Author: Alex

Categories
science-based medicine

Communication with the unconscious

When I first saw the title of this article, “Giving the ‘unconscious’ a voice, I immediately wondered if it would be more depressing facilitated communication crap. But this looks really interesting:

To find out whether a simple conversation was possible, the researchers selected one of the four – a 29-year-old man who had been in a car crash. They asked him to imagine playing tennis if he wanted to answer yes to questions such as: Do you have any sisters? Is your father’s name Thomas? Is your father’s name Alexander? And if the answer to a question was no, he had to imagine moving round his home.

The man was asked to think of the activity that represented his answer, in 10-second bursts for up to 5 minutes, so that a strong enough signal could be detected by the scanner. His family came up with the questions to ensure that the researchers did not know the answers in advance. What’s more, the brain scans were analysed by a team that had never come into contact with the patient or his family.

Now that’s some good effort to do experimental controls. After the team analyzing the scans came up with the answers they thought were indicated, those answers were then checked with the family.

I’m also pretty impressed by the caution, because it’s easy to become excited about something like this. It seems really huge, but there’s also only so far you can get with the ability of someone to answer yes/no questions:

One problem is that while the brain scans do seem to establish consciousness, there is a lot they don’t tell us. “Just because they can answer a yes/no question does not mean they have the capacity to make complex decisions,” Owen says.

Still, very exciting stuff, I think. It makes an interesting comparison to the Rom Houben case that Dr. Novella refers to in the post that I linked to. What you get out of ‘facilitated communication’ which I suppose sounds a lot better, versus a yes or no response.

Categories
feminism pet rock

Diamonds are interesting, but I have no desire to take them to the movies.

Interesting post here about “The facts about diamonds.” The author of the post mostly focuses on the cultural/social aspects of diamonds, and for the most part I agree with him. I’ve always found jewelry commercials in general irritating, and even more so the ones that dig up the rotting corpse of “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” and display it on national television. I don’t like the message that women are shallow beings that can be bought off with a shiny bauble; it’s demeaning for women (we’re coin-operated sex bots) and men as well (since apparently men have nothing going for them except their ability to give us shiny things.) It’s not any better if you approach it from the angle of “jewelry as a means for men to show off their wealth” since that places women squarely in to the category of an ornament for men, the vehicle by which they do their social posturing.

Bah. Bah, I say.

I actually do own two pieces of jewelry that involve diamonds. One of them is a small pair of earrings that a good friend of the family gave me for my birthday several years ago. I bring them out for special occasions. The other is actually my engagement ring. It wasn’t something I asked for; I always told Mike that if he wanted to get married, I’d be just as happy with a plastic ring out of a vending machine, or no ring at all. But Mike is an earnest, wonderful guy, who likes to feel as if he’s doing things properly when he’s moved to do them. In this case, that meant finding a really cool looking ring (no standard gold band with a rock on it for him) and giving it to me at the most bizarre moment imaginable. I think that’s what makes me feel okay about the outward appearance of tradition, there; I didn’t demand anything, I didn’t expect1 anything, and Mike did what he did because he had the financial means and wanted to. As anti-diamond and anti-jewelry as I tend to be, I also respect that in the great game of give and take that is a relationship, I’ve got to do my share of giving.

I like the shiny diamond ring and wear it every day because I love Mike to bits and know how important it is to him. Not the other way around.

I’m always left wondering, between the slime of advertising campaigns and these little events that make up my own life, where I sit relative to other women. Are there actually women whose affection can be bought by jewelry? I hope not, and I’ve never personally known any, but I also don’t think I’d be friends with someone like that to begin with. I’ve already learned far more about the seedy underbelly of human relationships than I ever wanted to know, just while trying to plan a wedding.

Social stuff aside, diamonds themselves are, I think, pretty interesting rocks. If nothing else, they intersect nicely with my favorite non-sedimentary rock, kimberlite. As far as anyone has ever seen, you don’t get diamonds unless there’s an Archean-age craton for the kimberlitic eruption to punch through; what we get from those kimberlites are the little bits and bobs that the magma carried up with it. This is why you get diamonds in Canada (and even in Wyoming), but not in Colorado. We’re just a bit too far south of the remaining, long-buried Archean age rocks.

