Les Jones

Transient Ischmeic Attacks (TIA)

Aunt Shirley called Saturday night. Mom had a light stroke that morning. Shirley had taken her some food and washed the dishes for her.

Melissa and I went over immediately. We tried to persuade Mom to go to the emergency room, but she didn't want to go and be poked and prodded all night. Besides, she said, she had gone to the hospital before after having these light strokes, and they hadn't been able to tell her anything or do anything.

We asked her to come home with us, but she didn't want to leave her home. She pointed out that Tana (my sister) was with her, and could call 911, and that her house is closer to a hospital than ours, which is true. In the end I decided to spend the night at her house, which made her and Melissa feel better. I also had her take some aspirin, which can reduce heart damage caused by strokes or heart attacks.

She was much improved this morning, and could stand up easier, and her grip was much stronger. I made breakfast, got the paper, and walked the dog over at the college. When Eric (my brother) came over he and I washed the dishes. I came home after that.

Melissa was more worried than I was, because I had seen mom after these light strokes before, and this one was pretty mild. In particular, her speech was much less affected. Though most people are terrified of the word "stroke," there is such a thing as a light stroke (also known as a Transient Ischemic Attack, or TIA). Lots of people have them as they get older, or as the result of an injury. The same day mom had her light stroke, a friend of Melissa's had a stroke following a car accident the previous day.

Even a light stroke can be serious, though, and may be a warning sign of a bigger stroke or a heart attack. NINDS states that one-third of TIAs are preludes to larger strokes. TIAs should never be ignored, because they are always a sign that something is wrong.

In mom's case, her earlier strokes were a sign of high blood pressure, which is one of the major contributors to stroke. She's taking medicine for it now, but Melissa just found out on Wednesday that mom is only taking one of her blood pressure medications because the other one is so expensive. I'm going to start paying for it to make sure she takes it. The trick now is to use gift certificates, charge accounts at the drug store, or some other method to make sure the money gets spent on medication. Otherwise she could still decide that something else comes before the medicine.

I also bought her a bottle of 81 milligram (low-dose) aspirin tablets, which NINDS recommends for patients who are at risk of stroke. Low daily doses of aspirin are good for the heart, and new research suggests that aspirin can reduce the risk of colon polyps and various forms of cancer, including lung cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, and colo-rectal cancer. Melissa and I have both been taking aspirin, and are more glad every day that we do.

A few years ago mom had several small strokes after taking Metabolite, the over-the-counter diet medication that was all the rage for a while. Metabolite contains guarana, which is loaded with caffeine. People with high blood pressure should restrict their caffeine intake.

Here are some informational links that Melissa found:

• Transient Ischmeic Attacks (TIA)
  
• NINDS TIA Information Page
  
• TIA - Health Risk Factors
  
• Know the warning signs of stroke
  

Junk Science

SNOPES: Do toilets in the southern hemisphere flush in the opposite direction of toilets in the northern hemisphere? An oldie but a goodie.

STEVEN MILLOY: Is NOW's stance on silicone breast implants based on science or politics?

NAPLES NEWS (VIA EUGENE VOLOKH): Yesterday was the 25th birthday of Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby.

It's hard to believe the uproar that the first test-tube baby caused. Pundits, religious leaders, politicians, and even some scientists warned that this was "playing God" and would lead to a moral breakdown of society.

Scientific American quoted Leon Kass, a biologist at the University of Chicago, who warned in 1978 that "the idea of humanness and of our human life and the meaning of our embodiment and our relation to ancestors and descendants" were at risk because of the first test-tube baby.

Fast forward to 2003. Test-tube babies are commonplace and the world hasn't self-destructed. But now people are pointing quaking fingers at the idea of cloning human beings.

"Cloning threatens the dignity of human procreation, giving one generation unprecedented genetic control over the next. It is the first step toward a eugenic world in which children become objects of manipulation and products of will." Who said that? The self-same Leon Kass.

The point is that every new capability in biology - particularly a new capability that deals with the creation of children - has been proclaimed to be wrong, evil or immoral by people who fear change. Yet today we live longer, healthier lives than any preceding generation of human beings.

Even the test-tube babies are getting along quite well, thank you.

Biology Blogging: ID These Six Plants

I downloaded pictures from the camera today and found some good ones. Can you name any or all of these plants? Post your answers in the comments. (Later: I added more hints.)

You can click on any image for an enlarged view

Fruit or Vegetables
I found this plant growing beside the corn in Melissa's Aunt Stella's vegetable patch. It's the one with the large, pointy leaves. Here's another view. Hint: this plant produces beans. Oil from those beans is a traditional herbal remedy. (First correct answer goes to Tess. See her answer and others in comments.)

Wild Things
This tree has not one, not two, but count 'em three vines growing on it. One is an exotic invader, common in disturbed areas. Hint: part of it is edible, and the edible part isn't the root, the flower, or the leaves. The other two are native species found in any wooded area in Tennessee. Hint: they have three leaves and five leaves, and the one with three leaves should be familiar to anyone who goes camping. (First correct answer for the three-leafed plant came from Chris Range at Celtic Grove. Tess got the five-leafed plant.)

The single-leafed plant is air potato (Dioscorea bulbifera), a relative of the yam. It produces an above-ground tuber. The ones around here are small - not much bigger than a jelly bean - but some species and varieties grow to a pound or more.

Flowers
Melissa and I grew these gorgeous annuals in our garden from seed. There are two species shown. One has the large, robust blooms in the center of the photo. (First correct answer: tie between Justin at Elephant Rants and Deb at Sugarfused.) The other species has small, delicate flowers, and frilly, Seussian leaves. (Botany goddess Tess correctly identified the smaller flower.) Both occur in a wide range of colors and varieties. You can find them at any garden center.

Neat Science and History: Pykrete

CABINET MAGAZINE: The British planned massive ice ships and ice aircraft carriers during World War II. The ships were to be made - not from steel - from ice, and not from ordinary ice, but from Pykrete, the creation of eccentric inventor Geoffrey Pyke.

Pykrete is a super-ice, strengthened tremendously by mixing in wood pulp as it freezes. By freezing a slurry of 14 percent wood pulp, the mechanical strength of ice rockets up to a fairly consistent 70 kg/sq cm. A 7.69 mm rifle bullet, when fired into pure ice, will penetrate to a depth of about 36 cm. Fired into pykrete, it will penetrate less than half as far - about the same distance as a bullet fired into brickwork. Yet you can mold pykrete into blocks from the simplest materials and then plane it, just like wood. And it has tremendous crush resistance: a one-inch column of the stuff will support an automobile. Moreover, it takes much longer to melt than pure ice. But as strong and eco-friendly as it is, pykrete remains forgotten today save among glaciologists, who express bafflement over why no one has made use of it. "I don't really know why it has languished in obscurity," admits Professor Erland Schulson, director of the Ice Research Laboratory at Dartmouth College.

Found via Jason Kottke's web site.

Junk Science

ERIC RAYMOND: Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is flawed. Kuhn popularized the concept of the paradigm shift, which he claims is generational in the sciences. Raymond shows counter-examples in which major scientific ideas changed in much less time.

James Franklin has a more thorough criticism of Kuhn:

Kuhn's success is also an instance of the enduring appeal of theomachy, a mode of explanation which worked so brilliantly for Marx and Freud, and, long before, for Homer. What was previously thought to be a continuous and uninteresting succession of random events is discovered to be a conflict of a finite number of hidden gods (classes, complexes, paradigms, as the case may be), who manipulate the flux of appearances to their own advantage, but whose machinations may be uncovered by the elect to whom the key has been revealed.

UNCLE CECIL: Did John Dillinger really die outside the Biograph Theater? This is more urban legend or conspiracy theory than science, but I thought it was interesting. I had heard the theory that the FBI killed someone other than the real Dillinger, but I didn't realize how flimsy the evidence was.

