E. chlorotica is "Half Plant, Half Animal"

This little guy is Elysia chlorotica, a species of sea slug that is able to usurp the chlorophyl-producing capabilities of the algae it eats. For this reason, they are nicknamed "solar-powered sea slugs".

Through a process called Kleptoplasty, the slugs are able to hang onto plants' chloroplasts (the cell organelle responsible for creation and storage of chlorophyl), keeping them intact in specialized cells in the slugs' digestive system. Amazingly, the slugs are also able to incorporate the chlorophyl-producing genes from the algae into their own genetic makeup. This allows them to make use of the burgled chloroplasts. The exact mechanism by which this is achieved is still unclear, but by the end of it, the slug can live off of light alone- up to ten months on the same alga's chloroplasts!

E. chlorotica is the only example in the Animal kingdom known to be able to do this. Incredible, the solutions evolution can come up with to overcome problems in an organism's environment! I, for one, am going to be eating more algae.

NSF Study: Developmental Differences in Stress Responses

Adriana Galván, of UCLA, is exploring how daily stress and associated stress hormones impact decision making. Through a grant from the National Science Foundation, she is able to contrast the effect of stress on brain function in adolescents and adults.

Galván monitors the level of stress in her study participants four times per day. When an individual records high or low levels of stress, he or she immediately comes to the lab for evaluation.

Data suggest that the greatest sources of stress for teens are parents, while for adults stress tends to come from work or schoolwork.

There are also differences based on the time of day. While adults are most stressed in the morning, teens are most stressed in the early evening. Data also suggest that teens show greater cognitive impairment when stressed than adults.

Once the individuals come to the lab, their levels of cortisol are evaluated. Galván explained, "We expect diurnal patterns of cortisol release to differ between adults and adolescents and that this distinction will correlate with levels of stress. Previous work has shown that, under identical stress conditions, teens show greater cortisol release than adults."

Full Text via NSF and LiveScience

Anatomy of an Impact

Look at this millisecond by millisecond description written by Australian engineers of what happens when one car hits another at 50 mph (~80 kph). The physical impact is completed in about a quarter of the time is takes to blink your eyes (which is about 300 to 400 ms). It happens faster than your 50-100 billion neurons can perceive it. Their description reads like a poem, with the last line delivering the real punch. If it can be thought of as a poem, it's one about how slowly our minds move in contrast to the mechanical world.

This is a reconstruction of a crash involving a stationary Ford Falcon XT sedan being struck in the driver's door by another vehicle travelling at 50 km/h.
[One millisecond equals 1/1000th of a second.]

• 0 milliseconds - An external object touches the driver's door.
• 1 ms - The car's door pressure sensor detects a pressure wave.
• 2 ms - An acceleration sensor in the C-pillar behind the rear door also detects a crash event.

Most Delicious Mitosis Ever

Click image for best resolution. I've got my eye on that anaphase one.
Krispy Kremes baked by New York native artist Kevin van Aelst.
His other works also have a certain humor to them.

-interactive review of cellular mitosis
-KK copycat recipe. [Just a wee high in fat/cholesterol. Not recommended for a long life of continued, controlled cellular division]

Why Men Don't Have To Die So Early (But Do Anyway): Sex and Gender Differences in Longevity

[Source] Data from August/September, 2001.

In a recent course on gender role socialization, I had the opportunity to do a bit of research into longevity, which is becoming a pet topic of mine. In doing so, I found a lot of information about why men die earlier - about 5.4 years earlier in the U.S. - than women. It seemed silly for only one person, a professor, to read it after I'd spent time on it. Especially since there is so much that men (both very gender-typed ones and males who eschew the label) in the internet audience, can do a lot to change health trajectories and add years to life. In just one testament to the amount of control we really have over our health, Dan Buettner, a researcher who focuses on twins' health outcomes and longevity, says that people, regardless of sex, have it within their power to add as much as 10 years onto their lives. With that in mind, enjoy factsnacking on this bloggofied version of the paper.

[Oh, and please forgive the writing style; I'm a social sciences person and we can be a little stiff like that. This is by no means a complete or exhaustive review of the literature on this, just a lil' something to raise awareness. As with all my original content, comments enouraged]

For more on why gender roles do real, measurable damage on men and women, see William Pollack, A New Psychology of Men, and the wiki on gender roles.