So, there was something about geological conditions back in the Archean (about 2.5-3.7 Ga) that allowed diamonds to form then and not since. So any “natural” diamond is quite old. There was much higher heat flow and there was full mantle melting back then, as opposed to the partial melting we get today. This different melting/depletion of the mantle probably is what allowed diamonds to grow.

Cratons are actually part of the lithosphere, the basement that the crust sits on top of. They’re also remarkably stable; it’s actually a matter of great interest how the Archean cratons have managed to hang in there so long. So the majority of diamonds – which haven’t been dragged to the surface by a kimberlitic freight train – “live” more than 100 km below the surface.

Which is why Steven Shirey says:

“Diamonds aren’t just for spectacular jewelry,” commented Shirey. “They are scientific gems too.”

Jewelry? Meh. Science? WOOHOO!

1- Literally. He caught me completely by surprise, the brat.

Categories
cats earthquake

Return of DeathCat

Doctor casts new light on cat that can predict death. Oy.

For the most part, it sounds like the doctor is trying to focus on the comfort that the cat can provide terminal patients. Which is good. I’m a big believer in the wonders of a fluffy, purring, shredding machine. But this?

When Oscar was about six months old the staff noticed that he would curl up to sleep with patients who were about to die.

So far he has accurately predicted about 50 deaths.

Sigh. I’d really like to know just what they mean by “accurately.” Does the cat only hang out with people who are about to kick the bucket? Does everyone he sleeps near die within a certain amount of time? Cats sleep an awful lot… I realize he’s at a nursing home and all, but are patients dropping like flies there? Or does he just sleep by himself until it’s time for someone to kick the bucket?

I realize that it’s just a fluff article with a cute picture of the DeathCat, but still.

“I don’t think Oscar is that unique, but he is in a unique environment. Animals are remarkable in their ability to see things we don’t, be it the dog that sniffs out cancer or the fish that predicts earthquakes. Animals know when they are needed.”

Fish predict earthquakes? I actually googled this. And found another fluff article about Oscar, the earthquake-predicting fish.

By the way, an okay summation of the “animals predicting earthquakes” thing can be found here, courtesy of National Geographic. That Rupert Sheldrake is an advocate of this idea makes me a little suspicious to begin with.1

A reproducible connection between animal behavior and earthquakes could be made, he said, but “as the Chinese have discovered, not all earthquakes cause unusual animal behavior while others do. Only through research could we find out why there might be such differences.”

So… animals can predict some earthquakes but not others? Now, I confess, I am no expert on earthquakes, so I could very well be wrong. But at its most basic, an earthquake is an earthquake is an earthquake. Either you’ve got seismic waves of some magnitude or you don’t. Maybe you could argue that large earthquakes with a lot of foreshocks might be in a different category, but that’s also the sort of thing you can observe with seismographs – and sadly, lots of little earthquakes aren’t necessarily a predictor of a big one, or we’d be able to predict big earthquakes ourselves and wouldn’t be worrying about what the animals think.

Honestly, I’d be willing to buy the idea of animals reacting to foreshocks if there were a decent explanation for it that’s backed up with actual evidence or at the least a plausible mechanism. Animals interact with and observe the environment differently than us, so I can certainly believe that they can notice things that we don’t and react to them. But when we’re talking a situation where one time, dogs howled, an another time, a bunch of hibernating snakes woke up, and this other time the cattle were restless, the inconsistency really doesn’t help the case. It just ends up sounding like a lot of confirmation bias to me, kind of like Oscar the DeathCat.

My new hypothesis is that animals named Oscar are psychic. My sample size of two confirms it.

1 – Yes, this is technically me committing a genetic fallacy, but darnit, people. I’m a writer, not a philosopher.

Categories
rivers

A big dam problem

At its most basic, a river is just a conduit for the transportation of sediment via water. Rivers pick up sediment and put it back down further downstream. There’s a fascinating balance between the amount of sediment available for transport and how much the water is capable of carrying. More sediment than the river can hold? The extra sediment gets piled up in to a bar. Not much sediment in the river? The water eats the bar down to nothing and carries the sediment downstream.

Rivers constantly change and rearrange their beds on their own, depending on flow and available sediment. Bars appear to move downstream over time, with new ones forming behind them. Where people come in to the process is with dams. Dams change river flow, taking out the possibility of annual floods (when you’ll get a whole lot of sediment washing downstream) and generally trapping sediment in the lakes that the dam forms. Since the rivers downstream of the lakes suddenly have a lot less sediment to carry, this often leads to them eating their own bars and then not having the sediment input near the dam to build new ones.

