The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Oxytocin and roses….

New Scientist recently got all romantic with an intrepid researcher’s chemical expose of her big fat geek wedding:

WE’D booked the venue, chosen the bridesmaids’ dresses and even decided on the colours of the table decorations. But finding a refrigerated centrifuge and a ready supply of dry ice in rural south-west England was proving tricky. Then there were the worries about getting blood on my silk wedding dress, and what to do if someone fainted.

Organising a wedding can be stressful enough, but we had a whole extra dimension to consider. We were turning it into a science experiment to probe what happens in our bodies when we say the words “I do”.

…

it is clearly difficult to measure complex emotions with simple games in the lab. For one thing, volunteers know their actions are being recorded, which may alter their behaviour. For example, people who share more money with other players are usually seen as more altruistic, but maybe they just care more about what people think of them. In reality, they might be quite selfish.

“We’re not sure of the motivation that drives behaviour,” says Richard Ebstein, also at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who studies the genetics of human behaviour. That is why scientists need to start looking at hormones such as oxytocin in real-life situations, he says. Like weddings.

That’s where I came in. Once Nic, my husband-to-be, had resigned himself to turning the most romantic day of our lives into a science experiment, I realised there were several additional hormones we could check at the same time….

Lovely story. Sigh. Just lovely.

Entered on 9 March 2010 at 15:58 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: “Rocket Ride Is New Planetarium Exhibit,” Popular Science Monthly, April 1938

^{Click to embiggen slightly}

Hey, look! PopSci just put 137 years of back issues on the internet for free. Science-aesthetic treasure!

They’re at Google Books, from whence this striking image came, or accessible through their own archive viewer.

The news spread on the Wired, but I first heard it via ear trumpet.

Entered on 7 March 2010 at 6:09 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Evolution made us conservative, not smart.

LabSpaces shares some interesting research on the role of novelty in human development:

An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more nocturnal, waking up and staying up later than less intelligent individuals. Because our ancestors lacked artificial light, they tended to wake up shortly before dawn and go to sleep shortly after dusk. Being nocturnal is evolutionarily novel.

In the current study, Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals.

Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) support Kanazawa’s hypothesis. Young adults who subjectively identify themselves as “very liberal” have an average IQ of 106 during adolescence while those who identify themselves as “very conservative” have an average IQ of 95 during adolescence.

Similarly, religion is a byproduct of humans’ tendency to perceive agency and intention as causes of events, to see “the hands of God” at work behind otherwise natural phenomena. “Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid,” says Kanazawa. This innate bias toward paranoia served humans well when self-preservation and protection of their families and clans depended on extreme vigilance to all potential dangers. “So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists.”

Young adults who identify themselves as “not at all religious” have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as “very religious” have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence.

I’m now fighting an urge to start quoting Devo and the Church of the Sub-Genius on the virtues of MUTANTS! But yeah.

Entered on 5 March 2010 at 6:07 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Beethoven isn’t Beethoven any more.

Slate has a great piece on why the piano we hear now ain’t the instrument great composers wrote on – and how that changes the best known tunes in history:

But music from the 18th and 19th centuries doesn’t just sound different now than on the original instruments; some of it can’t even be played as written on modern pianos. One example is the double-octave glissando in the last movement of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata. With the light action and shallow key dip of a period Viennese piano you can plant your thumb and little finger on the octave and slide to the left, and there it is. Given the much heavier action and deeper key dip of a modern piano, if you tried that today you’d dislocate something. Every pianist has a dodge for that passage. It’s said that before the glissando Rudolf Serkin would discreetly spit on his fingers.

The prime example of what I’m talking about is perhaps the most famous piece ever written: Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata. Hector Berlioz called its murmuring, mournful first movement, “one of those poems that human language does not know how to interpret.” At the beginning, Beethoven directs the performer to hold down the sustain pedal through the whole first movement, so the strings are never damped. With the pianos of Beethoven’s time, on which the sustain of the strings was shorter than today, the effect was subtle, one harmony melting into another. On a modern piano, with its longer sustain, the effect of holding the pedal down would be a tonal traffic jam. Today you have to fake the effect, and it never quite works as intended.

You really owe it to yourself to check out the side-by-side audio comparisons in the story. It’s pretty whoah!

Entered on 4 March 2010 at 6:21 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Snake eating dinosaurs.

Not dinosaurs that eat snakes, Wired says, but snakes that paleontologists discovered eating dinosaurs:

But in 2001, University of Michigan paleontologist Jeff Wilson, took a second look at the fossils. The team then recognized they had actually found a snake coiled around a broken egg, with a hatchling and two other eggs nearby. The findings appeared Mar. 1 in Public Library of Science Biology.

The newly discovered species of snake, Sanajeh indicus, measures about 11.5 feet long. The hatchlings, part of a group called titanosaurs, measured about a foot and a half long. Titanosaurs were the largest animal to ever walk on land, with adults that could reach up to 100 feet long.