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Despite the longstanding patriarchic belief that females are naturally the weaker sex, modern research clearly demonstrates that men have significantly more impairments in physical health behaviors, predispositions, and outcomes. The mortality rate in the U.S. for men is consistently 1.5 to 3 times higher until 85 years of age. Men make up 70% of heart attack fatalities before the age of 65 as well as the majority of cases of mouth, throat, skin, and urinary organ cancer (Kilmartin, 2010, p. 178-9). Typically, men die 5.4 years earlier than women and have a 43% greater age-adjusted mortality rate (class notes). This has been the status quo long enough that the New Oxford American Dictionary makes reference to women as exemplar for longevity: “the greater longevity of women compared with men” (Longevity, 2005). Why should it be the case that so many more men die at younger ages? Why is it that women have a lead in longevity? Some theorists point to biological rationales, saying that differences in specific attributes of physical development are the root cause. Others point to social and psychological sources for the gender gap. These explanations are not mutually exclusive; framing the issue as nature versus nurture is a false dichotomy. In fact, the biological, socio-cultural, and psychological realms interact in a complex and recursive fashion.

Letter of Note: Aldrich Ames on Polygraph Testing

After stumbling upon the following letter from Aldrich Ames, the USSR's and later Russia's top man in the CIA from the 1980s to the early 90s and the highest paid spy in American history, I decided to pay homage to the endlessly readable Letters of Note, and post one such letter here. 
[Update 5.19.2010: Many thanks to Letters of Note for linking back here in this morning's post] 

In the letter, which is addressed to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, Ames comments on the impracticality of polygraph testing as a method of screening for potential government employees and interrogating suspects. He speaks with some weight on the matter as he beat the so-called lie-detector twice, evading exposure by CIA agents in 1986 and again in 1991. 

Rightly mocking the polygraph, which is now widely regarded as pseudoscience because of its high rate of false positives, Ames brands it "junk science"; the US's reliance on the polygraph to root out misrepresentations and falsehoods is a product of a bureaucratic misunderstanding of both the technology and human physiology. He makes a just comparison between the CIA's misplaced faith in the lie-detector and people who are swayed by graphology, astrology, homeopathy, and cold reading - each a bullshit theory or an outright con. And - after all he is in federal prison for all eternity - he allows himself a moment or two of vitriolic humor, making reference to the CIA's PR mishaps after the then-recently bungled Iran-Contra affair and the careers of the agents who failed to detect him. Transcript follows the letter below. 

Dear Mr. Aftergood,

Having had considerable experience with the polygraph (well beyond that which you referred to), I read your very sensible essay in Science with great interest. I offer you a few comments on the topic for whatever interest or use they may have.

Like most junk science that just won't die (graphology, astrology and homeopathy come to mind), because of the usefulness or profit their practitioners enjoy, the polygraph stays with us.

Its most obvious use is as a coercive aid to interrogators, lying somewhere on the scale between the rubber truncheon and the diploma on the wall behind the interrogator's desk. It depends upon the overall coerciveness of the setting -- you'll be fired, you won't get the job, you'll be prosecuted, you'll go to prison -- and the credulous fear the device inspires. This is why the Redmond report ventures into the simultaneously ludicrous and sinister reality that citizens' belief in what is untrue must be fostered and strengthened. Rarely admitted, this proposition is of general application for our national security apparatus.

You didn't mention one of the intriguing elements of the interrogations of Dr. Lee which is in fact quite common -- the false representation to the subject of the polygraph results. Because interrogations are intended to coerce confessions of one sort or another, interrogators feel themselves entirely justified in using their coercive means as flexibly as possible to extract them. Consistency regarding the particular technique is not important; inducing anxiety and fear is the point.

Polygraphers are fond of the technique used by psychics called cold reading, as a slightly less dramatic practice than actually lying to the subject about the results. In this sort of cold reading, the interrogator will suggest to the subject that there may be a potential problem, an ambiguous result, to one of the questions and inquire whether the subject knows of anything that might help clear it up, etc, etc.

Your account of the Redmond report -- I haven't seen it -- shows how another hoary slider is thrown past the public. The polygraph is asserted to have been a useful tool in counterintelligence investigations. This is a nice example of retreating into secret knowledge: we know it works, but it's too secret to explain. To my own knowledge and experience over a thirty year career this statement is a false one. The use of the polygraph (which is inevitably to say, its misuse) has done little more than create confusion, ambiguity and mistakes. I'd love to lay out this case for you, but unfortunately I cannot -- it's a secret too.

Most people in the intelligence and CI business are well aware of the theoretical and practical failings of the polygraph, but are equally alert to its value in institutional, bureaucratic terms and treasure its use accordingly. This same logic applies to its use in screening potential and current employees, whether of the CIA, NSA, DOE or even of private organizations.