Which is what is happening in the Grand Canyon1. We actually talked about these studies a lot in the geomorphology class that I took since it was a very good example of how sediment load affects river morphology. The Colorado River is starved for sediment below the Glen Canyon Dam, so it’s been eroding its own sandbars away.

One of the proposed solutions to stop the sandbars from disappearing entirely has been changing the flow of water from the Glen Canyon Dam so that there are periodic floods, which will allow sediment to be swept out in to the river. This isn’t exactly a simple proposal, though.

Ted Melis, deputy chief of the USGS’ Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center, said Tuesday that the key to maintaining the sandbars is not simply manipulating the flows from the dam on the Arizona-Utah line. The frequency and timing of the flows would have to exceed the erosion that occurs between them, he said.

Exactly. It all boils down to how much sediment comes in to the system as opposed to how much sediment leaves. If they want to preserve what currently exists, they’ve got to do enough flooding and time it appropriately so that the system remains balanced. If they want to actually rebuild some of the eroded bars, they need to up the sediment input even more. It makes sense that the greatest benefit would come from controlled floods that coincide with the flooding of tributary rivers; that’s when the Colorado would naturally be getting its influx of sediment.

I suppose that this can be seen as a depressing lesson that even “green” power (the Glen Canyon Dam generates electricity) isn’t without a potential for high environmental cost. It sounds like a solution where seasonal flooding would make up for the presence of the dam may be workable, but would lower its power generated somewhat. To me, that still sounds like a real have your cake and eat it too kind of solution, though – the Colorado River gets its original character back, and the Glen Canyon Dam still gets to be a working dam.

Since the 1960s, Glen Canyon Dam has blocked 90 percent of sediment from the Colorado from flowing downstream, turning the once muddy and warm river into a cool, clear environment that helped speed the spread of extinction of fish species and pushed others near the edge.

90 percent? Ouch.

1 – You can tell the man in the picture is a geologist because he has a giant beard. True fact.

Categories
books

A pox on both your houses

If you’ve been hiding under your rock and playing Star Trek Online more than me over the weekend, you might have missed the fact that Amazon and Macmillan are having a little conflict.

It reminds me of the heady days of high school, when pretty much everyone was just trying to get to class and then two enormous jerks that you didn’t even know would start shoving each other. Suddenly the hallway would become a clogged mass of students, with those on the inner ring chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” and the rest of us just wishing those assholes would knock each other out already because we were going to be late to class and there’s a danger of claustrophobia when you’re being crushed by a bunch of your stinky, hormonal fellow teens.

Anyway, Scalzi, whose altar I worship at daily just so you know, is of the opinion that Amazon’s come out looking like a bigger pile of fail than Macmillan. Quite possibly. But he’s also gone on to further emphasize the point that the people who are getting really screwed are the authors.

I don’t really see a point in taking sides in this particular corporate slugfest, even if I agree that Amazon is coming across like a petulant child. But it is the authors that are getting hurt, and badly. Particularly since Amazon hasn’t completely pulled their titles; you can still buy them used or from other resellers, which means the authors get cut out of the deal entirely. Now, if you’re in the market for used books normally, that doesn’t make much of a difference, but if you occasionally buy books with the thought of getting a good read plus the warm fuzzy of helping one of the little guys pay their mortgage, it reveals itself as quite the dick move.

Supposedly Amazon has caved. As of the time I’m writing this post, the Macmillan titles are still unavailable through the regular Amazon store, however. And even after it goes back to normal, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this sort of ridiculous skirmish happen again in the near future. I think it just serves as a very important reminder that when corporate titans clash, as amusing as it can be to watch, it also comes with the potential to hurt the livelihood of people who have absolutely no say in what caused the mess to begin with1.

It just means that we dedicated book nerds need to be a little flexible in our book-buying habits. Personally, I don’t give a rat’s behind which giant bookstore chain gets my money when I buy a copy of, say, Old Man’s War. I just want to know that Scalzi’s getting his little sliver of the pie so he’ll write something else fantastic for me to read in the near future.

1 – Obviously, this is not unique to the publishing world.

Categories
politics Uncategorized

First Corporate "Person" to run for office

Murray Hill, Inc. is going to run for Congress. The press release reads like something out of the Onion, which means that these people are A-okay in my book.

