Author Archives: curiouscat

Young Scientists Design Open-Source Program at NASA

Young Scientists Design Open-Source Program at NASA:

The program was launched quietly last year under NASA’s CoLab entrepreneur outreach program, created by Robert Schingler, 28, and Jessy Cowan-Sharp, 25, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Members of the CosmosCode group have been meeting in Second Life and will open the program to the public in the coming weeks, organizers said.

“NASA is recognizing the value of free and open-source software in other sectors,” said Cowan-Sharp, a contractor at NASA Ames in Mountain View, California. “CosmosCode is going one step further by allowing NASA scientists to begin a software project in the public domain, leveraging the true value of open-source software by creating an active community of volunteers.”

CosmosCode is indicative of a larger shift at NASA toward openness and transparency — things for which complex and bureaucratic government labs are not known. The software project is part of CoLab, an effort to invite the public to help NASA scientists with various engineering problems. NASA is also digging into its files from previous missions and releasing code that until now remained behind closed doors. Together, these projects are creating a sort of SourceForge for space.

Related: CosmosCode – Second Life Intern – NASA CoLab

Math’s Architect of Beauty

Math’s Architect of Beauty – How Terence Tao’s quest for elegance earned him a Fields Medal and a MacArthur Fellowship

The prime numbers do obey some simple patterns—for instance, all primes but 2 are odd numbers. The great achievement of the Green-Tao theorem is its use of subtle and novel methods of harmonic analysis (very much indebted to the work of 2002 Fields Medalist Timothy Gowers) to show that these simple patterns are essentially the only structure the primes possess. Beyond these basic structures, the primes look random—they are, in a sense, all noise and no music.

Related: Terence Tao – math related posts

Bedbugs Are Back

Bedbugs bounce back: Outbreaks in all 50 states by Meredith May:

Pest control companies nationwide reported a 71 percent increase in bedbug calls between 2000 and 2005. Left alone, a few bedbugs can create a colony of thousands within weeks. “We never treated bedbugs until 2002. Now we have a dedicated bedbug crew working on this every day,” said Luis Agurto, president of Pestec in San Francisco.

Agurto’s arsenal includes a vacuum, steam heat to cook the bedbug eggs and targeted spraying of insecticides. It takes three, eight-hour visits and about $500 to $750 to exterminate one room. A whole house would cost closer to $5,000.
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Nearly all exterminators use pyrethroids, which are a synthetic version of pyrethrum, the substance found in chrysanthemum flowers. But last fall, at the University of Kentucky, some of the nation’s best bedbug researchers delivered some sobering news — while they could kill bedbugs born in the lab with pyrethroids, four groups of adult bedbugs brought in from the outside were unaffected.

University extension offices often have the soundest scientific information – try the links below for more details.

CERN Pressure Test Failure

photo of Femilab inner triplet quadrupole at CERN

On March 27th a high-pressure test at CERN of a Fermilab-built ‘inner-triplet’ series of three quadrupole magnets in the tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider failed. Fermilab Director on the test failure:

We test the complex features we design thoroughly. In this case we are dumbfounded that we missed some very simple balance of forces. Not only was it missed in the engineering design but also in the four engineering reviews carried out between 1998 and 2002 before launching the construction of the magnets. Furthermore even though every magnet was thoroughly tested individually, they were never tested with the exact configuration that they would have when installed at CERN–thus missing the opportunity to discover the problem sooner.

We need and want to make sure that we find the root causes of the problem and from the lessons learned build a stronger institution. Beyond that, there is no substitute for the commitment each of us makes to excellence, to critical thinking and to sweating every detail.

In a Fermilab Update on Inner Triplet Magnets at LHC they state: “The goal at CERN and Fermilab is now to redesign and repair the inner triplet magnets and, if necessary, the DFBX without affecting the LHC start-up schedule. Teams at CERN and Fermilab have identified potential repairs that could be carried out expeditiously without removing undamaged triplet magnets from the tunnel.”

Bisphenol A

Bisphenol A is a chemical compound used in plastics (and contained in many beverage and food container – water bottles…). There is debate over how dangerous it is. Studies have found health problems in animals and people (due to Bisphenol A exposure) but whether those studies indicate there is any problem with the real life exposures today is questioned. At a quick glance at the issue it seems to me the issue is worthy of continued study but the evidence of harm is not conclusive yet (the FDA, European Food Safety Authority and Japan have examined the issue and find current levels safe). However, I am concerned about the general increase it chemicals in our food supply, ground water… so I think this is an area that needs constant monitoring and increases in funding for public health studies. Obviously the industries effected have an interest in maintaining the status quo and influencing government to concur. Those pressures have to be offset by proper government research and oversight. Which is not easy to maintain.

