Category Archives: Science

Baseball Pitch Designed in the Lab

Five years ago, computer scientist Ryutaro Himeno was testing super-computers by modeling the fluid dynamics of airflow around baseballs. Himeno’s deconstruction of existing pitches led to a strange new one—whirling clockwise as it flew forward, the virtual ball curved as abruptly as its closest relative, the slider, but without sinking. Himeno met with Kazushi Tezuka, who runs baseball training centers in Tokyo and Osaka, and they ironed out the pitch’s mechanics.

As detailed in the books the pair has since authored, a gyroball calls for a complex flip of the fingers during release, ending with the thumb pointed down. At its most effective, the pitch breaks horizontally as it nears the batter, as though shrugging off gravity.

Gravity-Defying Baseball Pitch Ready for U.S. – an update on the article above. Details from the scientist (pdf)

The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science

The United States government bears great responsibility for keeping our environment clean and Americans healthy and safe. And while science is rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should be objective and impartial.

In recent years, however, scientists who work for and advise the federal government have seen their work manipulated, suppressed, distorted, while agencies have systematically limited public and policy maker access to critical scientific information. To document this abuse, the Union of Concerned Scientists has created the A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science.
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In 2004, 62 renowned scientists and science advisors signed a scientist statement on scientific integrity, denouncing political interference in science and calling for reform. On December 9, 2006, UCS released the names of more than 10,000 scientists of all backgrounds from all 50 states—including 52 Nobel Laureates—who have since joined their colleagues on this statement.

It is important for the public to have access to type of information. There will always be areas of intersection between science and politics. And there is a role for politicians in science policy. However, covering up data and attempts to promote unscientific conclusions from data, in order to serve political ends, is something that should be condemned. Certainly many will seek to turn political disagreements into condemnation of the opposition, so the mere accusation is not the important factor – the important factor is the evidence of wrongdoing. Then the facts should be debated.
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Physics Concepts in 60 Seconds

Physics Concepts in 60 Seconds from Symmetry Magazine (from Fermilab and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). The magazine is open access journal funded by the US Department of Energy. The complete antimatter in 60 seconds by Michael Doser, CERN:

Antimatter is made up of particles with equal but opposite characteristics of everyday particles of matter. Consider this analogy: dig a hole, and make a hill with the earth you’ve excavated. Hole and hill have equal but opposite characteristics— the volume of the earth in the hill, and that of the hole where the earth was removed. For particles, properties like electrical charge are opposite to their antiparticles—one positive, one negative. Also, antimatter will annihilate its matter counterpart in a burst of energy, just like the hill will fill the hole, leaving neither.

The universe seems to contain no significant amounts of antimatter, despite expectations that both should have been created equally during the big bang. So where did all the antimatter go? One possible explanation could be a subtle and unexpected difference in the properties of matter and antimatter, leading to a slight excess of matter which survived the initial cataclysm of matter-antimatter annihilation.

Experimenters at CERN, Fermilab, SLAC and KEK are producing antimatter in particle accelerators to search for and study this difference. Antimatter also has real-life medical applications, such as positron emission tomography—PET scans. But because producing antimatter even in minuscule quantities is very difficult, it will unfortunately never power any future Starship Enterprise.

Ocean Warming’s Effect on Phytoplankton

Ocean warming’s effect on phytoplankton:

When the climate warms, there is a drop in the abundance of the ocean’s phytoplankton, the tiny plants that feed krill, fish and whales, according to scientists who say new research offers the first clues to the future of marine life under global warming.

Ocean temperatures have generally risen over the last 50 years as the atmosphere warms. And now nine years of NASA satellite data published today in the journal Nature show that the growth rate and abundance of phytoplankton around the world decreases in warm ocean years and increases in cooler ocean years.

