Science, Engineering & Technology

I guess I first got the idea when NPR decided to introduce a culinary story, and referred to modern cooking methods like using foams and freezing as "scientific" cooking methods. I guess I did not understand why cooking on the stove was un-scientific. Or worse, scientific being used as a synonym for modern? Or new fangled crazy?

Close on the heels, I lost it when when someone referred to using a custom XML schema as new technology. And ETL as a brand-new capability.

So this is my attempt at helping bring a little sanity back into the use of terms like science, engineering and technology.

The _why_ tales

Some of the coolest recent research stories about why some things are the way they are. These stories have appeared in the news over the last year or so. The synopsis: blame evolution, society, genes and your unnaturally large heads.

Tickling

If you thought tickling served no purpose other than to cause social faux pas, you were underestimating its significance. Turns out there is a purpose to tickling. And funnily it is self defense. According to people that spend time thinking about this, the parts that make you tickle are the same one that need to be protected the most. And tickling between kids is a way to develop and hone self defense skills. Which is why when someone goes for that ticklish spot, you cannot help but react like you are being hunted.

Pruney fingers

I had always interpreted the wrinkling of fingers in water as a sign to stay clear of prolonged exposure to water - one of the many reasons I never learned to swim. However, research suggests that the real reason is way cooler. Wrinkled fingers are our own all-weather tires. If our fingers didn't wrinkle, we would have to learn two sets of actions, one set for when our hands were dry and another set of actions for when our hands were wet and slippery. The wrinkles do away with that need. Instead we grab onto stuff the same way, and our fingers take care of the rest.

Body Clocks

Your internal clock is the reason you feel drowsy at late night parties, and annoyingly awake during lazy weekend mornings. Till recently lab coats had associated this 24-hour circadian cycle to our DNA. Turns out the truth is cooler, or redder. The clock is a protein in your blood whose quantity rises and falls (like tides) in a 24 hour cycle, that tells us what time it is. This happens in all living things, including algae. What is scary is that, the body clock keeps running even if genes are not active. And that, kids, is why zombies are able to maintain a perfect 24-hour clock hunting cycle.

Snakes and Spiders

So you have had it with these mutter-feeling snakes and these manner-fearing spiders. Guess what - you are not alone. Of all earthly creatures, snakes and spiders are the least helpful and most dangerous (poisonous) to humans. Which is why even though it is not (yet) in our DNA to fear these slimy and leggy buggers, we are inherently biased when it comes to hating them. One man's phobia is basic common sense for the rest of us. And guess what happened to that one man. He was bitten to death by a slithering pile of venomous snake-iders.

Blushing

Don't you hate it when the IT guy glances at your browsing history and you have to blush? How we blush is well known. The why is linked to evolutionary social adaptation. Blushing is a way of saying sorry when one is guilty of a social infraction. Unlike other animals, our primary defense was not speed or strength, but in numbers. Being kicked out of a social group was generally considered a life-limiting move. Blushing and apologizing could be the difference between life and death. So next time you bump into someone - apologize. Unless you like being eaten by wild animals.

Cancer

At the cost of sounding flippant, cancer is apparently just your inner monkey expressing itself (ugh, there is so much wrong with this sentence, that it stays). In other words it, allegedly, is our unicellular selves deciding to ignore billions of years of evolution to decide that we are little more than rotting logs in shallow water. If this is true, the bad news is cancer is not something mankind can inoculate into oblivious. The good news is cancer has as much intelligence as moss growing under a rock. Maybe now "curing cancer" will stop being the sarcastic benchmark for overzealous committees.

WMAP and CMB

Stumbling onto NASA is such a time-suck. The latest foray was the image above, that piqued my curiosity, and I came upon the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), a satellite based mission that for the first time helped detect and map Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation in great detail. The probe helped establish not only the the census of atoms in the universe, but also helped reconstruct events leading up to a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Information gleaned from this program helped build the picture above, which is a timeline of our universe's expansion.

The WMAP probe turned out to be a handy little busybody. Launched in 2001, the satellite was supposed to travel to an orbit beyond Earth called L2 in about three months and spend another 2 years collecting data. But the probe continued to send data through August 19, 2010. And the data turned out to be a gold mine.

Findings from the WMAP mission are impressive. Many recent changes about our understanding of the Universe and its origins seem to be linked to data from this probe. Among those I found the most fascinating, was this pie-chart that classified stuff in the Universe. Turns out only 4% is everything that we see - stars, planets, nebulae and dark holes. An overwhelming chunk is stuff that is causing more than expected attractive force in the Universe (dark matter) and way more than expected repelling force (dark energy). While I had read this before, spending time with the WMAP site, helped put a lot of it in perspective.