Deciding whether to trust or credit a person is always an uncertain task, and in a variety of situations a bad, lazy or just unlucky decision about a person can result not only in serious problems for the organization and its purposes, but in career-damaging blame for the unfortunate decision-maker. Here, the polygraph is a scientific godsend: the bureaucrat accounting for a bad decision, or sometimes for a missed opportunity (the latter is much less often questioned in a bureaucracy) can point to what is considered an unassailably objective, though occasionally and unavoidably fallible, polygraph judgment. All that was at fault was some practical application of a "scientific" technique, like those frozen O-rings, or the sandstorms between the Gulf and Desert One in 1980.

I've seen these bureaucratically-driven flights from accountability operating for years, much to the cost of our intelligence and counterintelligence effectiveness. The US is, so far as I know, the only nation which places such extensive reliance on the polygraph. (The FBI, to its credit in a self-serving sort of way, also rejects the routine use of the polygraph on its own people.) It has gotten us into a lot of trouble.

On the other hand, there have been episodes in which high-level pressures to use or acquire certain persons entirely override pious belief in the polygraph. One instance which made the press is that of the Iranian connection in the Iran-Contra affair.

I wish you well in this particularly important theater of the struggle against pseudoscience: the national security state has many unfair and cruel weapons in its arsenal, but that of junk science is one which can be fought and perhaps defeated by honest and forthright efforts like yours. 

Sincerely,

Aldrich H. Ames 

40087-083 

P.O. Box 3000 

White Deer, PA 17887

P.S. I should say that all my outgoing mail goes through the CIA -- unlawfully -- for review, censorship and whatever use it chooses to make of it.

Related:

Transcript source @ FAS

6 Bullshit Facts About Psychology that Everyone Believes which brought Ames to my attention

Apollo 11 @ 500 FPS

The initial 30 seconds of the Apollo 11 launch in such high definition it takes 8 minutes and 43 seconds to show. Produced by Spacecraft Films, a company specializing in HD production of exactly what it sounds like. Good to enjoy with sound (to learn about the chemical reactions and physical forces at work) or muted (overlayed perhaps with Milieu's Colortone or Boards of Canada why not).

Via Petapixel, a phantastic digital photo blog (with a ton of HD vids).
And they got it from BoingBoing, the mother of us all.

Periodic Table

Yup.

Love That Dirty Water: ARPA-E Scientist Discovers Artificial Photosynthesis

MIT Chemist Dan Nocera can power your home with a glass of the Charles River

The idea is to use solar power for electrolysis - breaking water into hydrogen and oxygen - which then could be recombined when needed in a fuel cell, efficiently saving "almost all the solar energy," according to Nocera. "We emulated photosynthesis for large-scale storage of solar energy." [source] This means that with continued research and development, there could be wide spread access to solar cells that are both cheap and affordable.

This discovery and Nocera's prototypes are the product of 2009's US Department of Energy's Recovery Act, which provides funding for ARPA-E, the green, civilian version of its much scarier, bizarro-world counterpart, DARPA. Nocera presented his findings at ARPA-E's inaugural two day summit earlier this week.

 [Source]

Via PopSci

Evolution Minute: New Study Establishes Relationships Among All Arthropods

  Lepidopterae, one example of the estimated 1.6 million different Arthropods 

  [around 90% of the Earth's biomass]

Researchers at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County have just finished a long awaited analysis of the evolutionary histories of Arthropods, an otherwise ragtag bunch known for wild variability, by carefully selecting representative DNA from 75 (often otherwise) disparate species. [link]

I like this article for several reasons, not the least among them is its final endearing image: fellow nerds at the beach.

A key problem that the research team had to solve was obtaining specimens of some of rare and obscure organisms whose DNA was needed for the analysis... Dr. Wetzer recalls lying on the beach with a microscope at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She was hunting for specimens of a tiny, little-known crustacean that lives between grains of sand. "I got the mystacocarids we needed, but I think I also provided pretty good entertainment to the families at the beach that day," Dr. Wetzer said.

Mission Control Radio

Space shuttle Endeavor is in space right now. 

Also in space is SomaFm - Broadcasting ambient music mixed with the live NASA mission feed, this is truly my space jam. 

Read about it on BoingBoing. 

Experience it here. 

To quote my friend James: 

This is the coolest shit ever. Live space shuttle radio communications overlayed with ambient music... Check that shit. They're adding a node to the space station right now. I'm listening to a spacewalk live. With dark ass shit being played over it. TECHNOLOGY IS AWESOME.

 Update 

From Somafm (2.23.10):

NASA Shuttle STS-130 successfully landed tonight at 7:20pm pacific time at the Kennedy Space Center after 14-day journey of more than 5.7 million miles. Welcome Back!