SLATE: The End of Mystery: The encroachment of science on fantasy's last redoubts. How science is confirming or refuting some old mysteries. In the case of the Dauphin, DNA testing confirmed that his death was not faked:

Only three weeks before the church revealed its Fatima secret, a pair of geneticists announced that they had resolved the mystery of the Lost Dauphin. In 1795, the 10-year-old son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette died in prison. Or did he? As soon as the boy was reported dead, stories arose that the real dauphin had been rescued and a substitute left in his cell. People have been arguing about little Louis XVII for 200 years. Hundreds of books address the mystery, including Huckleberry Finn, and a long line of claimants has intrigued their contemporaries. Indeed, one claimant is buried in the Netherlands under a headstone that identifies him as the heir to the French throne.

But scientists have now compared DNA from locks of Marie Antoinette's hair with DNA extracted from the heart of the boy who died in the French prison. They match. The Lost Dauphin has been found, and disappointed romantics will have to take what succor they can from the unlikely fact that a succession of people harbored the little prince's desiccated heart as a curio for so long.

Guest post from Chris, Tip o` the Hat to Les

Les and Melissa are off to New York now, and they're surely having fun. Rather than problems from the blackout, they'll likely not encounter anything more troubling than some anecdotes. Well, I say that in light of news reports which seem almost dejected about the lack of mayhem. Headline: New Yorkers Pull Together During Massive Power Loss -- Tagline: Citizens Take Advantage of Rare Opportunity to Drink Beer and Smoke in Public.

I do hope they're careful about parking however. Seventy-year-old average Joes directing traffic in the streets while the Brown Shirts issued parking citations, seems to be the main controversy. Funny to a degree yes, but given the nature of bureaucracy it was neither ironic or surprising. For Les' part one can take it as read he used the occasion as an opportunity to negotiate better rates from the travel agency. Oh, here's a GeoSat picture of the blackout.

A total lack of light pollution probably made the outage mildly enjoyable for amateur astronomers. Mars is the focus of attention for them right now, ringing in at an apparent 27+ arc seconds. Yes, it's the closest Mars has come to us in a bujillion years, but let's keep this in perspective. Every so often Mars gets close to us and just a few years ago in 1998 it was an apparent 25+ arc seconds across. That's not enough to resolve the polar ice caps any better in your Sears Celestron telescope. It is big enough to make it worth the trouble though. And it's the first thing other than the Moon I've been able to resolve in my own tiny Celestron. I'm a better shot with a camera - and those projectile throwers of which Les is so recently fond. But I just don't grok telescopes for some reason. Sad really, because I love star gazing.

Before my first missive here comes to a close, I want to say a couple words about Les and Melissa. You ought to know what sort of folk it is behind this blog. You ought also to know that BloggerPro's spell checker doesn't recognize the word blog. But I digress. I've known Les for several years, since our days at U.S. Internet. And I've known Melissa since they started dating. That seems forever now because as practical people they had an extended courtship. Melissa is an extremely outgoing person, who brings humor and happiness wherever she goes. She's a nice yin to Les' yang - with him being quieter - heh - and at times a bit mysterious.

But that's only part of the tale. The wedding was great evidence of the rightness of their match. Melissa carried herself as an elegant bride. She managed to sweep one of those romantic and impossibly long trains behind her without falling once. Hey, I've been to a lot of weddings; not falling down is no mean feat.

Her dress swept dramatically as she descended from the horse-drawn carriage, and moved towards the gazebo, wherein were spoken the magic words. "Do you Les Jones, agree before these witnesses assembled, to become the chattel property of Melissa from now unto perpetuity?"

Something like that. I can't remember it exactly.

It all went off without a hitch. Les and Melissa put on quite an event. There was more than enough drink and prandial delights to keep everybody happy. And this is really saying something because since they're in their 30s (actually Melissa is something like 14 but that's legal in Tennessee) they had to pay for it all themselves. The usually frugal Les obviously went all out, spared no expense. And he made sure that by 1:00AM we were all getting gloriously glassy on the very same Jonesborough porch that Andy Johnson drank on a century and a half ago. "Hey honey..." I said to my own wife Melissa "We're gettin' drunk on the porch of the Three Sisters hotel just like the ie-Yo-Neerz!".......Near to this point she decided it was time to ferry me home.

Les and Melissa are good friends to me, and to many people I know. I am proud to count myself as their friend - honored I should say - because they are two of the most decent people you will ever meet. Decent, dependable and patient; They'll make great parents. And that of course is the next chapter in the story.

Another wedding, a brief glimpse of Mars & Jellyfish

(Note: this was a guest post from Chris Range, made on the Blogger system. When the old material was imported to the new Movable Type software, all articles were attributed to lesjones. For the record, this was Chris Range's article.)

Last night the old U.S. Internet / Earthlink / OneMain / SSES / Idelaire crew had another wedding. You've got to understand that since U.S. Internet was founded nearly ten years ago, it's original employees have worked for a succession of the same companies. This is probably one of the most inbred labor forces in history. Les and I met at U.S. Internet incidentally, though obviously he married someone else. Sera Coriell and Scott Saulnier were married last evening in a wonderful ceremony, which marks the 9th marriage where both spouses came from U.S. Internet. Along with my wedding gift and card I included some notes on how Scott could make his name as problematic as Sera's. One way I thought he could spell it would be Czkhat, which is sort of a combination of the slavic "cz" sound and a Welsh "kh" sound. If he could make the "A" one of those thorn A's with the little circle above it, or perhaps with an umlaut that would be really nice. --They're headed off to Jamaica now. Maybe a friendly Jamaican can offer some alternate spellings for their names. Something like Sconja or Seranja mon?

My Melissa and I got home from the wedding about 11PM last night, and after settling the kids to bed talk turned to Les and his Melissa. Certainly hope they're having a good time. Our vacation a couple weeks ago was nice, but I did get a little surprise. I was stung by a jelly fish on the second day but it was no big deal at the moment. I felt a little slimy thing like cold wet spaghetti flip across my leg, and then a feeling like I'd stuck my toe in a light socket. That just lasted a moment. I went up to the lifeguard to get some first aid. Like almost everyone else in South Carolina in July, he was from Quebec; unlike most of them he had some vinegar to spray on the sting.

The perpetrator was probably Chrysaora quinquecirrha, the Atlantic Sea nettle. These are found all along the American Atlantic coast. The biggest populations are from the Chesapeake Bay to Florida. Sea Nettles are responsible for 90% of the harrasment of vacationers by invertibrates. They have two color phases, pink and brown; They once were thought to be separate species. Nettles have no pedalia but have tentacles emanating from the entire outer edge of the circular bell or float. They also have long, frilly, lace-like mesenteric tentacles that fall from the edges of the mouth. The frilly tentacles are used in eating -- they produce a second venom with a different composition from the outer fishing tentacles. This is the slimy stuff I felt on my leg. Nasty business.

Marine envenomation is not well understood and it sometimes produces strange results. For instance nearly 3 weeks after I was first stung, I suddenly found myself "stung" again. Where before there had been no marks whatsoever, after about 17 days I developed long strings of blisters in neat rows along my leg which were very painful. A phonecall to the family doctor prompted the following sage response. "Marine envenomation is not well understood and it sometimes produces strange results. I suggest you take some antihistimines, put a poultice of meat-tenderizer on it, or spray it with some vinegar. Call me if it gets worse or if you experience any paralysis."

If I experience any paralysis? What the?.... Fortunately the swelling and blisters went down again after a couple of days. And I can still walk. (E Gad - paralysis?)

