The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

It falls everywhere.

Well, as the world markets plunge, something else has started falling. It’s snowing on Mars:

iTwire reports:
Canada’s York University professor Jim Whiteway, who is the lead scientist for the Meteorological Station onboard the Phoenix spacecraft, stated, “Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars. We’ll be looking for signs that the snow may even reach the ground.”

It must be cold and beautiful.

Entered on 30 September 2008 at 6:43 in the Science file | 1 Observation |  Print

Giving the cold shoulder? Just wash your hands of it.

SciAm warms my heart with a great interview about metaphor. Cognitive psychiatrist Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto is an expert in why certain feelings are actually processed as feeling something:

I found that people not only use coldness-related terms to describe social rejection (for example, “cold shoulder”), but also experience rejection as physical coldness: feeling cold becomes an integral part of our experience of being socially isolated. This research is consistent with recent theories on embodied cognition as well as general research on the connection between mind and body.

LEHRER: What are some other examples of how seemingly abstract thoughts, such as feeling excluded, can have physical manifestations?

ZHONG: Another example would be the relation between morality and physical cleanliness. In my early work “Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing” in collaboration with Katie Liljenquist [a professor of organizational behavior at Brigham Young University], we discussed how metaphors such as “dirty hands” or “clean records” may have a psychological basis such that people make sense of morality through physical cleanliness.

When people’s moral self image is threatened, as when they think about their own unethical past behaviors, people literally experience the need to engage in physical cleansing, as if the moral stain is literally physical dirt. We tested this idea in multiple studies and showed that when reminded of their past moral transgressions, people were more likely to think about cleansing-related words such as “wash” and “soap”, expressed stronger preference for cleansing products (for instance, a soap bar), and were also more likely to accept an antiseptic wipe as a free gift (rather than a pencil with equal value).

Further, physical cleansing may actually be effective in mentally getting rid of moral sins. In another study, in which participants who recalled unethical behaviors were either given a chance to cleanse their hands or not, we found that washing hands not only assuaged moral emotions such as guilt and regret but also reduced participants’ willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors such as volunteering.

The kicker’s right there at the end of the excerpt (emphasis mine). That’s why metaphors are important, folks.

Entered on 29 September 2008 at 6:08 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Allosaurus Size Comparison

^{Click to embiggen}

T. rex gets all the credit, but Allosaurus – all the various species and sizes – was really the large fierce predator to look out for in the Mesozoic era. Some paleontologists call them “wolves of the Jurassic”. Unlike today’s wolves, Allosaurus weighed between 2 and 5 tons and used its massive head like a serrated hatchet:

…attacking open-mouthed, slashing flesh with its teeth, and tearing it away without splintering bones….Another possibility for handling large prey is that theropods like Allosaurus were “flesh grazers” which could take bites of flesh out of living sauropods that were sufficient to sustain the predator so it would not have needed to expend the effort to kill the prey outright.

This graphic was screen-grabbed from "Alosizes.svg" by Wikimedia Commons user Marmelad.

Size comparison between every allosaurid with a human:

• Epanterias amplexus: 12 Metres (40 Feet)
• Largest definitive Allosaurus fragilis: 9,7 Metres (32 Feet)
• Average Allosaurus fragilis: 8,5 Metres (28 Feet)
• "Big Al": 7.5 Metres (25 Feet)
• Human: 1.8 Metres (6 Feet)

I think this illustration should simply be titled "Run, you fool!"

Entered on 28 September 2008 at 6:23 in the Science Art file | 1 Observation |  Print

New Dawn Fades. (Science Art: Sunrise above the Martian Arctic.)

Look at this:

while listening to this.

In the lifeless, frigid Martian arctic, the sun only sets at the end of summer, then rises, weakly, after 75 minutes.

Like so.

_{Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University}

Entered on 26 September 2008 at 6:11 in the Music, Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Clever Crows Make Chimps Chumps.

Scientists in New Zealand have distressing news for those of us who enjoy a drumstick now and again. As reported in New Scientist, they’ve found more evidence that birds are smarter than your average primate:

A choice morsel of food was placed in a horizontal Perspex tube, which also featured two round holes in the underside, with Perspex traps below.

For most of the tests, one of the holes was sealed, so the food could be dragged across it with a stick and out of the tube to be eaten. The other hole was left open, trapping the food if the crows moved it the wrong way.

…

A recent study of great apes found they could not transfer success at the trap-tube to success at the trap-table. The three crows could, however.

They’re very good at solving problems. They use tools. Give them hands, and who knows what they’ll do to us. You can read the published research here.

Entered on 25 September 2008 at 6:29 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Sorry, Charlie.

