Get this blog via RSSApril 01, 2011
An amazing Kepler image puts planetary discoveries into perspective
Below is the most amazing image you'll see today.
As you may recall, scientists released the first batch of data from the planet-seeking Kepler probe in February. After just a few months of searching they identified 1,235 objects that are likely planets, and of those, the 68 smallest range from the size of Mars to slightly larger than Earth.
The photo below (click it for a much larger image) is an illustration to represent exactly what this means in terms of stars and planets discovered.
 Jason Rowe/Kepler |
The Kepler observatory tracks incoming light from some 155,000 stars, looking for periodic dimming when a planet in each system might cross in front of the star, known as a transit.
By understanding the size and mass of a star, the astronomers can estimate the size of a planet by the amount of dimming during a transit. In a system with multiple planets transiting the star, they can weigh each planet by the amount it tugs on the orbit of other planets.
In the image above Jason Rowe, of NASA's Kepler Science Team, has shown all of Kepler's planet candidates in transit with their parent stars ordered by size from top left to bottom right. The Sun is shown at the same scale, by itself below the top row on the right. In silhouette against the Sun's disk, both Jupiter and Earth are in transit.
In the illustration simulated stellar disks and the silhouettes of transiting planets are all shown at the same relative scale, with estimated star colors. Some stars show more than one planet in transit, but it's difficult to spot the smaller planets.
Needless to say I eagerly await further data from Kepler.
Posted by Eric Berger at 12:15 PM in Astronomy
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The $93,000 question: What's the value of a few months of life?
This week Medicare officials said they would include the relatively new treatment Provenge among the drugs paid for by the government-backed healthcare plan. The drug, which costs $93,000 for a full treatment, typically extends the life of a man suffering from prostate cancer by four months.
Essentially, then, the government is saying it will pay nearly $100,000 to give older men a few extra months of life. I'm going to try and give the case for and against this decision. Then I'd like to know whether it's something you believe the government should support.
FOR PROVENGE: We can't put a price on life. The new therapy has mild side effects compared to other prostate cancer treatments, so the four months are generally good quality-of-life months. This is the first of a new class of cancer "vaccines," and funding it will encourage drug companies to develop longer lasting vaccines. Medicare is legally prohibited from considering price when deciding whether to pay for a new treatment.
AGAINST PROVENGE: Health care costs are by far the biggest threat to the nation's fiscal health, and this is an expensive treatment the public simply can't afford. This decision mirrors the bias of the overall U.S. health system, which emphasizes expensive treatments over basic medical care. The decision could be calculated to shield Medicare and President Obama, from criticisms of healthcare rationing.
 Dendreon |
The bottom line, then, is whether we should be paying for a drug with limited benefits at a time when our long-term fiscal solvency is in question.
Posted by Eric Berger at 07:09 AM in Health, Science policy
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March 31, 2011
Helicopters playing ping pong ... welcome to the future
The video below of quadrocopters juggling has been making the rounds among geeks, futurists, robot nerds and other lovers of technology.
These autonomous flying machines, based upon Ascending Technologies' quadrotor technology, were developed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
By using a sophisticated motion capture system, the robotic copters can use location data to make extremely precise motions in real time. Just watch for yourself.
Now it's all well and good when the robots decide to play with balls. But one might very easily imagine more nefarious activities for such deft machines.
Found via crunchgear.
Posted by Eric Berger at 07:15 AM in The Future
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March 30, 2011
After locking into orbit around Mercury, probe dazzles with images
Yesterday NASA's Messenger probe released the first image it acquired of Mercury, and today it's released several more.
Among the highlights:
 NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab/Carnegie Institution of Washington |
This never-before-imaged area of Mercury's surface near its north pole was taken from an altitude of 280 miles during the spacecraft's first orbit with the camera in operation. The area is covered in secondary craters made by an impact outside of the field of view. Some of the secondary craters are oriented in chain-like formations.
 NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab/Carnegie Institution of Washington |
Bright rays, consisting of impact ejecta and secondary craters, spread across and radiate from Debussy crater, located at the top. The image, acquired Tuesday during the first orbit for which the camera was imaging, shows just a small portion of Debussy's large system of rays in greater detail than ever previously seen.
 NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab/Carnegie Institution of Washington |
The wide-angle camera is not a typical color camera. It can image in 11 colors, ranging from visible through near-infrared. In this image the 1000 nm, 750 nm, and 430 nm filters are displayed in red, green, and blue, respectively. Several craters appear to have excavated compositionally distinct low-reflectance (brown-blue in this color scheme) material, and the bright rays of Hokusai crater to the north cross the image.
This is just the beginning for the Messenger probe, which will acquire 75,000 images of our solar system's smallest planet during the next year.
Posted by Eric Berger at 01:52 PM in Astronomy
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If UT values basic research, why isn't its news office promoting the hard sciences?
A rather large imbroglio engulfed the University of Texas and its academic research in recent days after the UT System Board of Regents hired Rick O'Donnell as a "special adviser."
The university's alumni group, the Texas Exes, denounced the move (see their letter) as O'Donnell had "publicly stated the fundamental view that academic research is not valuable" and proposed a formula that excluded research in valuing faculty.
Under pressure from the alumni group and some legislators, O'Donnell was reassigned and will be gone for good by summer's end.
Politics are involved. O'Donnell is closely connected to a recent appointee by Perry to the UT Board of Regents, fellow Coloradan Alex Cranberg, who contributed $4,200 to O'Donnell in his failed 2006 Colorado congressional bid. O'Donnell also is connected to a prominent Perry donor, Jeff Sandefer, who contributed $100,000 to Perry in the last election cycle.
Now I wholeheartedly disagree with the notion that academic research is not valuable, and there's no question of its economic benefits and the importance of training a new generation of researchers. For that reason I'm glad O'Donnell is no longer a special adviser to the regents.
With that being said, I can easily see how some people might take a cursory look at the research being done by the University of Texas and express skepticism about its value. At least if they're perusing the main campus in Austin's web site.
Take a look at the news releases tagged as "research" recently issued by the University of Texas news media center. Note that this is the primary site for university issued news releases, and these releases are the ones most widely distributed to reporters.
Here are the titles of some of the "research" news releases since Jan. 1:
• Beautiful People Are Happier, Economists Find
• Psychologists Find the Meaning of Aggression
• Men More Likely to Stick with Girlfriends Who Sleep with Other Women than Other Men, Research Shows
• Growing Economy Sparks Change in Chinese Mating Preferences, Research Shows
• Young Adults' Sexual Relationships Increasingly Favor Men, Research Finds
Now I'm sure some of these news releases cover research that's scientifically valid, but it's easy to see how someone skeptical about the value of the university's research would have his or her opinion confirmed after looking at the university's web site.
Having gotten an education from the University of Texas and majored in astronomy, I'm reasonably sure the news releases cited above are not representative of the broad base of basic research at Texas in chemistry, physics, nanoscience, engineering and a host of technical fields.
But instead of promoting this kind of science on its main news page for research, the university has instead selected a lot of studies on sex and beauty. To use magazines as an example, the university is portraying itself as People rather than Scientific American.
This may be a sound strategy to attract more eyeballs and perhaps more coverage from the news media, but in my opinion it reflects poorly on the university's research establishment, and is certainly not the kind of work one would promote for an institution that aspires to be the nation's foremost research university.
More science and less sex, please.
Posted by Eric Berger at 07:17 AM in Academia
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March 29, 2011
The Big Question: Should research be government supported?
In Texas some government officials believe the state should not support scientific research that does not provide immediate benefits, and that university research is harmful to teaching.
Earlier there has been a similar sentiment afoot in Great Britain that would require academic researchers to justify the economic value of their work before receiving funding.
This week's question, then, is whether all federally supported research in the United States should be justified economically. That is, is funding basic research for the sake of basic research justified?
I think it's a relevant question given this country's economic difficulties and concern in some political corners about activities at NOAA, the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies.
I have very strong personal feelings about the topic I'll address later this week, but for now I want to sound the views of my readers.
Posted by Eric Berger at 11:51 AM in Academia, Great questions
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Much more on the amazing use of electricity to put out fires
Some readers expressed a burning desire to read more about the seemingly magical fire wand briefly described here on Sunday, so I tracked down one of the scientists who led the work.
Ludovico Cademartiri, a postdoctoral fellow in the research group of George Whitesides, a highly respected chemist at Harvard University, was happy to oblige. As it happens, the potential uses of this technique go far beyond fire control.