Unlike modern snakes, S. indicus lacked jaw joints that allowed it to open its mouth incredibly wide, so it relied on its large overall body size to prey on the fledgling dinosaurs. Luckily for the snake, the titanosaur hatchlings had soft skeletons that “may have been somewhat collapsible, so you can fold their ribs up a bit and get them in your mouth,” Wilson said.

It’s likely a slow-rising flood or a storm caused adult titanosaurs to flee, abandoning their nests. The snake then slithered into the nest.

Given the genetic similarity, of course, they probably tasted like chicken.

Entered on 3 March 2010 at 17:52 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Plasma drive’s silver lining.

AFP takes a sunnier look at NASA’s budget trimming. Sure, the government agency said they won’t be landing people on the moon or Mars any time soon. But that leaves more room for private companies to do it – with NASA’s help:

Hopes are now pinned on firms like Chang-Diaz’s Texas-based Ad Astra Rocket Company.

“In the early days… NASA support for the project was rather minimal because the agency did not emphasize advanced technologies as much as it’s doing now,” Chang-Diaz told AFP.

NASA was focused instead on the series of Apollo missions that delivered men to the moon for the first, and so far last, times.

“They were mesmerized by the Apollo days and lived in the Apollo era for 40 years, and they just forgot developing something new,” he said.

Chang-Diaz, 60, hopes that “something” is a non-chemical rocket that eventually allow for a manned trip to Mars — long the Holy Grail for Apollonians.

His rocket would use electricity to transform a fuel — likely hydrogen, helium or deuterium — into plasma gas that is heated to 19.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (11 million degrees Celsius). The plasma gas is then channeled into tailpipes using magnetic fields to propel the spacecraft.

It’s an interesting way to look at the issue, that’s for sure. I just can’t help but think there must be a catch….

Entered on 2 March 2010 at 6:50 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Cute little dinosaurs.

Discovery News has the sweetest report on tiny pterosaurs flitting about with songbirds:

“I think that a group of small pterosaurs was feeding together near a pond or near a lake,” lead author Yuong-Nam Lee told Discovery News, adding “there are lots of feeding beak marks.”

…

For the latest study, accepted for publication in the journal Cretaceous Research, Lee and his colleagues focused on the pterosaur tracks. The scientists identified a total of 64 imprints made by five to six individuals that “show a clear quadrupedal gait pattern” with feet bearing curved “hook-like sharp” claws.

“The high density of the tracks suggest gregarious behavior, but the random orientation of the trackways does not show that they were moving in the same direction as a herd,” Lee said.

He and his team instead think the pterosaurs and birds randomly gathered to feed. The eating marks consist of “small round depressions on the slab,” possibly where the animals repeatedly pecked away for food.

Of course, now that folks think they weren’t so leathery all over, the differences between warblers and pterosaurs might be less obvious. But still, it’s quite an image.

Entered on 1 March 2010 at 20:25 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Nikola Tesla’s Letterhead

If you’re one of history’s greatest electrical inventors, it is only suitable to have stationery that’s equal to your stature.

The central image is of the unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower; other inventions pictured include the oscillation transformer, steam-and-gas turbine and a telautomaton (that is, a remote-controlled device; this one is a boat).

Found via (where else?) Letterheady.com, an archive of interesting letterheads.

Entered on 28 February 2010 at 6:56 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

The wise nap.

UC Berkley has me hankering for some shut-eye… for my brain’s sake:

In the recent UC Berkeley sleep study, 39 healthy young adults were divided into two groups — nap and no-nap. At noon, all the participants were subjected to a rigorous learning task intended to tax the hippocampus, a region of the brain that helps store fact-based memories. Both groups performed at comparable levels.

At 2 p.m., the nap group took a 90-minute siesta while the no-nap group stayed awake. Later that day, at 6 p.m., participants performed a new round of learning exercises. Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. In contrast, those who napped did markedly better and actually improved in their capacity to learn.

These findings reinforce the researchers’ hypothesis that sleep is needed to clear the brain’s short-term memory storage and make room for new information, said Walker, who presented his preliminary findings on Sunday, Feb. 21, at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego, Calif.

Entered on 25 February 2010 at 6:24 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Life is dangerous.

NPR has introduced me to the Medea Principle; just as the Gaia Principle states that a planet can be thought of as a single living organism, this idea states that the single biggest threat to life on other planets…is life:

Drawing on a detailed study of the geological record [University of Washington paleontologist Peter] Ward argues that rather than James Lovelock’s “Gaia” – the supportive Earth-mother – a better image to carry in thinking about life and the planet is Medea the mother in Greek Myth who killed her own children.

A principle point Ward deploys for his unusual thesis is the simple fact that most of the planet’s dramatic and dangerous mass extinctions were caused not by outside events but by life itself changing (polluting?) the environment on which it depends. In Ward’s view life has “biocidal” tendencies, which over time have led to sharp declines in biomass and diversity.

Life, in composite, does have a way of screwing with numbers. Ward’s book is here on Amazon, and more thoroughly reviewed yonder.

Entered on 24 February 2010 at 6:54 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print