inkycircus

In space no-one can hear you scream

We depend on the Sun for life, but it an unpredictable master. Every now and again it flings out bundles of joy known as Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), which can do an awful lot of damage when they slam into our vulnerable little planet. The CMEs can produce magnetic storms that could have the power to knock our gadget-heavy lifestyle back into the dark ages. Most of the CMEs aren't anything like that powerful, in fact they happen reasonably often and usually don't do that damage. But they can do some damage, including messing with our satellites and electrical transmission lines. Which is why it's interesting news that a team at SOHO (The Solar and Heloispheric Observatory) have discovered that the really big ones are preceded by radio 'screams' from the Sun. Here's how it works:

Strong CME shocks accelerate electrons in the solar wind, which in turn produce the radio signal. The same strong shock must also accelerate atomic nuclei in the solar wind, which produce the radiation storm.

The radio signal moves at the speed of light, but the particles lag behind. So we can 'hear' the scream and know that the CME isn't far behind. The article from the European Space Agency explains how the early warning system could be helpful (and has a nice clear explanation of the phenomenon) - if astronauts are showboating around on the outside of spacecrafts they could be told to get inside rightaway to be protected from the extra radiation. Handy indeed. But seeing as how the Sun is quite big and we are quite small, if a big ejection is on the way it's not like we can say 'Umbrellas up! CME a-coming' just yet...

PHOTO: ETAC

Fiddling with the food chain

Is is ok to kill a shark to save a seal? Not an easy decision to make. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration thinks it's ok, and is currently seeking permission from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to kill 10 sharks in the coming year. The seal in question is the Hawaiian Monk Seal, and the shark is the Galapagos Shark.

The justification for the plan is that the monk seal is classified as endangered (IUCN - Hawaiian Monk Seals) and the sharks are not. They've asked for and got permission to do this before, so they clearly think it's a good way to protect the few seals that are left.

The sharks don't give an arse for the IUCN red list, or the fact that we meddlesome humans think that Monk Seals are cute and worthy of protection. We see an endangered species, they see lunch. Protecting endangered species is never a straightforward task, because the animals are never killed 'just because'. If a poacher has killed an elephant, he's not done it just to be mean. He's done it because the ivory is obscenely valuable and he can make a large amount of money from it. If we stop him, his livelihood is gone. And in stepping in to protect a disappearing species, you sometimes have to take extreme steps, like sacrificing one group of animals for another.

However, the shark is classified as near-threatened (IUCN - Galapagos Shark) meaning it is not vulnerable now but is likely to be in the near future. I would therefore hope that anyone making decisions like this has the mantra Beware The Cane Toad echoing their heads the whole time as an example of when we can get it wrong. We as a species do not have a particularly good track record in meddling with the natural world. But with that in mind, it is possible to get it right, and hopefully the NOAA will manage to do just that for the seals.

(PHOTO: PKEMP)

How to pick a headline

In today's list of 'Most Popular' stories on BBC News (as you will see from the screenshot above) is a story with the headline "Star dies in monstrous explosion". When I first noticed it, my mind immediately jumped to an entirely understandable (I feel) conclusion. Despite my interest in all things science, as I clicked on the link to read more, I was already speculating as to which famous person had died, and what had happened to them. Was it an actor? A singer? Some other flavour of celebrity? And how bad was the accident that the explosion would be described as monstrous? But once the page had loaded, I don't mind admitting that my first feeling was of deflation. No tragic Hollywood death today. Just a boring old star exploding to make a supernova. But once I was there, I decided to stay around to read about the explosion of SN 2006gy, the biggest supernovae ever. And about the star in the Milky Way called Eta Carinae that could at some point explode too, creating a truly spectacular light show. If it were to go bang, "it would be so bright that you would see it during the day, and you could even read a book by its light at night". So whatever my motives in clicking on that link, I'm glad I did. Which reiterates the key importance of a catchy (and maybe even slightly ambiguous) headline for any news story.

