Explaining the Missing Antimatter

Flipping particle could explain missing antimatter

It is one the biggest mysteries in physics – where did all the antimatter go? Now a team of physicists claims to have found the first ever hint of an answer in experimental data. The findings could signal a major crack in the standard model, the theoretical edifice that describes nature’s fundamental particles and forces.

In its early days, the cosmos was a cauldron of radiation and equal amounts of matter and antimatter. As it cooled, all the antimatter annihilated in collisions with matter – but for some reason the proportions ended up lopsided, leaving some of the matter intact.

Physicists think the explanation for this lies with the weak nuclear force, which differs from the other fundamental forces in that it does not act equally on matter and antimatter. This asymmetry, called CP violation, could have allowed the matter to survive to form the elements, stars and galaxies we see today.
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“It is tantalisingly interesting at the moment,” says Val Gibson, an expert on B meson physics at the University of Cambridge. “If it is true, it is earth-shattering.” Jacobo Konigsberg, who leads the CDF collaboration, says that Tevatron researchers are “cautiously excited” about the analysis. He points out that more data needs to be analysed to rule out a statistical fluke, which has happened several times before in particle physics.

Baby Sand Dollars Clone Themselves When They Sense Danger

Baby sand dollars clone themselves when they sense danger

The odds of growing up aren’t good for baby sand dollars. Smaller than the head of a pin, the larvae drift in the ocean — easy prey for anything with a mouth.

But a University of Washington graduate student has discovered the tiny animal has a surprising survival strategy: Faced with the threat of being gobbled up, it makes like Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies and clones itself. The resulting “mini-me” may escape hungry fish because it is even teenier than the original — and harder to see.

“If you are eaten, but the smaller version of you survives, you’re still a winner from an evolutionary standpoint,” said Dawn Vaughn.
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Familiar inhabitants of Washington’s subtidal zone, sand dollars start life though the chance encounter of sperm and egg, simultaneously released into the water by mature adults. The larvae free-float for about six weeks before metamorphosing into miniature sand dollars that settle in colonies and eventually grow to full size.
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The white shells that wash up on the beach are the creatures’ external skeletons. Living sand dollars are covered with velvety, purple spines used to grab food particles. Vaughn knew many other marine invertebrates shift their shape to avoid being eaten. Colonial animals called bryozoans grow spikes when voracious sea slugs crawl across them. Barnacles take on a bent posture to repel snails. Vaughn’s own previous research showed periwinkle larvae narrow their shell openings to keep out marauding crab larvae.

Photos by Fritz the Cat

Fritz the cat - photographer

fritz-cam by Fritz the cat:

My name is Fritz [photo of me on the left] and I live at 23 Cat Street [in Germany]. My mistress is an artist, and now it’s my turn to show what I can do. Since September 2007 we’ve owned a Mr-Lee-Catcam
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Third time lucky. I went for a long walk with the camera. Perhaps a bit too long, because she was looking for me everywhere. Anyway, she was very pleased when I came home with the camera and a mouse. I’d taken over 200 photos while I was out. Unfortunately the battery gave up the ghost before the final capture … of the mouse, I mean.

See many more great photos by fritz at fritz-cam.

Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace

The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall, the most robust run in the Sacramento River, have disappeared. The almost complete collapse of the richest and most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska left gloomy fisheries experts struggling for reliable explanations – and coming up dry.

Whatever the cause, there was widespread agreement among those attending a five-day meeting of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council here last week that the regional $150 million fishery, which usually opens for the four-month season on May 1, is almost certain to remain closed this year from northern Oregon to the Mexican border.
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So what happened? As Dave Bitts, a fisherman based in Eureka in Northern California, sees it, the variables are simple. “To survive, there are two things a salmon needs,” he said. “To eat. And not to be eaten.”

Fragmentary evidence about salmon mortality in the Sacramento River in recent years, as well as more robust but still inconclusive data about ocean conditions in 2005, indicates that the fall Chinook smolts, or baby fish, of 2005 may have lost out on both counts. But biologists, fishermen and fishery managers all emphasize that no one yet knows anything for sure.

Drug Price Crisis

I don’t think the suggestion below really solves the drug price crisis. But I do think it is an example of an educational and research institution actually proposing sensible role for themselves. As I have said too many universities now act like they are for-profit drug or research companies: Funding Medical Research. For some background on drug prices read my post on the Curious Cat Management blog from 2005.

Solving the drug price crisis

The mounting U.S. drug price crisis can be contained and eventually reversed by separating drug discovery from drug marketing and by establishing a non-profit company to oversee funding for new medicines, according to two MIT experts on the pharmaceutical industry.
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Following the utility model, Finkelstein and Temin propose establishing an independent, public, non-profit Drug Development Corporation (DDC), which would act as an intermediary between the two new industry segments — just as the electric grid acts as an intermediary between energy generators and distributors.

The DDC also would serve as a mechanism for prioritizing drugs for development, noted Finkelstein. “It is a two-level program in which scientists and other experts would recommend to decision-makers which kinds of drugs to fund the most. This would insulate development decisions from the political winds,” he said.

Book – Reasonable Rx: Solving the Drug Price Crisis by Stan Finkelstein and Peter Temin

NCAA Basketball Challenge 2008

Once again I have created a group on the ESPN NCAA Basketball Tournament Challenge for curiouscat college basketball fans. To participate, go to the curiouscat ESPN group and make your picks.