Here, then, is my conversation with Cademartiri, who insists I didn't butcher his name.
Tell me exactly what you did in the lab to demonstrate this phenomenon.
The experiments were fairly simple. We generated a methane flame that is tall and thin. Then we generated an electric field in the vicinity of the flame. To do that we used an electrode or metal wire covered with an insulator, which we pointed at the base of the flame. The wire was connected to a high voltage amplifier and the result of this setup is that we exposed the flame to an oscillating field gradient. The response of the flame was that, in certain conditions, especially at very high fields and frequencies, the flame would be literally pushed away from the burner and put out. It was a very strong effect compared to anything that has been shown before in regard to electric fields and flames.
What did you think when the flame went out the first time?
I thought "Well, that's weird." As a scientist you find it fascinating, but you have to control your emotions and ask how nature is trying to deceive you. I was thinking, "What is wrong with this experiment? What did I do wrong?"
How strong was the electric field?
The electric field we used was on the order of a megavolt per meter, which is close to the breakdown of air. It's essentially the field you witness whenever you get a spark on your fingers when you try to open a door.
 The first time the fire went out, Cademartiri thought something had gone wrong. |
Like if you get a shock from someone or something?
Yeah.
So it doesn't take that much energy to generate that kind of an electrical field.
The energy that goes into a system of this kind comes from two sources. One is the voltage. And the other one, that turns out to be more important, is the current. Essentially in order to oscillate a voltage on an electrode you have to drive a current through the electrode. Then this current will increase with the size of an electrode, so if you have a larger electrode, you would need more current to bring it to a higher potential. Our amplifiers were 600 watts, that's the power required. We think that, from of our experiment, the results wouldn't change too much if we decreased the current by 50 percent or so. But we haven't looked into it yet, and we have a lot of work to do.
How large was the methane flame?
It was larger than a Bunsen burner. The geometry of the flame was the same, it was conical. The largest flame we could fit in our setup was 50 centimeters tall, that's a foot and a half. We only now are starting to look at how this effect scales with the size of the flame.
Where did the idea come from? One does not think commonly of using electricity to fight fire.
The strategy of looking at flames in unconventional ways came from Professor Whitesides. There is a history of scientific reports on the effects of electric fields on flames, but the effects were very small because people were using DC voltage, fields that are static over time. What we discovered is that by applying an oscillation field, AC voltage, the effects are completely different.
Continue reading "Much more on the amazing use of electricity to put out fires"
Posted by Eric Berger at 07:10 AM in Chemistry
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March 28, 2011
The heavens ... revealed
A reader passed along a link to this rather amazing time-lapse video of the sky over an entire night from an observatory in Chile above 16,000 feet.
The most amazing fact I've heard about this observatory, the ALMA Array Operations Site, is that the Milky Way Galaxy shines so brightly at night that you cast a shadow when it's high in the sky. Now that is a dark sky.
The flashes on the ground, if you were wondering, are the car lights of the guards patrolling the site.
Our distant ancestors may have lived in caves and had brutish, short lives, but I do envy them their dark skies. It's no wonder that astronomy was the first real science to develop.
Posted by Eric Berger at 01:48 PM in Astronomy
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Weekly Weather: Finally, some cooler weather and a chance of rain
Welcome to your Monday morning weather update, in which I'll attempt to sum up the immediate past, present and future of weather on the bayou. After a very warm stretch of weather Houston will see a return to near normal temperatures this week. The weekend weather for the Final Four should be near ideal.
PAST
Houston completed yet another very warm, dry week. This month has an outside chance to end as one of the 10 warmest Marches on record.
Average temperatures were 11 degrees above normal -- temperatures characteristic of mid-May, not March -- and we received not a drop of rain. If you're ready for a cold front, raise your hand.
The following plot pretty much tells the story of our prevailing weather during the past six weeks. Our temperatures have remained, for the most part, well above normal and we've received very little rain such that we now have a deficit of several inches.
 |
As we've discussed previously, the dry weather extends across nearly the entirety of Texas, with more than 92 percent of the state mired in a drought. More than 64 percent of the state is in a severe drought, or worse.
There's a chance -- just a chance, mind you -- we'll get some relief this week. See the section below for more on that.