Jellyfish are a bellwether for the health of the ocean. If seasonal fishing has undercut the schooling populations there is less competition for the jellies, which eat the same foods. Being invertibrates, jellyfish breed faster than fish proper. Once begun, an overpopulation of jellies is a self-sustaining cycle. In a year of overfishing the number of stings on the Atlantic coast goes up dramatically. Population recovery doesn't seem to take long though because jellyfish don't have the lifespan of bony fish. One last note of interest - another Atlantic species called the Sea Wasp is a "box jelly" and is considered one of the most venemous creatures on Earth. If one of these stings you, death is almost certain after less than 15 minutes of excruciating pain. ---Don't worry. They live in the deeper colder waters of the Atlantic. You're not likely to ever see one, but if you do, get the H377 out of the way.

Back to last evening. After a good time at the wedding reception I noticed on the way home that Mars was visible for the first time in a couple weeks. It's very close now as I've written earlier, but that danged August haze has kept me from seeing it. I got my telescope set up in the front yard. I leveled it but I didn't even bother trying to do a proper alignment to the arc of the sky. After all, I'm only looking to gaze on one thing. And Mars was very bright. It took me about 5 minutes to get the telescope centered on it. My little Celestron is kinda cheap and the targeting scope doesn't really match the main reflector. But I found it quickly enough.

Lenses, lenses, lenses and more lenses -- 25 MM this and 5X that. With all that blasted haze, it's like the skies over East Tennessee are wrapped in a swaddling gauze. Right now Mars looks like a bright red star to the naked eye. Through my telescope lens it looked like a dust bunny from a flannel shirt. It didn't look much like a planet but I did experience one wierd thing that I'll remember for a long time to come. The polar cap on Mars was much more reflective than the rest of it. As I turned the cables to track it's movement through the sky, Mars' polar cap would glimmer and sometimes twist into a little halo around the edge of my lens that framed the rest of the planet. Mars itself was probably only 1/8th as wide as the viewable area within the eyepiece, but the glare from the cap would stretch out around it, and sometimes gleam brightly like a little circular flourescent light.

I can see clearer pictures of Mars many places. If I really want to learn about its geography I can study its features online or in a good astronomy book. The image that I saw was fuzzy and non-descript. But I had resolved that fuzzy image myself. And I wasn't looking at a picture in a book. I was looking at another planet - in real time as one might say - not in virtual reality, not an online simulation or astronomy CD rom - I was looking at a real planet with my very own squinted eye. For a minute I experienced a happy but deep realization. I'm on a rock, among other little rocks, spinning around in the universe. It's a tiny rock. And except for 12 men who spent no more than a few hours each on the Moon 30 years ago, it's the only rock we've ever known.

Biology Blogging: Name That Spider

Melissa called me this morning just after I got to work and said she found a big spider. She didn't want me to kill it or anything. She just wanted to know what it was. "It's big and black."

"I don't know. Wolf spider, maybe." I told her where to find the Golden Guide to "Spiders and Their Kin."

She checked. "Nope. It's not a wolf spider. They're more grey and hairy. This is solid black and shiny." I suggested she take a picture so I could look it up when I got home, then forgot all about it.

I get home while Melissa's still in class, notice the digital camera, and fire it up. Holy arachnids, Batman!

I checked the Golden Guide. The closest match was to one of the crab spiders (family Thomisidae or Philodromidae) or a filistatid (family Filistatidae, duh!). In the Audobon guide, it looked almost exactly like the California trapdoor spider (family Ctenizidae), which is great, except I'm in Tennessee. Also various crab spiders.

Based on where it was found (the center of a zinnia flower) I'm pretty sure it's a crab spider. Some crab spiders hunt by perching on a flower and waiting for a pollinating insect to drop by. If anyone knows better, or can narrow it down further than the family level, post in comments.

LATER: Melissa got home, and we started talking about it. Tthe spider was in the flower bed and was crawling on some other flowers, but she got her to climb on some other flowers, picked her up, and put her on the zinnia. So the center of a flower might not be her native habitat. This might be the same spider that's been building webs on the cannies.

Name That Caterpillar

Ellie May Melissa found another critter. This is a caterpillar she photographed in the flower beds. Click on the picture for a higher-resolution image.

Those yellow and black warnings stripes almost certainly mean this caterpillar is poisonous to birds. Warning colors - such as the black and orange of the monarch butterfly - in invertebrates announce to predators that the potential prey is poisonous. Poisonous, incidentally, means toxic when eaten. Venomous means capable of injecting toxins. Monarchs don't manufacture toxins. In their caterpillar stage they eat milkweed and other toxic plants to which they are immune and store those toxins in their body tissues.

Caterpillars, like butterflies, try to confuse predators about the location of their head and tail, using eyespots, or - in this case - antennae-like appendages at both ends. In this picture, the head is on the left. You can tell by the presence of true feet on the left. The leg-like appendates on the right are pseudopods.

This was an easy identification. The picture in the field guide looked identical to the one Melissa took. Know what it is? Post your answer in comments.

I'm #1! I'm #1!

People are always bragging about their Google rank. After checking my referral logs, it turns out that I'm #1 for filistatid spider picture because of this post. If this was 1997, I'd be able to parlay that into a public stock offering. Incidentally, I'm still looking for a definitive ID on that arachnid, so if you recognize it, give a shout.

Hydrogen Fuel

Rich reviews Jeremy Rifkin's "The Hydrogen Economy." It's not a very positive review, and I'm not surprised. I saw Rifkin speak at UT in the '80s, back when he was demonizing genetic engineering (and plugging his book, "Algeny"). His main tactic was to keep going and going - over the time alloted him by his contract with the Events Committee - so that by the time the contractually-obligated question and answer session came up, most people had already gone home.

For the sake of anyone who doesn't already know: hydrogen isn't an energy source. You can't drill for hydrogen. You can only take other forms of energy (coal, oil, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, etc.) and use them to create elemental hydrogen (H2) from more complex compounds (such as water) that contain hydrogen. Once you have the elemental hydrogen, you can run this reaction:

2(H2) + 1(O2) -> 2(H20) + energy

which is an exothermic (energy-releasing reaction.) But to create elemental hydrogen, you have to run the opposite, endothermic (energy-consuming) reaction:

2(H20) + energy -> 2(H2) + 1(O2)

The people pushing hydrogen generally want you to believe that the energy to produce elemental hydrogen will come from renewable resources, like wind and solar. That's crazy.

Wind, solar, and hydroelectric output electricity. The simplest, most economical use for electricity is to supply power to homes and businesses using our existing electrical grid. Only after we have enough renewable energy to do that should we move to hydrogen as a fuel source for cars. Using hydrogen in cars will require replacing existing vehicles and building a massive refueling infrastructure. It's not worth the effort until our other energy needs are taken care of.

Brushy Mountain Prison

Via SayUncle comes news that Tennessee may close Brushy Mountain prison to build a newer, larger facility. The driving force is economic: Brushy Mountain, a maximum security facility, is currently the most expensive prison in the state system.

The new facility will be at a different location, which will almost certainly be less secure. The current prison is set in a natural bowl surrounded by mountains that make escape difficult. James Earl Ray served his sentence there for the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Ray tried to escape in 1977, but was caught in the forest 55 hours later. National media at the time described the area surrounding the prison as "snake-infested rugged mountain terrain."

SayUncle says that family legend has it that his great grandfather's brother was the first man to escape from Brushy Mountain. I can't match that, but I have seen the prison while hiking. If you go to Frozen Head State Park and Natural Area in Wartburg, Tennessee, you can hike to the top of Old Mac Mountain. At the top of the mountain you can climb a firetower and look down into the prison. It really is set into a bowl, with mountains on all sides.