I’m still pretty steamed about the the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission SCOTUS ruling. Not because I think it’s going to destroy the electoral process as we know it – I tend to agree with someone1 who was on Rachel Maddow’s show. Basically, he said that it just means instead of corporations paying for adds that say “Ask Senator Bob why he keeps killing puppies,” they can now run scarier attack adds that say, “Vote no for Senator Bob because he keeps killing puppies.” Functionally, I don’t see that much of a difference. The shadowy corporate paymasters can now just be a bit more open about throwing money around, I guess.

Of course, I’m sure there’s a lot of nuance I’m missing here, since I’m most definitely not a lawyer.

Anyway, the reason I’m ticked off about the SCOTUS decision is that I deeply resent the implication that corporations are in any way equated to, you know, actual people. Agreeing with Justice Stevens, here:

A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.

If nothing else, corporations have a lot more money to throw around than those of us who are supposed to be having an active voice in our own government. I know our congresscritters rarely listen to us to begin with, but this is just rubbing our noses in it.

I suppose this is an even more powerful argument for trying to aim your spending at corporations that espouse values that you support. Considering the concerns regarding the disclosure of donations to political campaigns that we’ve seen pop up during the Prop 8 dust-up, I admit I’m pretty worried that even that method of exercising individual power could be in jeopardy.

…and all this from a post that was just supposed to point at a cute an amusing link.

Here: an adorable picture of a cat. That should make it all better.

ETA: Also, Corporate People in the News, from Lockwood. It made me giggle.

1 – Whose name I have forgotten, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one.

Categories
volcano

Volcano for Monday

Mount Rainier is an absolutely gorgeous stratovolcano that has its own national park, and is in fact not threatening to explode at any moment.

Fun fact: Mount Rainier is the grandaddy of the Cascade volcanoes, the tallest of the bunch.

Actually, the hazard that Mount Rainier is currently presenting is of a different geological variety: like basically every mountain in the US, its glaciers are in serious retreat1and that is clogging the downstream areas with all manner of sediment. The article mostly focuses on flood risks – which are a big concern when there are people living nearby. There’s also a minor mention about fish habitat, which can also be severely altered by changes in sediment load.

Mount Rainier’s glaciers being in retreat also makes me quite sad for aesthetic reasons. Part of the beauty of these big mountains is then they’re got their white cap on, all year round. Some day soon, we may not see that any more.

1 – You know, because of that global warming thing that totally isn’t happening because it was cold outside today.

Categories
links

Some nifty links for today

Caterpillar that takes over ant colonies – these guys aren’t quite as creepy as the wasps that turn caterpillars in to zombies or botflies, but they’re up there on the list.

Green “Volcano” to power UK town – it’s not actually green in color, and it’s not actually a volcano, but this is a pretty cool idea for an alternative energy power plant.

Study asks if mom and dad are the best match for children – This was something that just plagued the Prop 8 trial, this notion that it’s a mommy and a daddy or else.

Another reason to love Mark Twain – he wrote a nasty, nasty letter to a snake oil peddler. Now he was a man that knew how to wed clever and nasty like chocolate and peanut butter.

Categories
vaccines

Andrew Wakefield: Dishonest and Irresponsible

So sayeth the General Medical Council in the UK

In other news: Water still wet.

If you’ve been living under a rock and have no idea who Andrew Wakefield is or how he’s been contributing to the mortality of children via vaccine-preventable diseases, a good summation here. Dr. Novella also has a concise summary of what a dangerous, irresponsible quack this guy is.

One might hope that among the sanctions the GMC will be mulling over is putting his medical license in an industrial shredder. And then possibly using the remains to line a hamster cage. Though I’m uncertain what effect, if any, that might have on his unwelcome presence in the United States. As pessimistic as it sounds, I also doubt it’s going to have much of an effect on Jenny McCarthy and her ilk. Sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised if getting verbally spanked by the GMC becomes a sort of badge of honor for him when all is said and done.

Categories
geeky stuff wtf

The i…WHAT?

Okay, seriously. Was there no one in the Apple offices to let them know that their new device sounds like it was named after a feminine hygiene product?

I’m sure it’s cool and stuff, but really. I feel like I should be sticking it in my underpants to hold the red menace at bay, not be reading books off of it.

On the other hand, I’m sure there are plenty of male geeks that want to stick it in their underpants, and for an entirely different reason.