This year we also have a second challenge, using sportsline, that rewards picking upsets. So those that enjoy the tournament please join the fun. The password for this one is cat

Go Badgers and Go Davidson,

Contractor Warned NYC About Crane

Contractor warned city about crane but was blown off

A retired contractor warned the city 12 days ago the doomed crane on E. 51st St. wasn’t properly braced, but the Buildings Department blew him off after making a cursory check. “I think the Buildings Department is grossly negligent because they had been warned. They sent an inspector and they brushed it under the rug, so to speak,” said Bruce Silberblatt, an 80-year-old former contractor.

“Now, I’m sitting here and, at last count, four people are dead and a couple buildings on 50th St. are completely wrecked. … It looks like Baghdad over there.” Silberblatt said he called the city at 3 p.m. on March 4 because he had been concerned for days about the lack of braces securing the crane at a construction site near his United Nations Plaza home.
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Early yesterday, Silberblatt watched as the crane was lifted about 50 feet higher into the air. That left almost 150 feet of the massive white crane unsecured, he estimated. “That to me is unstable,” he said. “It’s too heavy. You don’t have to be an engineer to understand that.” Hours later, Silberblatt’s worst fear was realized: The crane toppled over, splitting in two after it crashed into one building, and then flattening a four-story building.
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Stephen Kaplan, owner of the construction company managing the site, Reliance Construction Group, said the crane became dislodged after a piece of steel fell and severed one of its ties. “It was an absolute freak accident,” Kaplan told The Associated Press. “All the piece of steel had to do was fall slightly left or right, and nothing would have happened.” Silberblatt called that explanation nonsense.

Update: Inspector Is Charged With Filing False Report Before Crane Collapsed
Continue reading →

Bird Brain Language Research

Molecular Mapping of Movement-Associated Areas in the Avian Brain: A Motor Theory for Vocal Learning Origin

Vocal learning is a critical behavioral substrate for spoken human language. It is a rare trait found in three distantly related groups of birds-songbirds, hummingbirds, and parrots. These avian groups have remarkably similar systems of cerebral vocal nuclei for the control of learned vocalizations that are not found in their more closely related vocal non-learning relatives. These findings led to the hypothesis that brain pathways for vocal learning in different groups evolved independently from a common ancestor but under pre-existing constraints. Here, we suggest one constraint, a pre-existing system for movement control.

Using behavioral molecular mapping, we discovered that in songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds, all cerebral vocal learning nuclei are adjacent to discrete brain areas active during limb and body movements. Similar to the relationships between vocal nuclei activation and singing, activation in the adjacent areas correlated with the amount of movement performed and was independent of auditory and visual input.
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Based upon these findings, we propose a motor theory for the origin of vocal learning, this being that the brain areas specialized for vocal learning in vocal learners evolved as a specialization of a pre-existing motor pathway that controls movement.

Grade School Engineering

Reading, Writing … And Engineering

More than 2,200 middle and high schools use engineering courses offered by Project Lead the Way, a Clifton Park, N.Y., nonprofit that receives industry support, up from just 12 when the initiative started in 1997. And Infinity Project, developed out of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, is now in 300 schools, up from 12 in 1999. The impact of these initiatives on the ranks of engineers remains to be seen.

Besides creating curricular approaches, groups are lobbying state governments to add engineering to their education standards.

Massachusetts included engineering content in its state science requirements for grades K-12 starting in 2001. New Hampshire began sprinkling engineering and technology concepts into its science curriculum starting last school year. New Jersey incorporated engineering concepts into its state education standards starting in 2004. And more states are following: Texas is working on creating standards for an engineering course that can be used to fulfill a high-school science credit.
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Teaching through problem-solving storybooks that feature characters from around the globe “becomes a lot richer and is liberating for many kids and many teachers,” she says. The curriculum can cost as little as $40 — the price of a teacher’s binder, including lesson plans and one storybook. For about $6,000, a school could furnish materials, refills and a storybook for each student in every grade.

Peru Meteorite Provides Puzzles

Peru meteorite may rewrite rules

Usually, only meteorites made of metal survive the passage through Earth’s atmosphere sufficiently intact to scoop out a crater. But the object which came down in the Puno region of Peru was a relatively fragile stony meteorite. During the fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere, these are thought to fragment into smaller pieces which then scatter over a wide area.

Yet pieces of the estimated 1m-wide meteorite are thought to have stayed together during entry, hitting the ground as one.
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Peter Schultz told the conference that the meteorite was travelling at about 24,000km/h (15,000mph) at the moment of impact – much faster than would be expected. “This just isn’t what we expected,” said Professor Schultz, from Brown University in Providence, US. “It was to the point that many thought this was fake. It was completely inconsistent with our understanding of how stony meteorites act.”
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At the velocity it was travelling, fragments could not escape the “shock-wave” barrier which accompanies the meteorite’s passage through the atmosphere. Instead, the fragments may have reconstituted themselves into another shape, which made them more aerodynamic. Consequently, they encountered less friction during their plunge to Earth, holding together until they reached the ground. “Although [the meteorite] is quickly broken up, it is behaving like a solid mass,” Professor Schultz told the conference.

Excellent article. First it is just interesting. Also it shows how scientists have to learn from what they observe and try to understand what explains the results they see.