(PS - I console myself by thinking that it's reasonably unlikely I was the only person to make this mistake. Even though space and star stories always catch the attention, they aren't usually quite so high up in the most popular list...)

Star trekkin' across the universe

You can always tell it's a special day when Google goes all themed, and today is no exception. On the 12th of April in 1961, soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin made history and became the first person ever in space. Most people in the world were delighted, one notable exeption probably being American Alan Shepherd who missed out on claiming the title by a mere 23 days. Yuri did one leisurely loop of the Earth in Vostok 1, then landed just under two hours later. He apparently landed in a field in front of a farmer and his daughter, scaring the life out of them. In an attempt to reassure them, he is meant to have said "I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow". That seems typical of his straightforward style, while he was up in space, he is reported to have said things like "I am feeling fine. I am in good spirits. I feel splendid. The craft is operating normally." I can't helping thinking that if that were me who was the first person in space there'd be a lot more swearwords involved, but maybe that's one of the many reasons I'm not an astronaut...

Diminutive 5 ft 2 Yuri never lived to see NASA steal back the lead in the space race by sending the first men to the moon in 1969 - he died tragically in a plane crash in 1968. As recognition of his stellar acheivement, Yuri has a couple of commemorative coins bearing his likeness, a crater on the dark side of the moon, an asteroid, a town near to where he was born, numerous streets and squares, and the Cosmonaut Training Facility in Star City named after him. He also has his own mineral, gagarinite, and a 40ft titanium statue in Moscow. Nobody could ever say that Russia is not proud of it's trailblazing son - their very own Columbus of the Cosmos. Happy Anniversary, Yuri, wherever you are.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

PHOTO: ELIAS MINASI
Scientific literacy is at an all time high in the US. It now stands at a paltry 28% - up from an abominable 10% circa 1980.

Still, there's trouble down the line. According to the latest International Mathematics & Science Study from 2003, 4th graders in the US outperformed kids from at least 13 other countries out of 45. By the time they got to 8th grade, American students fared better and were ranked 15th best in Math know-how and 9th best in Science (again out of 45 countries). Still, across the board, American kids were creamed by those from Japan, China, Korea, and Hungary. Some of you may find it hard to believe that the world's political and economic leader produces such substandardly educated tots.

Look no further than Science Humour's collection of quotes from 11 year old science exams as a case in point.

A smattering of comic, and in turn tragic, quotes:

"Liter: A nest of young puppies."
"Magnet: Something you find crawling all over a dead cat."
"Momentum: What you give a person when they are going away."
"Planet: A body of Earth surrounded by sky. "
"Rhubarb: A kind of celery gone bloodshot."
"Vacumm: A large, empty space where the pope lives."

Forensic nuclearology

The same despot who is referred to as the "Master of the Computer Who Surprised the World" and "Eternal Bosom of Hot Love" by the international community (see Harper's for more bullshit titles) blew up a nuclear bomb on Monday.

While the politicians are busy urging UN actions, sanctions, and Kim-Jong-Il-is-a-bastard factions, scientists are busy sussing out exactly what blew up last week in North Korea. Test nukes are often detonated underground to stem radioactive pollution and ensure a degree of secrecy. The explosion triggers a unique pattern of shockwaves which are caught by seismic sensors. But no one knows for sure how big the blast was and whether it was indeed nuclear.

USGS clocked an an explosion of 4.2 on the richter scale near the surface some 40 miles north of Kimchaek, N.Korea. Estimates of the blast's strength place it at 500-2,000 tons of TNT, small fry as far as nukes go. Manhattan Project veteran Wolfgang Panofsky told USA Today that "most likely they tried to get a larger yield and things went wrong." Also measurements of airborne radioactivity, which spike after a nuclear explosion, haven't come in yet. Arms Control Wonk doesn't mince his words about it: "NHK and Yonhap have both reported on what Japan and South Korea have found in the atmosphere after the DPRK’s Monday test: bagel."