I suppose this has been all over the British press by now, but the Church of England recently apologized to Charles Darwin:

Scientific American:
“The Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still,” Rev. Malcolm Brown writes on a church Web site marking next year’s 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

“There is nothing here that contradicts Christian teaching,” he says, adding that the church’s “reaction now seems misjudged.”

I find New Scientist’s coverage of the official Catholic response far more entertaining. Does this not define “arch”?:

In 1950, Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans, a view that was reiterated by Pope John Paul II in 1996. But Ravasi said the Vatican had no intention of apologising for earlier negative views.

“Maybe we should abandon the idea of issuing apologies as if history was a court eternally in session,” he said, adding that Darwin’s theories were “never condemned by the Catholic Church nor was his book ever banned”.

So. There.

Entered on 24 September 2008 at 6:17 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

SONG: (We Can Blame Peter Higgs) At the Collider

SONG: “(We Can Blame Peter Higgs) At the Collider” _{(To download:double right-click & “Save As”)}

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: CERN progress updates throughout 2008, as used in the posts “Calling Doctor Manhattan…”, “LHC fires beam” and a few others.

ABSTRACT: Well, it’d be hard, at this point, not to know what this song is about. It’s about the Large Hadron Collider, the machine 17 miles long and 300 feet beneath the French-Swiss border where physicists are hoping to recreate the Big Bang and, among lots of other things, see if they can finally pin down a Higgs boson long enough to make it say “Uncle!” The Higgs boson is the particle that’s supposed to give solid matter its mass. More poetically, it’s the thing that makes things real. So, this is a song about Higgs bosons, and about building a giant machine to find them. I was halfway hoping it would wind up being about the destruction of the world with a miniature black hole. That’s where that very long, “Blanket Hog”-inspired outro came from – it’s supposed to be the sound of the particle beams coming on line and smashing atoms. (Let’s hope the real LHC gets that back on track soon, eh?)

I played an acoustic guitar on this and faked a bass by pitch-shifting a Telecaster. Some of the drum fills were by Ringo Starr. But the shredding guitar solo in that outro isn’t from me and it isn’t sampled from some other record somewhere. It’s not a guitar, either. That’s Randy Pytel of Budget Cut Orchestra playing his Chapman stick and making the collider burn.

Entered on 23 September 2008 at 6:42 in the Songs file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

The Mummies of Lima.

This summer, archaeologists discovered three bodies that had been ritually preserved 1,300 years ago in what is now the capital city of Peru. PhysOrg describes the central figure, who wears a mask identifying her as a woman:

“It is a woman because in the surrounding area we found offerings and textile items like those of a (female) weaver,” Flores said. The archaeologists also found ceramics and the remains of children who were offered as sacrifices to accompany the dead person in the afterlife.

Archaeologists made the find, dubbed “The Lady of the Mask,” in the first week of August.

Lima is a major metropolitan city. This would be something like discovering pyramids under Minneapolis.

See photos of the site over here. Check out the skyline….

Entered on 22 September 2008 at 6:28 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Hello, neighbor. (Science Art: First Picture of Likely Planet around Sun-like Star)

For the first time, astronomers have snapped a photo of a planet orbiting a star like our own Sun. That’s it. Not a recreation or illustration. That’s what an alien planet looks like.

It’s big and it’s far out, but on a universal scale, it’s not too different from home.

Here’s what the Gemini Observatory says about their discovery:

Three University of Toronto scientists used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai‘i to take images of the young star 1RXS J160929.1-210524 (which lies about 500 light-years from Earth) and a candidate companion of that star. They also obtained spectra to confirm the nature of the companion, which has a mass about eight times that of Jupiter, and lies roughly 330 times the Earth-Sun distance away from its star. (For comparison, the most distant planet in our solar system, Neptune, orbits the Sun at only about 30 times the Earth-Sun distance.)

You can read more at The Age.

Photo credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA

Entered on 21 September 2008 at 6:22 in the Science, Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

You can have any music you like, as long as it’s one of these six forms.

Because, New Scientist tells us, there are only six forms of music to have:

In his new book, The World in Six Songs, cognitive psychologist and former record producer Daniel Levitin argues that all music, from orchestral classics to thrash metal and tribal dance, can be grouped into just six categories: friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, ritual and love.

Cue the sounds of a hundred techno fans arguing over which category includes gabba, glitch or happy hardcore.

Check out Levitin’s book hither, or the cognitive composer himself thither. He’s got blurbs from Sting, Willie Nelson and Sir George Martin, and a handful of neuroscience professors, too. And even better, the sample chapter quotes the song “Homegrown Tomatoes.”

Entered on 19 September 2008 at 6:54 in the Music, Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print