyo Sky Tree broadcast tower
The first 1,000 feet is built... just 1,000 feet to go!
Hmm, usually, when a "tallest in the world" structure is built, it is a sign that an economic crash is coming right behind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Sky_Tree
http://www.tokyo-skytree.jp/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Sky_Tree
http://www.tokyo-skytree.jp/
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Intraterrestrial life
The biomass below the surface of the Earth easily that at the surface of the Earth.
While Mars, Ceres, the ice moons of the gas giant planets, and the ice dwarfs in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud may look barren at the surface, their subsurface environments are similar to subsurface environments on Earth, which we know teems with archaea at least.
The search for extraterrestrial life in the meantime focuses on intraterrestrial life.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Happy Birthday, Karen!
She would have made 60. What we missed over these many years we will never know.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Court stenographers alone make no sense
As another example of how inertia makes people do things that make no sense, the way notes are taken in court and other venues makes no sense. Of course we want typed transcripts, but since audio and video recording have dropped in cost to nearly nothing, why audio and video recording are not also made makes no sense whatsoever. But then why do judges still wear powdered wigs and black robes?
There is a difference between tradition and rigid lack of common sense.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Atmospheric blocking
Atmospheric blocking occurs 20-40 times each year and usually lasts 8-11 days ... blocking can trigger dangerous conditions, such as a 2003 European heat wave that caused 40,000 deaths. Blocking usually results when a powerful, high-pressure area gets stuck in one place and ... fronts behind them are blocked. Lupo believes that heat sources, such as radiation, condensation, and surface heating and cooling, have a significant role in a blocking's onset and duration. Therefore, planetary warming could increase the frequency and impact of atmospheric blocking.
http://www.physorg.com/news185719909.html
Friday, February 19, 2010
Bravo, Roger!
Every time I read a review by Roger Ebert at the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) I am amazed. He treats every movie as if it were fine literature... and what comes out of his pen can only be produced by love.
"The deep irony here is that all of our relationships in the real world are exactly like that, even without the benefit of Solaris. We do not know the actual other person. What we know is the sum of everything we think we know about them. Even empathy is perhaps of no use; we think it helps us understand how other people feel, but maybe it only tells us how we would feel, if we were them."
One of my favorites is his review of the recent remake of Solaris:
"The deep irony here is that all of our relationships in the real world are exactly like that, even without the benefit of Solaris. We do not know the actual other person. What we know is the sum of everything we think we know about them. Even empathy is perhaps of no use; we think it helps us understand how other people feel, but maybe it only tells us how we would feel, if we were them."
Have fun, Roger!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Some randomness in gene expression
Some of this variation may be due to environmental factors and the influence of other genes, but not all: It has been shown that genetically identical organisms living in the same environment can show variability in some incompletely penetrant traits.
...
"It's not just nature or nurture," says Alexander van Oudenaarden, leader of the research team and a professor of physics and biology at MIT. "There is a random component to this. Molecules bounce around and find each other probabilistically. It doesn't work like clockwork."
Monday, February 15, 2010
K D Lang
Hallelujah
Back in 1994, when lang was a surprise guest on Tony Bennett: MTV Unplugged, Bennettintroduced her by saying she was in a league of singers who are "blessed with a destiny."
"The three that come to mind: Billie Holiday,Edith Piaf, Hank Williams," Bennett said. "It goes beyond success. It becomes immortal.
...
The singer says her mom was determined to give music lessons to her four children.
"Every week on Thursday — and this is in the middle of Alberta in the winter — she would work all day and then drive four kids 60 miles one way through blizzards, and then sit there for two hours while we each had our half-hour lesson," lang says. "And then drive all the way back. We wouldn't get back 'til 7 o'clock. And she did that for maybe 20 years."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123416193
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Morality and religion
"For some, there is no morality without religion, while others see religion as merely one way of expressing one's moral intuitions."
Citing several studies in moral psychology, the authors highlight the finding that despite differences in, or even an absence of, religious backgrounds, individuals show no difference in moral judgments for unfamiliar moral dilemmas. The research suggests that intuitive judgments of right and wrong seem to operate independently of explicit religious commitments.
http://www.physorg.com/news184857515.html
Religious people are more likely than the non-religious to engage in prosocial behaviour – acts that benefit others at a personal cost – when it enhances the individual's reputation or when religious thoughts are freshly activated in the person's mind...
- Empirical data ... suggests there is more cooperation among religious societies than the non-religious, especially when group survival is under threat
-- Economic experiments indicate that religiosity increases levels of trust among participants
-- Psychology experiments show that thoughts of an omniscient, morally concerned God reduce levels of cheating and selfish behaviour
...
"One reason we now have large, cooperative societies may be that some aspects of religion – such as outsourcing costly social policing duties to all-powerful Gods – made societies work more cooperatively in the past."
...