Physicists Find Long Sought Particle

Long the fixation of physicists worldwide, a tiny particle is found:

After decades of intensive effort by both experimental and theoretical physicists worldwide, a tiny particle with no charge, a very low mass and a lifetime much shorter than a nanosecond, dubbed the “axion,” has now been detected by the University at Buffalo physicist who first suggested its existence in a little-read paper as early as 1974.
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“We identified each vertex for each electron pair and we would not accept any electron pair unless we knew its vertex,” he said. “There was a congestion of all kinds of low mass particles, including axions, near the detector. The background has to be filtered out from this congestion in order to obtain the signal of the axion.”

Water flowed ‘recently’ on Mars

Two gullies that were originally photographed in 1999 and 2001, and imaged again in 2004 and 2005, showed changes consistent with water flowing down the crater walls, according to the study.

In both cases, scientists found bright, light-coloured deposits in the gullies that were not present in the original photos. They concluded that the deposits – possibly mud, salt or frost – were left there when water recently cascaded through the channels.

Other scientists think it possible that gullies like this were caused not by water but by liquid carbon dioxide.

Increasing American Fellowship Support for Scientists and Engineers

A great research paper is available today from the Brookings Institution: Investing in the Best and Brightest: Increased Fellowship Support for American Scientists and Engineers by Richard B. Freeman. For those interesting in science and engineering education and/or economic policy I recommend it.

In 2005, the United States employed about 31 percent of the world’s scientist and engineer researchers and financed 35 percent of R&D while accounting for 5 percent of the world’s population and 21 percent of the world’s GDP…
The U.S. share of global science and engineering activity is declining, however, and will continue to decline

I agree the declining trend is likely to continue, mainly due to the improvement of science and engineering efforts worldwide, see, for example: Diplomacy and Science Research and – U.S. Slipping on Science – Phony Science Gap?.

The growth of high-tech employment in Silicon Valley and in university-based locations of scientific excellence suggests that innovation, production, and employment in high-tech fields occur largely in areas strong in basic science.10 The supply of scientists and engineers is a major factor in the location of these centers of excellence.

Again I agree. I am in danger of confirmation bias since this report basically reinforces what I believe – so of course I find it worthwhile.

While no one can be sure of the particular areas where an increased number of scientists and engineers might make their greatest contribution, our recent history is filled with examples where young innovative researchers have made major contributions to economic progress: The Internet. The biotech industry. The PC. The mathematics of cryptography that underpins Internet commerce.

Again I agree. This is why so many countries have been devoting significant resources to improving their science and technology infrastructure – the economic benefits of doing so.
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Science and Engineering Scholarships and Fellowships

I have added a new page on our web site that includes links to online resources with advice on applying for and winning science and engineering scholarships and fellowships. That page also includes a list of the largest science and engineering scholarships and fellowships. Please share your comments and suggestions for additions for that page.

China’s Science and Technology Plan

Interesting article – China’s 15-year science and technology plan by Cong Cao, Richard P. Suttmeier, and Denis Fred Simon:

China initiated a 15-year “Medium- to Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology.” The MLP calls for China to become an “innovation-oriented society” by the year 2020, and a world leader in science and technology (S&T) by 2050
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China will invest 2.5% of its increasing gross domestic product in R&D by 2020, up from 1.34% in 2005; raise the contributions to economic growth from technological advance to more than 60%

Finding Dark Matter

Dark matter hides, physicists seek

Scientists don’t know what dark matter is, but they know it’s all over the universe. Everything humans observe in the heavens—galaxies, stars, planets and the rest—makes up only 4 percent of the universe, scientists say. The remaining 96 percent is composed of dark matter and its even more mysterious sibling, dark energy. Scientists recently found direct evidence that dark matter exists by studying a distant galaxy cluster and observing different types of motion in luminous versus dark matter. Still, no one knows what dark matter is made of.
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The experiment is the most sensitive in the world aiming to detect exotic particles called WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), which are one of scientists’ best guesses at what makes up dark matter. Other options include neutrinos, theorized particles called axions or even normal matter like black holes and brown dwarf stars that are just too faint to see.

WIMPS are thought to be neutral in charge and weigh more than 100 times the mass of a proton. At the moment these elementary particles exist only in theory and have never been observed.