Macular Degeneration

I took my mom to a new doctor today to see if he could do anything for her vision. She's 77 and is legally blind due to age-related macular degeneration and cataracts. The cataracts would be easy to treat, except that you're apparently not supposed to have cataract surgery while you have macular degeneration. (There's at least one study saying that cataract surgery is OK, but that study reviewed cases of mild MD.)

One eye is almost completely blind, even after surgery. She's had several surgeries in the other eye, but the doctor now thinks he can't do anything else for her. She's also taken Lutein, which is supposed to help. There's a "wet" and "dry" version of MD. She has the wet type. The surgeries were mostly laser surgeries to seal off blood vessels.

The new doctor's specialty is helping patients deal with low vision. After some extensive testing and interviews, mom tried a few things to help her see. The simplest is a couple of lighted magnifying lenses, one big for the house, and another small for her purse so she can read restaurant menus. They use excellent German optics and are much better than the dimestore style. As my brother put it, you can see a serial number on a pubic hair.

Another option is the "Jordi." It's a video camera and close-proximity viewing screen, with a belt-mounted battery pack with zoom controls up to 10x. It's head-mounted, much like a headlamp used for caving. Using the Jordi, she can see clearly at a distance. It's too awkward for everyday use, but would be useful for watching movies in the theater or taking in the scenery outdoors.

The video unit can be mounted on a scanner device with a movable stage (like a microfiche reader) for viewing documents and writing checks. The video signal is output to a television or computer monitor.

Another nice thing about the Jordi is that it accepts feeds from other video devices, like DVDs and VCRs, so she can watch TV, which is difficult now. We're moving her TVs around this week, so she can watch the biggest TV in the den instead of the living room. Total cost for the Jordi is $3,000 for the setup, including a video monitor. She's thinking about it.

Mom is actually doing really well through all of this. It's been scary for her, but she has a good sense of humor about it.

She's also pretty smart. During the interview, she was asked how she handles money when she has trouble seeomg the numbers. It turns out she puts different denominations in different slots in her billfold. If she's at a store where she doesn't know the cashier, she'll say out loud - with enough volume that other customers can hear - "Was that a 20 dollar bill I gave you?" She's also learned the number of steps between rooms for those times after surgery when her vision is especially bad.

I'm posting this as a "what's going on" post, but also to inform, and to get more info from anyone who has experience with macular degenaration in their family.

Junk Science

A new study finds that 40% of Americans believe that surgical treatment of lung cancer causes the cancer to spread in the body. Blacks were more likely to believe the myth than whites.

People believe lots of urban legends, but believing this one could be fatal.

Bear and Big Cat Attacks

You've probably read the news that Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend Aime Huguenard were mauled to death by a brown grizzly bear in Alaska. Treadwell treated brown bears as pets, and denied that they were dangerous:

"At best he's misguided," Deb Liggett, superintendent at Katmai, told the Anchorage Daily News in 2001. "At worst he's dangerous. If Timothy models unsafe behavior, that ultimately puts bears and other visitors at risk."

The same year, Treadwell was a guest on the "Late Show with David Letterman," describing Alaska brown bears as mostly harmless "party animals."

Now a tape recording found at the scene reveals that in the end Treadwell was pleading with Huguenard to beat the bear off of him. Suffice it to say that treating wild predators as cuddly cause celebes in need of human protection is a good way to wind up as an object lesson in a Jon Krakauer book.

This week also saw performer Roy Horn being attacked by one of his tigers. His co-star, Siegfried Fischbacher, claimed that the tiger drug Horn offstage to protect him. Experts dispute this, noting that the big cat sunk its teeth in his neck. Even after witnessing a tiger attack Fischbacher is apparently unable to conceptualize the nature of a predator. As another example of the way some people idealize man eaters, consider the case of Frances Frost, another victim of a big cat:

A couple of years back, a cougar killed a dog near the home of Frances Frost in Canmore, Alberta. Frost, an ''environmentalist dancer'' with impeccable pro-cougar credentials, objected strenuously to suggestions that the predator be tracked and put down. A month later, she was killed in broad daylight by a cougar who'd been methodically stalking her.

That excerpt comes from Mark Steyn's review of Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev's eco-friendly version of "Peter and the Wolf," in which a marauding wolf is captured, then re-introduced back to the wilderness.

I have some experience in this area. My degree is in biology, and my first job out of college was working as a field biologist in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I hiked into the woods, for miles in some cases, off-trail, alone, to collect water samples at nine study sites scattered across the park and its adjoining forests. Hiking four to five days a week, I ran into wild turkeys, white-tailed deer, and grouse, not to mention copperheads, rattlesnakes, and black bears.

One week persistent rain put me behind schedule. To catch up, I tried to visit three study sites in one day. On the way to the third site I ran into a black bear that had sat motionless as I approached. As I rounded a bend in the trail he erupted into a mass of gallping paws kicking up the forest floor. Luckily for me he ran away from me and not toward me, but he didn't go very far into the brush.

I could have gone past him to my destination, but it was getting late. I'd have to pass this same point on the way back, in near-darkness, alone. I might not be so lucky then. Though I was almost to the study site and I needed badly to get caught up, I thought better of it, turned around, and hiked back to the jeep.

That was in 1993. At that time, no one had ever been killed by a bear in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. That changed in 2001, when 50 year old Glenda Ann Bradley, a schoolteacher from Cosby, Tennessee, was killed by a black bear in the Elkmont section of the park.

Everyone was surprised by a black bear attack. Bear attacks in North America are almost exclusively the province of grizzly bears like the one that killed Treadwell.

It was also a grizzly bear that attacked my friend Tyson. (UPDATE: I recalled it as a grizzly, but it was a black bear. ) Tyson and I were best friends in high school and roommates in college. One summer between college terms he took an Outward Bound class on the Boundary Waters in Canada. The bear attacked without provocation and wouldn't let go. Other people in his group had to beat the bear with canoe paddles to get him to stop the attack. Because they were in a remote area of the backcountry it took 24 hours to evacuate him to a hospital. The bear had torn into his shoulder and mouthed his head, cutting a path in his scalp with one of his incisors. Tyson lived, and several operations later was back in good health and joking that he had "bearly" made it.

That same bear attacked someone else the next day. As with Tyson, the bear wouldn't let go, and had to be beaten back with canoe paddles. UPDATE: The Bounday Waters Journal has an extensive report on the 1987 attacks.

There are competing metaphors for wild nature, from the Bible's benevolent Garden of Eden to Tennyson's concept of "nature, red in tooth and claw." John Stuart Mill once remarked, "If there are any marks of all special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals."

I've worked in nature centers before, and in my experience they struck a healthy balance between assuaging irrational fears on the one hand, and giving good advice on avoiding dangerous animals on the other. For the fringe of the modern ecology movement, that isn't good enough. Their politics are heavily invested in the concept of man as the only destructive being, willful or otherwise, and facts be damned.

For vivid accounts of what happens when people underestimate nature, read Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild and Into Thin Air. Into the Wild tells the story of Chris McCandless, an Emory graduate who set out to Alaska to find adventure (and, one suspects, to prove himself), but who died alone in the wilderness. For a history of missing persons in the Smokies, I highly recommend Dwight McCarter's Lost!

Kentucky Boy Finds Two-Headed Snake

A 10 year old boy in Kentucky found a two-headed snake that's being nicknamed Mary-Kate and Ashley. That boy was destined to be the coolest kid in his class until his dad gave the snake that sissy name.

The University of Tennessee has had two multi-headed snakes. One was a black rat snake. The other was a ringneck. Both were found in Tennessee, as mentioned in this story. A grad student in animal behavior showed me the black rat snake. (I forget the guy's name. Sowell, maybe? He was one of Gordon Burghardt's students.)