The study also points out that in today's world religion has no monopoly on kind and generous behaviour. In many findings, non-believers acted as prosocially as believers. The last several hundred years has seen the rise of non-religious institutional mechanisms that include effective policing, courts and social surveillance.
"Some of the most cooperative modern societies are also the most secular," says Norenzayan. "People have found other ways to be cooperative – without God."
http://www.physorg.com/news142174482.html
Vancouver Olympics
And so, for a few moments, the world is joyous and bright, and we glimpse what we could be all the time and forever...
They may be three hours of prerecorded music and national schmaltz, a made-for-television spectacle that verges on becoming a religious rite instead of a mere celebration of sports. But unless you've actually seen one in person or marched in one, you can't really grasp the enormity of what is happening during the opening ceremonies when the world gathers for the Games.
Monday, February 8, 2010
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Perhaps the most fascinating story of the 20th century, and the foundation of the 21st. What Henrietta Lacks gave and continues to give to all humanity was known to only a few, and who she was was known to fewer still, but this superb book and audiobook will make her unforgettable. Love and tears, sacrifice and heartbreak, caring and unkindness, in a world long gone and yet still here. You will learn what she has done for each and every one of us, and you will be amazed.
Aloha, Henrietta, aloha.
Scroll down for interviews with the author and pictures.
The Hayflick limit and other aspects of long life
Saturday, February 6, 2010
The Solar Dynamics Observatory
The Sun is a variable star.
We need to understand solar dynamics for many reasons.
Changes in solar output can affect climate.
Solar storms can fry satellites, endanger astronauts, and cause huge blackouts.
In 1859, there was a HUGE solar flare directed at Earth. For a few minutes, the brightness of the Sun doubled. When the coronal mass ejection reached Earth hours later, auroras were seen as far south as Hawaii and Cuba; telegraph equipment caught fire.
If this were to happen now, it would be catastrophic.
It was a once-in-500-year event, so not very rare...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_031027.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/do-not-adjust-your-sets-solar-storms-could-cause-blackouts-at-olympics-1887630.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_031027.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/do-not-adjust-your-sets-solar-storms-could-cause-blackouts-at-olympics-1887630.html
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Completely the opposite
And I would add that addresses are written from the largest to the smallest.
COUNTRY
Zipcode
Prefecture City
District number-number-number
Name of building
Person to whom the letter is addressed
so
JAPAN
111-1111
Hokkaido Yukimura
Yukicho 1-2-3
Snow Hall
John Smith Mr.
Einstein letter up for auction
"The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."
"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
Albert Einstein
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion
Half of adults are vitamin D deficient
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/the-miracle-of-vitamin-d-sound-science-or-hype/?em
Each of us really needs to go out in direct sunlight at least 10 minutes per day or go to a tanning salon for about 15 minutes once a week. We also need to eat oily fish like sardines and mackerel at least a couple of times a week.
Howard Zinn
A brief excerpt from his book. The audiobook, excerpts from the book, read by Matt Damon, is superb.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The most entertaining history of science and technology programs of all time
James Burke brings the history of science and technology to life as only he can. Humorous, exciting, and profound, an amazing tour of the accidental origins of the miraculous world in which we live.
Connections
Connections2
Connections3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)
and
The Day the Universe Changed
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Elizabeth Warren explains the basic problem in 8 minutes
Best summary in a few minutes of what is going wrong. You should also listen to her other longer speeches.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Could increasing rates of autism be due to increased degree of assortive mating?
I think that increasing rates of autism is a real phenomenon. Some of the increase may be due to improved diagnosis, but even if that effect were excluded, I think a real increase remains.
I do not think that vaccines are causing the increase in rates. When mercury preservatives were discontinued in the vaccines, the rates did not go down. When the MMR was given separately, the rates did not go down.
Clearly in extreme autism cases, something is wrong even prenatally, and children at high risk of autism have unusually large heads even before they receive any vaccines.
If the effect is real, what then could be causing it? I can think of three possible causes that would be so far removed from the effect that it is very difficult to determine the relationship between the cause(s) and the effect.
1. Low vitamin D levels. Serum vitamin D levels have plummeted for generations now that children spend more time indoors and their parents do not work outdoors the way nearly everyone did a century ago.
2. Imprinting. Effects of diet and other environmental factors can cause genes to be turned or off, particularly at the time the sperm and eggs are made. This gene tagging is known to extend as far as three generations.
3. Increasing rates of assortive mating.
I think the rates of assortive mating have increased dramatically because a century ago, only a small percentage of people went to college, and the colleges were often all-male.
Now, about 50% in the US go to college, and about 25% finish college.
Many people meet their spouses in college.
If a man with an IQ of 130 and a woman with an IQ of 130 marry, it is possible that the risk of the offspring being homozygous for one or more genes relating to autism would increase dramatically. The risk might be even higher if they both have IQs of 150.
This would explain this.
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