Anyway, let's do the numbers for last week.
| Date | High T | Low T | Average | Departure | Rainfall |
| Monday | 82 | 65 | 74 | +11 | 0.00 |
| Tuesday | 82 | 68 | 75 | +11 | 0.00 |
| Wednesday | 85 | 69 | 77 | +13 | 0.00 |
| Thursday | 83 | 62 | 73 | +9 | 0.00 |
| Friday | 83 | 65 | 74 | +10 | 0.00 |
| Saturday | 86 | 71 | 79 | +15 | 0.00 |
| Sunday | 85 | 64 | 70 | +7 | 0.00 | Average | 83.7 | 66.4 | 75.0 | +11.0 | 0.00 |
PRESENT
This week's weather begins on a cool note.
Forecasters had been unsure whether a front would push all the way off the coast, but it has, bringing a surge of modestly cooler air into the Houston area. It will be short-lived as the frontal boundary should begin to push back north later today as a warm front.
That will set the stage for this week's main event, say forecasters with the Houston/Galveston office of the National Weather Service. A stronger cold front is expected to move through late Tuesday and early Wednesday morning, bringing a decent chance of rain and pleasant weather.
How much rain might we get? At this time the best guess is one-tenth to three-quarters of an inch, with greater amounts to the northeast of Houston and lesser amounts to the southwest.
The latest quantitative precipitation forecast for the next five days shows our area on the western fringes of a large storm system.
 National Weather Service |
The rain, if we get any, should begin to ebb by Wednesday evening or Thursday morning, with temperatures settling into highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s for a few days. Prior to this morning, it had been nearly two weeks since Houston has seen a night in the 50s.
Friday through Sunday should see sunny skies with highs returning to the upper 70s and then low 80s. From this vantage point it looks like a fine weekend ahead for hoops and celebrations appertaining thereto.
FUTURE
Wednesday (March 30) is the climatological date after which there's just a 10 percent chance of a freeze occurring at Bush Intercontinental Airport.
Given that the long-range forecast shows fairly warm weather for the next two weeks, I'd say the chance of the Houston metro area seeing a freeze again this year is near zero. So if you've been holding off planting -- and I doubt you have -- I'd say do so no longer.
SUMMARY
This week's scale goes from 0 to 600, the power requirements, in watts, of an electrical-field "wand" chemists used to douse a fire. Electricity apparently is the new water.
My number: 472.
FINE PRINT
As always, thank you to the fine professionals at the National Weather Service for the information and data that make this weekly blog entry possible. Also, bear in mind there's always uncertainty in weather forecasting, particularly the timing and intensity of precipitation.
Posted by Eric Berger at 06:46 AM in Weather
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March 27, 2011
Scientists use a Harry Potter-like wand to tame fire
This is so wild I don't even know where to begin. And it's a Sunday, so I'm pretty much going to pass this news release through verbatim:
 |
Scientists today described a discovery that could underpin a new genre of fire-fighting devices, including sprinkler systems that suppress fires not with water, but with zaps of electric current, without soaking and irreparably damaging the contents of a home, business, or other structure.
"Controlling fires is an enormously difficult challenge," said Harvard chemist Ludovico Cademartiri, who reported on the research. "Our research has shown that by applying large electric fields we can suppress flames very rapidly. We're very excited about the results of this relatively unexplored area of research."
Firefighters currently use water, foam, powder and other substances to extinguish flames. The new technology could allow them to put out fires remotely -- without delivering material to the flame -- and suppress fires from a distance. The technology could also save water and avoid the use of fire-fighting materials that could potentially harm the environment, the scientists suggest.
In the new study, they connected a powerful electrical amplifier to a wand-like probe and used the device to shoot beams of electricity at an open flame more than a foot high. Almost instantly, the flame was snuffed out. Much to their fascination, it worked time and again.
The device consisted of a 600-watt amplifier, or about the same power as a high-end car stereo system. However, Cademartiri believes that a power source with only a tenth of this wattage could have similar flame-suppressing effect. That could be a boon to firefighters, since it would enable use of portable flame-tamer devices, which perhaps could be hand-carried or fit into a backpack.
The scientists aren't precisely sure why this works. It appears the electricity may affect the soot particles produced by combustion and disrupt the stability of the fire.
Or it could be voodoo. Whatever it is, it's cool. And while it's not exactly fighting fire with fire, it's close.
Posted by Eric Berger at 01:01 PM in Chemistry
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