The grad student had done an interesting experiment with the snake. The question he was trying to answer was "What causes satiation of hunger? Is it chewing, or is it the presence of food in the stomach?" The snake had two mouths but only one belly, so it was well-suited for answering the question. He fed just one of the heads, and found that it was satisfied, but the unfed head wasn't. (In case you were wondering, he measured satiation by measuring the frequency of tongue-flicking for each head.)

If you can remember the name of UT's two-headed snakes, post in comments. You could win net.fame! Double net.fame for coming up with a better name for a two-headed snake than Mary-Kate and frickin' Ashley.

So Sweet, So Fake

Wired has an article about the pursuit of the perfect artificial sweetener. Most of the candidates are enantiomers: mirror-images of a substance with an identical chemical formula.

Louis Pasteur discovered enantiomers in his studies of tartaric acid, which produces two different crystals. Pasteur separated the crystals by hand under a microscope, dissolved them in solution, and passed a light through the solution. One set of crystals rotated light to the left (the laevus, or L- enantiomer), while the other rotated light to the right (the dexter, or D- enantiomer). The different forms are said to be chiral versions of one another.

Either enantiomer typically works equally well in chemical reactions, but not necessairly in biological reactions. Biological reactions are mediated by enzymes, and enzymes have evolved so that their folded structures only interact with the common enantiomer found in nature. Luckily for food scientists, the taste buds are generally non-specific, and will detect the chiral form as sweet. Most natural sugars are the D- version, while the artificial sweeteners are the L- version.

One new sweetener is the D- version of tagatose. Tagatose is one of the rare sugars that occurs in nature in the L- form. The human body only metabolizes about 25% of the calories in the D- version of tagatose. The taste buds respond to tagatose because it is similar to L- fructose.

Two interesting points from the article. One, saccharin was discovered a long time ago, in 1879. Two, most of the discoveries of artificial sweeteners happened because a chemist spilled a chemical in his hand and later stuck his finger in his mouth. Now that's good chemistry!

Exotic Plants in Knoxville

Terri Killeffer sends along this story about the fight to control exotic pests on Knoxville greenways. (Standard News-Sentinel warning: this online story will self-destruct in no time at all, so read it soon.)

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, invasive plant infestations cover about 100 million acres and are spreading at a rate of 14 percent a year, an area twice the size of Delaware.

During a recent walk along Knoxville's Third Creek Greenway, Ranney stopped at a junction where the railroad tracks, the path and Third Creek converged. The list of exotics at this site included mimosa trees, privet, Japanese honeysuckle and kudzu, just to name a few.

I've been trying to eradicate mimosas around my house for years, but it's like trying to kill Mr. Magoo. I spray Roundup on them, but I think it just gets them high. After that they burn incense and put Phish on the stereo. Then they make sweet love and have little baby mimosas.

Mr. Blobby the Fish

Hi Les,

I just had a look at your interesting blog site.

I thought you might be interested to add a link to the most amazing fish you are ever likely to see. It's Mr. Blobby.

More information on other fishes collected on the same deepsea research expedition can be found at Australian Museum's Norfanz page.

Cheers,
Mark McGrouther

Vaccinate Thy Neighbor

Here's a new idea in vaccinations that's especially interesting now that the U.S. is experiencing shortages of flu vaccine. The idea is to vaccinate only people who have lots of acquaintances (and who therefore are more likely to spread a given disease) in order to minimize the number of people who need to be vaccinated. Via jwz.

Reuven Cohen of Bar-Ilan University in Israel and his colleagues propose a simple modification of random vaccination that is more effective, according to their computer simulations. The idea is to randomly choose, say, 20% of the individuals and ask them to name one acquaintance; then vaccinate those acquaintances. Potential super-spreaders have such a large number of acquaintances that they are very likely to be named at least once, the researchers found. On the other hand, the super-spreaders are so few in number that the random 20% of individuals is unlikely to include many of them.

Using the team's vaccination strategy, a disease can be stopped by vaccinating less than 20% of the individuals, in some cases, according to their computer model of a human population. The method can also be tweaked: if a larger sample is asked for names, and those named twice are vaccinated, the total number of vaccinations required can be even lower.

There are obvious privacy concerns that prevent this from being a routine immunization strategy, but it could be crucial in the event of a bioterror attack.

Aliens Cause Global Warming

Via Clayton Cramer comes a link to this Michael Crichton lecture, Aliens Cause Global Warming. His thesis: soft-heading thinking about scientific issues has become rampant, and we'd be better off if we were more rigorous about science, and its application to public policy.

Rian Malan on the Exaggerated African AIDS Epidemic

In "Africa Isn't Dying of AIDS" Rian Malan reviews the pitiful history of lies and exaggerations surrounding AIDS in Africa. Read this along with Michael Crichton's essay below to see what happens when you mix science, politics, and meaningless data models. Via Colby Cosh.

Aids is the most political disease ever. We have been fighting about it since the day it was identified. The key battleground is public perception, and the most deadly weapon is the estimate. When the virus first emerged, I was living in America, where HIV incidence was estimated to be doubling every year or so. Every time I turned on the TV, Madonna popped up to warn me that ‘Aids is an equal-opportunity killer’, poised to break out of the drug and gay subcultures and slaughter heterosexuals. In 1985, a science journal estimated that 1.7 million Americans were already infected, with ‘three to five million’ soon likely to follow suit. Oprah Winfrey told the nation that by 1990 ‘one in five heterosexuals will be dead of Aids’.

Wood-boring Beetles in Imported Pine Cones

Terri Killeffer sends along this note:

A devastating wood-boring beetle has been detected in scented pine cones imported from India and sold in Florida stores, prompting the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to urge consumers who have recently bought such products to return them immediately. The pest was found in the Target store in Gainesville.

30th Anniversary of the Endangered Species Act

The Volokh Conspiracy notes that today is the anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, and concludes that the act has been a failure.

Sea Monkey Inventor Dies

Harold von Braunhut, inventor of Sea Monkies, has died at the age of 77. He held 195 patents.

On the less whimsical side, he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nation. Who knew?

Hello 2004, So Long Kyoto

Ian Murray says 2003 was a good year for the environment, because the Kyoto Protocol finally became a dead end.

Facts on Mad Cow Disease

It's not as scary as some people would have you think.

Triplewart Seadevil

Mark McGrouther sends along a new fish.

Hi Les,

I have just put up another webpage on a deepsea fish.

It isn't as bizarre as "Mr Blobby", but considering I said I would keep you posted on the weird and wonderful fishes that cross the site I thought an email couldn't hurt.

The fish is the triplewart seadevil (cute name!) and the page is at http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/fishfacts/fish/ccouesii.htm.

Hope you had a good Christmas and all the best for the new year.

Cheers,
Mark

Where Science Meets Policy

Interested Participant tells the story of the Prebles Meadow Jumping Mouse. Listed as an endangered species, its status as a separate species is being challenged by a new study. If the new study is correct, bad science led to an unnecessary expense to taxpayers and land owners. Mistakes are inevitable and even understandable, but when scientific mistakes lead to mistaken policy, the effects are suddenly quantifiable in a way that other scientific mistakes aren't.

Controlled Burns

There's been a lot of talk for decades about controlled burns as a forestry management technique. The theory is that small, more frequent fires burn away brush and forest litter so that they don't accumulate. That helps prevent large, infrequent fires which tend to burn hotter and spread farther.

One of my forestry professors in college was a proponent of controlled burns. He noted that Native Americans used fire to clear land for settlements, and to encourage the growth of small trees that were easier to cut with simple tools.

It's also true that many forest types are the result of natural fires. Many tree species can survive small blazes, and will tend to eventually flourish in areas with periodic fires. Some pine species in particular have cones that don't open unless burned by fire. In the Smokies, Table Mountain pine (Pinus pungens) is an example of a serotinous species.