And yeah, I learned about Lagrange points, with pictures.

All pictures courtesy NASA/WMAP Science Team.

Stuff It

The Story of Stuff - is a cute and conscientious effort at promoting a more responsible and sustainable way of living. Narrated by a breathless Annie Leonard, the main video (embedded below) is an exploration of our current consumption-based economy and how unsustainable it really is. Interspersed with cute stick cartoons, Annie describes the linear nature of western economies, with particular focus on America - starting from extraction through to disposal of various material goods.

The core idea is not revolutionary - be sustainable because our current way of life is most certainly not. But the presentation seeks to gain a leg up via two different approaches, cartoon factoids and conspiracy theories. All through the video, you find instances of figures and ratios written up on virtual blackboards. They may all be true, or they may just represent the worst case scenario - one would never know from how neatly they are packaged. And then there are the conspiracy theories, right from the government - big business nexus to the secret cabal of post war economists and marketing directors. By no means is all of it false, and indeed expecting to get anything more than that in 20 minutes is rather naive. But by the same token, I would be hard pressed to imagine that all of today's economy is nothing more than a carefully packaged, herd the sheep, dog and pony show (talk about animated analogies).

With the facetious itch out of the way, let's get a tad more serious. The problem with sustainability in my mind, is that it has facets of the prisoners dilemma. In effect if all of us try to live sustainably, then it is a huge payoff for everyone. But if some of us do it and the others do not, then it leaves those of us acting in a sustainable manner worse off than those who are not. That is the way the dice of today's economy is loaded. When Annie talks about external costs she is not joking. Living off by your own self is not only more expensive, but it is not supported by the way society is set up today. That is what makes sustainable living a catch-22 situation.

Who then do we turn to? The same government that we blame for secretly getting us into this mess in the first place? The big business who care only about profits above all else? Or is the answer a more inclusive - all of the above? And that is the big issue I have with the tone of the message. The big question isn't how can we live more sustainably, but how do we make sustainability a social & economic imperative? Not one or the other. I have not heard a great answer yet.

Nevertheless, the video is a great way to communicate the message and urgency of a more sustainable life - to quote - "Make 'em Safe, Make 'em Last, and Take 'em Back."

Condemned to browse

Slate magazine has an awesome science section. Found this article in the section. Now I finally understand why I love Stumbleupon so much, even though I do not always spend time with the results of the stumble.

Research, as quoted in the article, has identified two distinct types of stimulation centers in the body - one that deals with seeking/wanting and another that deals with liking.

Seeking or wanting is the dopamine-based ultimate mammalian motivational engine. It is what makes us want to get up, seek, be curious, forage, crave, expect etc. Scientists have found that this is distinct and different from the opoid system of experiencing pleasure and satisfaction. In other words, the seeking system stimulates us to hunt, and the pleasure center makes us happy after success.

In human beings, the stimulation of the seek is stronger than the pleasure of success. Which makes evolutionary sense. Any animal with the pleasure center stronger than the seeking center quickly dies out, though completely satisfied. Humans, along with many of our contemporary mammals love the stimulation of seeking more than the satiation of success.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I love to stumble so much. And you like to use Facebook, or twitter, or Google. Our evolutionary seek centers are driving us to distraction with the easily availability of the 'seek'.

Deceptively incorrect

Michael Shermer is the founder of a fun little magazine Skeptic. Skeptic magazine espouses skepticism towards ideas not supported by science and reason. The following snippet from the site says it best...

Some people believe that skepticism is the rejection of new ideas, or worse, they confuse “skeptic” with “cynic” and think that skeptics are a bunch of grumpy curmudgeons unwilling to accept any claim that challenges the status quo. This is wrong. Skepticism is a provisional approach to claims. It is the application of reason to any and all ideas — no sacred cows allowed. In other words, skepticism is a method, not a position. Ideally, skeptics do not go into an investigation closed to the possibility that a phenomenon might be real or that a claim might be true. When we say we are “skeptical,” we mean that we must see compelling evidence before we believe.

The video after the break presented at TED, talks about the brain's pre-disposition towards survival, that is the root of all superstition and nonscientific attitudes. In essence it boils down to two things:

• A tendency to incorrectly find or ignore patterns in natural or random phenomena. Michael calls it “Patternicity”.
• A tendency to infuse patterns with a causation agency, often invisible beings from top down. Michael calls it “Agenticity”.