You can really hear it in the voices of the astronauts and ground crew both; we took people out into space for two weeks and now they're home safely. It's party time! 

Touching to hear [and well soundtracked].

Air Traffic in 24 Hours

Via Cracked: 6 Tiny Things Things That Have Mind-Blowing Global Impacts

Every plane in the air leaves behind it a trail of condensation, or contrail. 100,000+ flights a day in the world has a real impact on climate.

NASA Space Colony Conceptual Art

Over a few summers in the 70s, NASA spent a lot of drafting table time figuring how a few 10,000 people could survive in the vacuum of space. According to the predicted schedule, this was due to happen about fifteen years ago. While we're all still waiting and hoping, making these was a good idea to pass the time.

 

See you in space [soon].

Dr. John Cleese makes Neuroanatomy E-Z

I've been to lectures like this, but they were never this good. Must be all that Cambridge education.

No Really, Information is Beautiful

So much so that this blog, Information is Beautiful, gets two separate posts. Use this link to get a much better look at the image below [Or this one if you speak Portuguese, or this one if you speak French]. And then maybe we can all talk about something else other than 2012.

[It works best if you start with a given believers' claim and then read the rebuttal side-by-side. I really lost it @ "No rouge planets are have been detected in the solar system".]

Related: The 6 Best 2012 Apocalypse Theories (Are All Bullshit) [via Cracked]

Information is Beautiful

Um, just see if you can stop reading this blog. I'm pasting this stuff all over my walls.

I just needed the right inspiration to paint this kind of thing - beautiful data - and now I finally have it.

Counting the Days (Though It's Mostly Dark)

[credit]

This interactive chart helps you visualize the amount of daylight received based on latitude (this kind, not that - the latter I find is a bit too much). A good way to reteach yourself the relation of tilt to the seasons, though it's just got me missing the Spring.

Daylight Hours Explorer

The Neuroscience behind Bias and Bad Science

Yo.

My bona fide cool boss sent me this article in Wired [two articles from one publication is considered a "kick" for me. Normally I like to wander from place to place.] I suppose it's because she'd like us all to do better science. The article goes into depth on why we expect to see what we do (and vice-versa), how we edit this information to fit our beliefs- making a convincing argument in favor of theoretical diversity and open debate.

Over the past few decades, psychologists have dismantled the myth of objectivity. The fact is, we carefully edit our reality, searching for evidence that confirms what we already believe... The problem with science, then, isn’t that most experiments fail — it’s that most failures are ignored.

The lesson: scientists, or any group of people working towards a common goal, could stand to benefit from being more social with thinkers from diverse theoretical backgrounds.

Dunbar [the principle investigator]... found that the intellectual mix generated a distinct type of interaction in which the scientists were forced to rely on metaphors and analogies to express themselves. (That’s because they lacked a specialized language that everyone could understand.) These abstractions proved essential for problem-solving, as they encouraged the scientists to reconsider their assumptions. Having to explain the problem to someone else forced them to think, if only for a moment, like an intellectual on the margins, filled with self-skepticism.

This is why other people are so helpful: They shock us out of our cognitive box. “I saw this happen all the time,” Dunbar says. “A scientist would be trying to describe their approach, and they’d be getting a little defensive, and then they’d get this quizzical look on their face. It was like they’d finally understood what was important.” 

Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up

Kepler Telescope Sports Five Discoveries So Far

From Wired:

The Kepler Space Telescope, a designated planet-hunting satellite, has found its first five planets, among them an odd, massive world only as dense as Styrofoam.

'We expected Jupiter-size planets in short orbits to be the first planets Kepler could detect,' said Jon Morse, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA in a release. 'It’s only a matter of time before more Kepler observations lead to smaller planets with longer period orbits, coming closer and closer to the discovery of the first Earth analog.'

'This exquisite data is just the tip of the iceberg,' MIT astronomer Sara Seager said back then. 'We’re going to see a new world of exoplanet exploration where discoveries will come much more rapidly than they’ve come in the last 10 years.”

Related:

Write up in New Scientist
All you ever wanted to know about Exoplanets
NASA's Kepler Project Homepage

Octopuses Use Coconuts as Tools, Clearly Smarter than Most College Kids

Veined octopi octopuses (Amphioctopus marginatus) use coconuts as cover.

I've always suspected any given cephalopod to be more intelligent than my neighbors, but I'd never thought one could be so adorable.

--

Posted on BB

Write up in National Geographic

Amphioctopus marginatus wiki page