I personally want to err on the side of safety even if that increases costs. But making those tradeoffs – costs versus safety are complicated for an entire economy. Examining the existing evidence to see if there is a high likelihood of danger is not that tricky (that seems to be no, right now, for Bisphenol A). But determining whether the likelihood of danger is too high in reality (not that has been proved yet) is much more difficult. Even deciding what things to devote resources to for further study is quite challenging.

Links: Bisphenol A Exposure In Utero Disrupts Early Oogenesis in the Mouse – Opinion of the Scientific Panel AFC related to 2,2-BIS(4-HYDROXYPHENYL)PROPANE – EPA on Bisphenol A. – ‘Inherently toxic’ chemical faces its future – European Safety Review – No Risk from Bisphenol A Exposure – Bisphenol A industry web site

Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

Climate Change 2007: Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – summary (pdf) [the broken link has been removed]

Related articles: International report details impact of global warming [the broken link has been removed] – Climate change around the world – U.S., China Got Climate Warnings Toned Down – Permanent drought predicted for Southwest [paywall added so the broken link has been removed]

Solar Power Innovation: 10 Times Cheaper needs 10 Times less Sun

Dr Wayne CampbellTaking nature’s cue for cheaper solar power (site broke link so I removed it):

Solar cell technology developed by the University’s Nanomaterials Research Centre will enable New Zealanders to generate electricity from sunlight at a 10th of the cost of current silicon-based photo-electric solar cells.
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Dr Campbell says that unlike the silicon-based solar cells currently on the market, the 10x10cm green demonstration cells generate enough electricity to run a small fan in low-light conditions – making them ideal for cloudy climates. The dyes can also be incorporated into tinted windows that trap to generate electricity.

He says the green solar cells are more environmentally friendly than silicon-based cells as they are made from titanium dioxide – a plentiful, renewable and non-toxic white mineral obtained from New Zealand’s black sand. Titanium dioxide is already used in consumer products such as toothpaste, white paints and cosmetics.

“The refining of pure silicon, although a very abundant mineral, is energy-hungry and very expensive. And whereas silicon cells need direct sunlight to operate efficiently, these cells will work efficiently in low diffuse light conditions,” Dr Campbell says. “The expected cost is one 10th of the price of a silicon-based solar panel, making them more attractive and accessible to home-owners.” The Centre’s new director, Professor Ashton Partridge, says they now have the most efficient porphyrin dye in the world and aim to optimise and improve the cell construction and performance before developing the cells commercially.

Solar Flares May Threaten GPS

Solar Bursts May Threaten GPS (site broke link so I removed it):

The cause for their concern, Johnson said, was an unexpected solar radio burst on Dec. 6 that affected virtually every GPS receiver on the lighted half of Earth. Some receivers had a reduction in accuracy while others completely lost the ability to determine position, he said.
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And protecting the system is no simple task, added Paul M. Kintner Jr., a professor of electrical engineering at Cornell University, who monitored the December event. There are two possible ways to shield the system, he said, both very expensive. Either alter all GPS antennas to screen out solar signals or replace all of the GPS satellites with ones that broadcast a stronger signal.

That’s why it’s essential to learn more about the sun’s behavior quickly in an effort to find ways to predict such events, the researchers said. In addition to the GPS system, the December solar flare affected satellites and induced unexpected currents in the electrical grid, Johnson said.
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Dale E. Gary, chairman of the physics department of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said the burst produced 10 times more radio noise than any burst previously recorded.

Related: Solar Storms – Solar Eruption Photo

Cats Control Rats … With Parasites

What, then, could attract rats to cat pee? None other than toxoplasma gondii, a parasite carried by cats. If a rat is infected by t. gondii, cat urine doesn’t seem so bad anymore; it’s even kind of attractive. Even more impressively, Stanford University researchers have found that the rats otherwise behave normally, with all their usual fears intact. The response is so specific that cats and t. gondii seem almost like a single organism — which, in a sense, they are.

Fellowship Winners

Several fellowships and scholarships have announced winners for this year:

NSF Graduate Research Fellowships
Department of Defense (NDSEG) Fellowships – no online list of winners yet
Marshall Scholarships (link broken, so removed)
Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship – blog announcement

As I have mentioned before I work for ASEE (which manages the NSF and NDSEG fellowships): this blog is my personal blog and is not associated with ASEE.

Find out more about these and other science and engineering fellowships and scholarships. Also see: How to Win a Graduate Fellowship – NSF Undergraduate STEM Scholarships