With these two ideas, Michael attempts to explain the need for the unexplained - Conspiracy theories, souls, spirits, ghosts and God. While you may not agree with either the precept or his interpretation, you cannot ignore the idea of linking the brain's evolution to the need for our own belief system.

Photocopy my Car

This is a post about how mother nature tried to photocopy my car. At least that is what I think it is. Consider the first picture on the left - at the bottom are three receipts I had left in the car, clipped under the visor, while I waited for my shirts from the laundry. They were normal when I left them, but when I reached to pull them out three days later, what I saw surprised me. I got this darkened mess, that clearly reproduces the child seat warning message from the inside of the visor.

Quick background. The receipts are generally printed on what is called a 'thermal paper'. A thermal paper works by darkening in response to applied heat above a particular threshold. For example, you could cause the paper to darken if you left it in a car under direct sunlight for an extended period.

However, I do not think that is the reason for the darkening. Consider the following - firstly, I parked my car at work in a covered parking structure for the entire time. Secondly a closer examination of the darkening shows that it was not the gradual darkening of a car left in sunlight. Instead it was hot enough and short enough to cause the darker printed portions of the visor to visibly absorb more heat than the whiter parts of the visor. Finally, there was an electrostatic discharge event (aka thunder storm) during the period with the receipts under the visor that landed close enough to blow out the garage opener, about 10 feet away.

Which brings me to my conclusion. The lightning during the night struck close, probably the car itself. This caused a quick but intense heating of the air around. During the dissipation of this heat, the darker parts of the car heated up quicker than the lighter parts resulting in a “natural” photocopy of my car.

How LOST it should have been

Yesterday was the big LOST finale. For me and the wife, it was a major let down. She insisted, she needed some closure after the six years worth of episodes. So, well, here is the alternate end to LOST, the way it should have been. Read more after the break.

Scientific denial

An interesting watch - for a variety of reasons. This is an issue that generally seems to be splitting a lot of educated people down the middle. While no one seems to deny the impact science has had on humans, few seem to want to trust science either.

Maybe it is all down the the definitions. As I grew up, my vision of a 'scientist' was someone in a lab, highly intelligent, educated and motivated, pursuing a topic with a single minded dedication. A scientist, I believed, did not have to deal with the worldly problems & pressures like the rest of us - as if they lived in a sterile environment, just like in their own experiments.

Unfortunately, this is seldom the case. Scientists, live in and share the same world as us. And there is no 'science' that stands alone, in unblemished purity. So when people attack science, or they think they are, they really are not. They are attacking a hybrid cabal of scientists, businessmen, government and media. The reason they are attacking this cabal, is because the cabal is advertising itself as 'science'. When we have scientifically proven face creams, that are more in-your-face than the lack of correlation between vaccines and autism - how can you really distinguish between the two.

I don't believe the intelligent disbeliever is directly questioning science as defined by the scientific method, but what is questionable is the cabal claiming indulgence in and of the scientific method. That is not to say there there will always be someone that will never believe, but instead want to take things to their illogical extreme conclusions. I guess they believe they are 'scientists' in their own right.

Science & Morality

Have always been a fan of the TED website, and their collection of talks. Having just heard one of their videos, I was browsing the site, trying to learn a bit more about them - turns out, they actually encourage embedding and discussing their videos. Cue, glint in eye. So, here we are.

Morality, in the sense discussed in the video below is the definition of right and wrong, irrespective of what people think. Sam Harris, argues that, on the contrary to what many people assume, science is capable of reaching such definite answers on its own, based on facts, and can therefore complete eliminate the need for a morality-based declarations. Well thought and presented of course - but for me the crux of the matter lay in the Q&A at the end. When asked to prove the immorality of the Burqa, Sam scientifically fell back to the answer the basically said - we may not have a rigorous proof now, but given the rate of our scientific progress, we will eventually get there.

In his answer, I believe, Sam was absolutely correct and negligent. Yes, science will eventually get there, but people need an answer now - on what is correct and what is not. People have all been created with consciousness, but a varying degree of intellect. Waiting for an intellect-appealing morality, that may eventually get here is a very bad survival skill. Instead, society taking advantage of the common denominator, appealed to human consciousness. Turns out, morality is a lot like having immortal parents. Even if you replace parents with Man with beard in sky, things work just as well. True, such a replacement has side-effects, a lot of side-effects, but at least it kept humanity going till science would eventually evolve to appeal to the most intellectually-challenged among us.