"Controlled burn" sounds good in theory, but in practice can be more of a wish than a plan. That proved to be the case in 2000 when a prescribed burn caused the Los Alamos forest fire. Luckily, no one was killed, but more than 50,000 acres burned, most of the town's residents were evacuated, and over 200 homes were destroyed.

A 1999 controlled burn in California likewise raged out of control.

The latest incident came just last month. Australian forestry officials set a prescribed fire and accidentally killed Australia's biggest tree. Link.

Using fire as a management tool may make sense as science, but it's problematic as policy. With the mistakes made in the past, politicians and bureaucrats are going to be increasingly reluctant to sign off on controlled burns.

Adoption Rate Anomoly

Tyler Cowen points to an interesting anomoly. Overall, fathers tend to prefer boys for their biological children. Yet when couples adopt there is an overwhelming preference for girls.

Why Don't Clown Fish Get Stung by Anenomes?

Mark McGrouther sends in a new post:

Hi Les,

Don't know if the fishy factsheet that I put up today would be of interest to you for your site. If not, no problems.

It's on why anemonefishes (clown fish) are not stung by their host anemones. It's a neat story.

Feel free to link to the page at http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/faq/anemonefish2.htm if you wish.

All the best for 2004!

Cheers,
Mark

Aerogel

New York Times article on Aerogel, the least dense solid known to man. NASA uses it for collection and insulation. Via Slashdot. Go here for a gallery of Aerogel pictures.

Think about how computers and the Internet have changed the world, and imagine those same changes altering every man-made object you come in contact with. Computer technology has been amazing for manipulating bits, but the real change is going to be manipulating atoms. Materials science and nanotechnology are going to be huge.

Not a Sliver of Silver

Silversinksam at Overcockers.com decided to test popular brands of silver thermal paste. The paste goes between the computer chip and the heat sink to improve thermal conduction. What he found was that several of the brands either contained no silver whatsoever, or much less than indicated. Via Slashdot

The results have been confirmed by an outside lab. OCZ, one of the companies involved, has already announced a recall, saying that they buy their OCZ-branded paste from an outside company who lowered the silver content after the early samples were tested.

Here's a great article on thermal paste at Dan's Data.

From the discussion on Slashdot I found out that silver prices are much lower than I realized, around $6 per troy ounce. By way of comparison, gold is around $440 per troy ounce. This USGS study looks at historic silver prices through 1998.

It looks like silver is at a periodic low, while gold is near a high. Metals generally aren't great investments. They tend not to keep up with other investments or even inflation. However, they do provide some stability in a portfolio, and you can always hope for a metals rush, as happened in the inflationary '70s. With silver so low, I may pick up a little in my 401K. Heck, at these prices I can afford solid silver doorstops and bookends.

Wind Turbines and Birds

Wind turbines are causing more hand-wringing among the hand-wringing class. Scott Burgess puts things in perspective:

UK conservationists are emulating their California counterparts by threatening legal action against wind farms, reports yesterday's Observer (The Sunday Guardian, as it were). The death - one year ago - of a single red kite, named Filled Heart, is apparently threatening the government's alternative energy plan.

In the California case, a lawsuit has been filed by campaigners seeking to prevent the deaths of 5,500 birds a year. A Spanish study indicated that "6,000 birds were killed by turbines in a year."

What the article fails to mention is that a study conducted by the UK's Mammal Society and published in a 2003 edition of Mammal Review indicates that British cats kill about 27 million birds a year.

Prawngobies and Shrimp

Mark McGrouther writes:

Hi Les,

I just put up a page on the neat relationship between prawngobies and shrimps. This is a nice example of mutualism, which should be part of most secondary school biology courses.

Again, I'm not sure if the page is of interest, but you are welcome to alert your readers to its presence if you wish. It's at http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/faq/prawngoby.htm.

Cheers,
Mark

Fighting the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid

The Knoxville News-Sentinel reports on research at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to combat the balsam hemlock woolly adelgid using a predatory beetle, Pseudoscymnus tsugae.

Bogus Reporting on Climate Change Study

Mudville Gazette and Tim Blair are covering the Guardian fiasco over the climate change report.

In a nutshell, the report was prepared for the Pentagon not by it, it was disccused in Forbes magazine two weeks ago, and it describes possible scenarios without making hard predictions. Also, the report wasn't secret or classified. You can download it here.

Now compare that information with this Greenpeace press release:

Weather of mass destruction bigger threat than terrorism Sun 22 February 2004 UNITED STATES/Washington, DC

A world thrown into turmoil by drought, floods, typhoons. Whole countries rendered uninhabitable. The political capital of the Netherlands submerged. The borders of the US and Australia patrolled by armies firing into waves of starving boat people desperate to find a new home. Fishing boats armed with cannon to drive off competitors. Demands for access to water and farmland backed up with nuclear weapons. Sound like the ravings of doom-saying environmental extremists? It's actually the latest Pentagon report on how to ready America for the coming climate Armageddon.

The environmental movement has completely squandered its credibility. Compare this latest incident with Greenpeace's positions on nuclear power and genetically modified food:

"[T]he campaign of fear now being waged against genetic modification is based largely on fantasy and a complete lack of respect for science and logic."
- Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore.

"They have cheated the case and I am angry about that, because that will come to our account. They use bad data, as well as for the Brent Spar as for the French nuclear tests. I am against nuclear tests, but one should use scientific, sound arguments ... Greenpeace has harmed the environmental case."
- Paul Crutzen, Nobel Prize winner for his work on the ozone layer, who cancelled his Greenpeace membership.

Quotes from The Daily Ablution

More Fish Facts and Fish Pics

Mark McGrouther - Mr. Green Jeans to my Captain Kangaroo - sends along his page on the Gulper Eel, a creature whose mouth is bigger than its body.

And there's more:

Hi Les,

I've just put up another interesting fish story. It's entitled 'Do Fishes Sleep?'.

If you would like to link to it, you'll find the page at http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/faq/sleep.htm.

Cheers,
Mark

Condoms and HPV

The Bush administration is considering labels on condoms to warn that they don't protect against human papillomavirus (HPV), which is linked to cervical cancer. California already requires the warnings. Via Clayton Cramer.

First Day of Spring

Today is officially the first day of spring, also known as the spring equinox or vernal equinox.

So what does that mean? It means that the sun's position above the horizon today is at a mid-point between the winter solstice and summer solstice. The sun's highest position of the day is lowest at the winter solstice, and highest at the summer solstice. (In this article about our trip to Asheville in December I mentioned that the long shadows in the pictures were caused by the sun's low position.)

People often say that the equinoxes are the days when daytime and night time are equal. That isn't exactly right, though there is a relationship. That's true at certain latitudes, but not others. The winter and summer solstices are also near the longest and shortest days of the year, again depending on your distance from the Earth's equator. The real definition for these events is determined by the sun's position in the sky.

The spring equinox is usually March 21st, and occasionally March 22. 2004 is a leap year. The extra day in February caused the equinox to fall on the 20th. According to my non-computer calendar, the remaining equinox and solstice dates this year are:

Summer Solstice - June 20
Autumnal Equinox - September 22
Winter Solstice - December 21

Signs of Spring

I celebrated the spring equinox in advance. Last night after work I came home and grabbed my rod and reel and went fishing at Ish Creek on Fort Loudon Lake. I had less than an hour to fish before the sun went down, but I had fun. In a couple of weeks we'll change to daylight savings time and there'll be lots of fishing time after work. When I got home I left my gear in the trunk. For the next six months it's fishing season.

The picture is a Magnolia soulangiana (saucer magnolia or Chinese magnolia) at work. They're one of the earliest bloomers in Knoxville. There used to be one in front of the law school. I snapped this picture yesterday morning with my cell phone camera and jazzed it up with Photoshop. Click on it to see the original, unadulterated (and boring) photograph. Saucer magnolia is on my short list of non-fruitbearing, ornamental trees to plant.