For more info read the BBC's Factfile: Underground nuclear testing and check out the Washington Post's FAQ on Verifying Nuclear Test Blasts . For a running well informed update on it all, keep tabs on Arms Control Wonk.

And to laugh about it all watch The End of The World. Zee aynd.

Toxalicious!

This is a note to all of you considering Botox...that Absolutely Fabulous chemical, which, when injected superficially into the face, kills those wrinkly muscles dead! But please remember not to squirt any in your juice. Because "lethal paralyzing neurotoxin party" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Fruit juice - good for the brain?

DOESN'T IT MAKE YOU THIRSTY JUST LOOKING AT IT? (PHOTO: CJCJ).

Fruit juice is great. It tastes nice, it gives you your daily dose of vitamins and apparently it can protect you from Allzheimers. That's according to the results of a 10 year study recently completed by scientsts at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Qi Dai and colleauges found 1836 dementia-free patients in Seattle, and assessed what they ate and their cognitive function over a decade, paying particular attention to fruit and veg intake.

After controlling for a range of other lifestyle factors such as smoking, diet, exercise and physical activity, the researchers identified a key variable in onset of dementia - intake of fruit juice. Patients who drank fruit juice more than three times a week (they did not specify the type) were 76% less likely to suffer from Alzheimers. 76% is a massive amount, and if it really is due to the juice this is an important finding.

The caution here is the usual one about causation and correlation. The people who drank the juice could have been doing something else right too, like exercising their brain by doing the crossword while they drank their juice. The scientists plan to follow up their study by testing the effect of the ingredient in the juice that they believe is the magic bullet - polyphenols. It's been suggested before that polyphenols help to protect the brain (eg in Green tea via NCNI, or in apples via Sciencedaily), so this might be one step nearer to confirming that. Until they do confirm it, drink juice. And tea. Just to be safe. And because they're nice.

Via The Times, and Eurekalert.

Laws againts homosexuality - a real crime

(PHOTO: DKG)

Every now and then I read something in the news that makes me wonder what decade/century/parallel universe we live in. Sort of like when South Dakota banned abortions, US money for AIDS prevention in Africa gave the kibosh to condoms, pharmacists refuse to dole out emergency contraception and old birth control pills or when the money for sex-ed in the US is going towards abstinence training, ONLY.

Today I learned that the practice of homosexuality in India is actually still illegal (a very with-it kind of law dating back to 1861). According to AIDS activists, it's forcing the gay community underground and leading to dramatic rises in infection rates; because they are hidden, they don't get the information, education and CONDOMS necessary to keep a burgeoning epidemic at bay. 8% of Indian gays have HIV, compared with 1% of the straight population. In total the country has 5.7 million infected, the largest national population in the world (South Africa is second with 5.5 million). The Indian health authority is moving to scrap the law. Bravo.

There is something similar between all of these examples, however. Telling someone they can't have sex, restricting their freedoms, access to education, birth control, abortions does NOT lower HIV infections, teen pregnancies, teen sexual activity rate etc. Countries with the best track record in all these categories, like Denmark, have loads of mandatory sex ed, free condoms and birth control and a national attitude towards sex that is the antithesis to all the Christian, right-wing, oppressive bull crap. It's time to take the hint.

"Henninger gotcha Hawking!"

Before we were celebrating Colbert's brass-balled attack on Bush at the White House Press Corps Dinner. This time he's dissing Stephen Hawking ("Hawking's such an a-hole" is the exact quote...) after Hawking suggested we go colonize the moon and mars asap since the end is nigh. Daniel Henninger, Deputy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, reacted on Fox News: "Now that's his opinion. I've seen pictures of the surface of the surface of the moon. And personally I think I'm going to stay right here on earth and try and tough it out." Hear hear.

VIA Transbuddha