Our property at casa de Jones has most of my favorite native trees, including red bud, dogwood (two other early bloomers), hackberry,* and an awe-inspiring hemlock that impresses even the jaded landscapers who have been out to the house lately. The other native tree I have a soft spot for is sourwood. We have a peach tree and a couple of mature black walnut trees. I'd like to add a pear tree and some dwarf fruit trees when we start the big landscaping project in a couple of weeks. LATER: Come to think of it, there's two more fruit trees I'd like to have: a pawpaw and a fig. Eating a fig picked fresh from the tree is unforgettable - the flesh of the fruit is pinkish-red and doesn't taste anything like the dried fruit.

If you're planting fruit trees in East Tennessee, avoid cherry and plum. There's a blight that does them in. I've had a couple of wild cherry trees in my yard succumb to it. A few years ago I had to make like George Washington and chop down a plum tree I had planted for my mom as a mother's day present in high school. I've also lost a couple of pine trees to what I assume was southern pine bark beetles. You could actually stand outside and hear the beetles chewing into the cambium layer.

* Hackberry is a really non-descript tree, but I like it. Why? Because it's an honest tree, so to speak. No one plants hackberry. If you see a hackberry tree, it's there just because it happened to grow there au natural. It also has a distinctive bark. I can ID hackberry trees even in winter when the leaves are off. For the same reason, I wouldn't mind having a beech tree. Beech has a smooth, gray, tight bark that makes the tree look like an elephant's leg.

DDT

Even the New York Times is admitting that DDT - applied on a house to house basis - isn't the scourge Rachel Carson made it out to be.

Yet what really merits outrage about DDT today is not that South Africa still uses it, as do about five other countries for routine malaria control and about 10 more for emergencies. It is that dozens more do not. Malaria is a disease Westerners no longer have to think about. Independent malariologists believe it kills two million people a year, mainly children under 5 and 90 percent of them in Africa. Until it was overtaken by AIDS in 1999, it was Africa's leading killer. One in 20 African children dies of malaria, and many of those who survive are brain-damaged.

Yet DDT, the very insecticide that eradicated malaria in developed nations, has been essentially deactivated as a malaria-control tool today. The paradox is that sprayed in tiny quantities inside houses -- the only way anyone proposes to use it today -- DDT is most likely not harmful to people or the environment. Certainly, the possible harm from DDT is vastly outweighed by its ability to save children's lives.

Mark Sends More Fish Pix

Hi Les,

I have two more deepsea fishes that you may wish to mention on your site.

The first is the Stoplight Loosejaw. The fish in the images lives over a kilometre down and has jaws longer than its skull.

The second is the viperfish. This is a truly amazing fish that has quite incredible teeth.

Both these fishes were trawled during the NORFANZ expedition,

Cheers,
Mark

John Maynard Smith RIP

Evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith passed away last week. Though not as well known as Stephen Jay Gould to the public, he was influential in the scientific community. His best-known contribution was the concept of the evolutionarily stable strategy. Carl Zimmer has an obituary.

Giant African Snails

Federal health officials have seized giant African snails that were being used in Wisconsin classrooms.

In 1966, a Miami boy smuggled three Giant African Land Snails into the country. His grandmother eventually released them into a garden, and in seven years there were more than 18,000 of them. The eradication program took 10 years, according to the USDA.

Too bad they're such horrible pests. They'd be incredibly cool in a terrarium.

Baby Teeth, Adult Teeth, Bonus Teeth!

There's progress on the ability to grow new teeth.

Instead of false teeth, a small ball of cells capable of growing into a new tooth will be implanted where the missing one used to be.

The procedure needs only a local anaesthetic and the new tooth should be fully formed within a few months of the cells being implanted.

Even if it isn't quite that good (new teeth that are too cheap to meter!) it still sounds good to me, and I still have all 32 of my adult teeth. If I were toothless and old I'd be rallying other AARP members to get Bush and Cheney on the stem cell bandwagon pronto.

China: No Manned Lunar Expedition

Or,

China cancels moonwalk. Also cancelled: the duck walk, the alligator, the mashed potato, the bus stop, and the macarena.

New Fish Video

Mark McGrouther, the Stan Brock to my Marlin Perkins, writes:

Hi Les,

Thought you might be interested in the latest video that I have put up
on the Australian Museum site.

It's footage of an oarfish beaching itself. Fortunately some onlookers
managed to put the fish back in the water and it swam off unharmed.

It's at http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/movies/index.htm#oarfish.

Cheers,
Mark

Stout Infantfish (Schindleria brevipinguis)

Mark McGrouther, the Jack Hanna to my Johnny Carson, writes:

Hi Les,

__________________________
Mark McGrouther
Collection Manager, Fishes
Australian Museum
6 College St
Sydney, NSW, 2010
Australia

Pacific Fanfish (Pteraclis aesticola)

Mark McGrouther, the Stan Brock to my Marlin Perkins, writes:

Hi Les,

Cheers,
Mark
__________________________
Mark McGrouther
Collection Manager, Fishes
Australian Museum
6 College St
Sydney, NSW, 2010
Australia

Bio-engineering a Pulseless Heart

Pulseless artificial hearts that send blood continuously instead of pulsing. Seems counter-intuitive. I would guess that our bodies aren't adapted for continuous full-pressure flow. I'd even expect that some bodily processes would be regulated by pulse.

Time for a Geodesic Food Dome?

The Department of Agriculture is asking for ideas to replace the Food Pyramid. Dibs on the Mobius Food Strip.

Paleoclimatologist Review of "The Day After Tomorrow"

Members of rec.arts.sf.written asked poster and Duke University paleoclimatologist William Hyde to review "The Day After Tomorrow." He declined, saying he wouldn't do it unless someone gave him $100. They did, and he did. Via Colby Cosh:

The movie is at its most stunningly accurate in its portrayal of paleoclimatologists.

Paleoclimatologists are notoriously brave and of course very fit. Nary a one of us would hesitate to jump a widening crevasse - twice - while wearing arctic gear - to recover some ice cores which would take 2-3 hours to re-drill. We're watching out for *your* tax dollars. Score one for the movie.

Paleoclimatologists are also notoriously handsome/beautiful, indeed, the envy and despair of other scientists (because frostbite gives the skin such a youthful appearance). I cannot fault the producers for failing to cast realistically good-looking people in these roles (Dennis Quaid barely qualifies as handsome enough) but I suspect that there just aren't enough good looking actors in Hollywood to populate a typical paleoclimatic working group.

Now I'm through saying positive things.

There's more.

Typography Myth Smashed

So ever since reading Robin Williams's "The Mac is Not a Typewriter" I've believed in what's called the word shape model of word recognition. That theory goes that people recognize words by their overall shape, rather than by the sequence of letters or other sub-units.

Williams used the theory to argue against all-capitalized words, since all caps leads to uniform, un-differentiated blocks. From what I've read in design books and Web sites this theory is wildly popular in design and typography circles.

In a new paper, Kevin Larson, a PhD in psychology who works for Microsoft, examines the competing theories of word recognition. It turns out word shape theory is old hat, and is no longer seriously considered a viable model for word recognition. Via Colby Cosh, whom I'm shamelessly ripping off today.

In This Corner, Stephen Hawking, In This Corner... Gregg Easterbrook?

Brad DeLong fisks Gregg Easterbrook's criticisms of Stephen Hawking and some broad theories in physics.

Those Wacky Physics Students...

and their zany laboratory mischief. "But.... the good news is that I am the first documented medical case of a cryogenic ingestion. Read the New England Journal of Medicine. Three articles are in review now, and will be published soon, I'm told." There are easier ways to get published.

Longray Spiderfish (Bathypterois longifilis)

Mark McGouther, the Steve Irwin to my Tim Blair, writes:

Hi Les,

I've just put up a page on another deepsea fish that may interest you.

It's the Longray Spiderfish at
http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/fishfacts/fish/blongifil.htm

Check out the length of the pectoral fins.

Cheers,
Mark
Collection Manager, Fishes
Australian Museum

Clayton Cramer Defends Evolution

Conservative, Christian blogger Clayton Cramer has a wonderful defense of evolution. His earlier defense of abortion was equally surprising to me.

Vitamin E May Shorten Lifespan

Via Fox News:

Johns Hopkins University researcher Edgar R. Miller III, MD, PhD, an associate professor of medicine, tells WebMD that when he combined 19 vitamin E studies that looked at almost 136,000 patients, "it was clear that as the vitamin E dose increased, so does all-cause mortality."

...

His voice rising as he describes his frustration with patients that "don't take drugs that we know work, yet take a supplement because they heard about it on the radio or because a neighbor recommended it," Gibbons says he hopes this latest report will finally debunk the vitamin E myth.

Also called into question: toothpaste that tastes like ass but doesn't fight cavities, and Cherokee hair tampons.

Uncle Cecil on Lead Fishing Sinkers and the Environment

Dear Straight Dope:

I went fishing for salmon for the first time in my life last year in Washington along a beautiful quiet river with about 100 or so other anglers. Besides depositing beer cans, cigarette butts, fish guts, fast food trash, hundreds of yards of fishing line and multitudes of hooks, etc., I quickly noticed that due the rocky nature of the stream bottom anglers commonly broke their lines several times per session. Most of these "sportsmen" used lead weights on the end their lines. Considering that this has been happening every year for 30 (?) years or so there is probably a truckload of submerged lead lurking there. Does this practice pose a risk to the environment? Is lead really the most suitable material for this endeavor? --Mike

SDSTAFF Una replies:

Two things you might find surprising: First, lead fishing weights have a long history--the Egyptians used lead net sinkers 5,000-7,000 years ago (reference 2). Second, perhaps the greatest danger posed by lead fishing tackle is neither to fish nor humans, but to birds.

Read the whole answer. It convinced me to buy non-lead sinkers next fishing season.

Sandhill Crane Viewing Days February 5-6, 2005

Sandhill Crane Viewing Days are coming up again in a few weeks. When Melissa and I first started dating I invited her to go, and it apparently made a big impression on her that I'd want to to do that sort of thing. It firmly established my dorky-cool nature cred.

Sandhill cranes are huge birds, and they migrate through Tennessee in large numbers during the viewing time. We took binoculars, but we also peeked through other people's spotting scopes to watch the big birds. Birders are friendly folks, and we enjoyed milling around and talking to people.

The event is at Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge in Meigs County, with special programs at Birchwood School. Contact Meigs County Tourism at 423-344-5850 for more information.

- More Sandhill crane viewing info.
- More about Sandhill cranes
- UPDATE: SouthKnoxBubba went early and took pictures

Sleep Apnea

John Cole is blogging his sleep apnea diagnosis and treatment:

I went to bed at 11:30 last night, and I slept until 3:50. Went to the bathroom, slept from 3:50 until 8:00ish. That may sound uneventful for those of you without sleep disorders, but let me tell you, the difference for me is remarkable.

First, as I was having 54 episodes an hour, waking up only once a night as opposed to 400 is highly preferable.

I used to work with a guy who had sleep apnea. He didn't know he had it until he got married and his wife noticed he'd stop breathing in his sleep. He went to a local sleep disorders center and got diagnosed. He eventually had surgery to correct it.

As someone who occasionally snores, I thought that would be pretty cool, since I assumed the surgery would also stop snoring. It didn't. We went on a business trip together one time and shared a room. He snored like hell. Oh, well. It did cure his sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea is a pretty serious condition. Besides making you feel bad, it often leads to high blood pressure and gradually damages your heart.

- Wikipedia entry on sleep apnea
- Sleep apnea self-assessment

Newsweek Reports - The Cooling World

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.” Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

Newsweek - April 28, 1975

For a counterpoint, read this.

Why I Don't Worry About Intelligent Design

I haven't given any time to the Intelligent Design flapdoodle. It's not that I don't have an opinion - I'm a Darwinist through and through. It's just that I've read lots of Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins and between the two of them I've not only seen the arguments, I've seen these debates unfold over the course of two decades. Experience tells me that in the U.S. the evolutionists always win, so I rarely bother to even get indignant about people trying to keep evolution out of the schools, or putting warning stickers on textbooks, or trying to get creationism taught for "balance."

I don't expect Intelligent Design - which is just creationism with a fresh coat of paint - to fare any better than old-school creationism. As the latest example of why that is, consider this post at the National Review's group blog, The Corner. National Review is a conservative publication, and John Derbyshire is one of the most conservative of the bunch, but even he is unimpressed with ID arguments. Here's his opening paragraph.

First, a general remark. I like a good knock-down argument as much as the next person, but I must say, ID-ers are low-grade opponents, at least if a bulk of my e-mails are any indication. They are still banging away with the arguments I first heard when the whole thing first surfaced 10-15 yrs ago. "What use is half an eye?" "The odds against this are a trillion to one!" etc. etc. There is nothing new here. I understand why biologists get angry and frustrated with ID-ers. All the ID arguments have been patiently refuted many times over. The ID-ers response is to come back with... the same arguments.

Read the whole thing. Certainly not every Christian conservative feels the way Derbyshire does, but enough do that creationism doesn't stand a chance in this country.

UPDATE February 10: More Derbyshire posts on ID here and here. Also, it turns out Derbyshire used to take acid. That surprised me, but it didn't exactly alter my world view. Lots of people who wind up conservatives didn't start that way.

ATTN: Math and Chess Nerds

(I know, that title is probably redundant.)

Check this out. A way of moving the knight to every square on the board once and only once that forms a magic square.

Ribbon barracudina (Arctozenus risso)

Mark McGrouther, the Jim Fowler to my Cosmo Kramer, writes:

Hi Les,

I haven't contacted you for some time, so ... this morning I put up a new NORFANZ fish page. It's on the ribbon barracudina. It is a deepsea fish, but doesn't look as outrageous as some of the other deepsea species. It's at http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/fishfacts/fish/arisso.htm.

You may also be interested in the tsunami hoax page at http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/faq/tsunami.htm.

Cheers,
Mark
__________________________
Mark McGrouther
Collection Manager, Fishes
Australian Museum
6 College St
Sydney, NSW, 2010
Australia

More Math Nerdery

111111 x 111111 = 123454321

Via Wyatt's Torch, who has more.

Anthropologist Forced to Retire When False Data Exposed

Reiner Protsch von Zieten has been accused of scientific fraud. He allegedly falsified carbon dating records, including his research that showed Neanderthals in northern Europe.

Another apparent misdating involved an allegedly prehistoric skull discovered near Paderborn in 1976 and considered the oldest human remain ever found in the region. Prof von Zieten dated the skull at 27,400 years old. The latest research, however, indicates that it belonged to an elderly man who died around 1750.

Germany's Herne anthropological museum, which owns the Paderborn skull, was so disturbed by the findings that it did its own tests. "We had the skull cut open and it still smelt," the museum's director, Barbara Ruschoff-Thale, said last week. "We are naturally very disappointed". . .

Clayton Cramer is loving it, noting that it's both scientific and evolutionary fraud. True, but as I think Cramer would acknowledge, the apparent fraud was discovered by another scientist, archeologist Thomas Terberger. Despite a dishonest actor, good data is pushing out the bad, and that seems to be the best we