Science

Scientists have done it again! They have proven the obvious. This time though they've done it with trees and carbon dioxide. Nature.com has a report about an experiment where extra CO₂ was pumped into the branches of trees to see if they would grow more and/or faster. In the process they have disproved a misconception of people who have claimed that extra CO₂ in the atmosphere would spur plant growth.

Reading through Nature's report, I was thinking of the obvious: I don't grow any faster or more if I'm placed in a room with nothing but oxygen. I suppose I might be able to run for a few more feet before I'm huffing and puffing, or I might just feel a little giddy in such a room. I definitely wouldn't gain any super powers like super-human growth, and I sure as hell won't use any more oxygen than I normally do.

So this one goes out to science for discovering common sense once more. Some of us could use a lot more of it.

Science published their 125th Aniversary Issue that listed a 125 big questions in science. Here's a selection of my thoughts on those.

What Is the Universe Made Of?

This article tells about the questions that scientists have about their observations of the cosmos. It mentions dark matter, dark energy, and how the universe is expanding at a faster and faster rate. Here's a quote I want to nitpick:

But even this mysterious entity pales by comparison to another mystery: dark energy. In the late 1990s, scientists examining distant supernovae discovered that the universe is expanding faster and faster, instead of slowing down as the laws of physics would imply. Is there some sort of antigravity force blowing the universe up?

My answer is no. If you take the right point of view you imagine that galaxies are getting smaller relative to each other. I haven't really worked it out mathematically, but this is how I picture it. The math would rest on the fact that the projected size of something is inversely proportional to how far away it is. So if something is moving away from you it will get smaller and smaller linearly. But if something is truely getting smaller, ie: shrinking, at a constant rate then it'll not only appear to be going farther and farther away but it'll do so at a non-linear rate.

That could all be demonstrated with a computer simulation, and I suspect it'll be correct. The question then remains whether that matches up with observations such as red-shift, the rotation of galaxies, and everything else I haven't researched.

This is a radical idea and hopefully avoids such answers as dark energy.

What Is the Biological Basis of Consciousness?

The quote from this one is:

Experiments under way at present generally address only pieces of the consciousness puzzle, and very few directly address the most enigmatic aspect of the conscious human mind: the sense of self. Yet the experimental work has begun, and if the results don't provide a blinding insight into how consciousness arises from tangles of neurons, they should at least refine the next round of questions.

Ultimately, scientists would like to understand not just the biological basis of consciousness but also why it exists. What selection pressure led to its development, and how many of our fellow creatures share it?

I think all of these questions have been addressed by Gerald Edelman, and he's either right or on the right track. Read some of his books and think about it. For a very basic introduction read Wider Than the Sky, but his best writing on the subject is A Universe of Consciousness.

So don't try to answer the question of "what is the basis for consciousness?". Just try to understand the answer.

How Did Cooperative Behavior Evolve?

Simply put: sex.

My basis is that you're out in the wild without much company. When you see two hairless arms wailing about in the water you're hoping for a beautiful young lady so you dive in. Maybe you hoped right and got laid, but even if you hoped wrong you could still get something out of it. Remember, you were pretty lonely.

On a non-human level though this probably is the reason. Give a few evolutionary iterations, I suspect this will eventually become the meme to cooperate, but it all originated from an entity's desire to at least survive and hopefully to have glorious sex.

Do Deeper Principles Underlie Quantum Uncertainty and Nonlocality?

My quote from this one is: "Some physicists in the second group are busy trying to design experiments that can get to the heart of the weirdness of quantum theory. They are slowly testing what causes quantum superpositions to 'collapse'."

That only shows that people need to stop overthinking quantum mechanics. No the atom cannot be on both the left and right side of the box. It can only be on one. Quantum mechanics only says that YOU DON'T KNOW and have to find out by taking a peek.

It's mathematics from the real world for the real world, get over it.

I've posted my thoughts on Intelligent Design over at Progressive Indiana.

Intelligent Design has finally gone mainstream. It has already produced two editorials in the Daily Journal, one by Jerry Wilson and a response by Cody Crocker. At least Cody Crocker was forthcoming about Intelligent Design being Creationism under a new guise. That only proves that this is the same argument for the same old thing.

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Go here to read the rest of it.

An idea that I've had for at least a couple years now is that NutraSweet, aspartame, is a cause of diabetes. I came up with that due to one of my managers who drank a lot of Diet Pepsi being diagnosed with diabetes. My grandma has diabetes too and has been drinking Diet Pepsi for a while too.

My grandma left a bottle of Diet Pepsi at the house tonight so I thought I would see what Google would turn up. Wikipedia had a good article about aspartame that pointed out that it isn't exactly the safest thing to ingest. That didn't say anything about my hypothesis though.

I did get a hit though googling for "aspartame cause diabetes". I found a page, Aspartame, cause of diseases? that contains:

According to researchers and physicians studying the adverse effects of aspartame, the following chronic illnesses can be triggered or worsened by ingesting of aspartame:(2) Brain tumors, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, parkinson's disease, alzheimer's, mental retardation, lymphoma, birth defects, fibromyalgia, and diabetes.

Further down:

The American Diabetes Association (ADA) is actually recommending this chemical poison to persons with diabetes. According to research conducted by H.J. Roberts, a diabetes specialist, a member of the ADA, and an authority on artificial sweetners, aspartame:

1. Leads to the precipitation of clinical diabetes.
2. Causes poorer diabetic control in diebetics on insulin or oral drugs.
3. Leads to the aggravation of diabetic complications such as retinopathy, cataracts, neuropathy and gastroparesis.
4. Causes convulsions.

There's also material online saying the opposite, but that's one hit in the literature about a possible link. I may have to see what I can do to get a study going at some point to answer the question, "Is there a direct correlation between the ingestion of aspartame for a period of years and the eventual development of diabetes?" I suppose a yes to that question would be a greater number of diabetics who consumed aspartame for a long period of time before they were diagnosed than the number of non-consuming diabetics.

Picture such as this make me feel small:

APOD: 2005 April 27 - The Hercules Cluster of Galaxies

I may yet receive my possible birthday present from God. Further calculations show there's a risk that it can possibly strike during a latter year. Here are some [possibly] new stories about 2004 MN4:

• Earth’s gravity may lure deadly asteroid
• Near-Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 Reaches Highest Score To Date On Hazard Scale: This maybe a repeat.
• 2004 MN4 Impact Risk: contains a table for subsequent years and their risk estimate

This is mainly a note for myself, but may be useful to some passer by. I never understood how a genetic algorithm could successfully be used, until now. One would come in handy for setting up a neural network by evolving the weights used to connect the "neurons". It would be more ideal than just tweaking the weights somewhat randomly to achieve the results you want.

There are more uses for genetic alogrithms, and I'll leave a further elucidation to either Google or someone who uses them in his work/studies.

I just got done reading Alarm at new climate warning on BBC News. It ended with:

"It's very difficult to get politicians to collaborate, not only across the globe but also over sustained lengths of time," Bob Spicer from the Earth Sciences Department at the Open University, told BBC News.

"The people who can hold politicians to account are the public; and with this project we are bringing cutting-edge science to the stakeholders, the public."

That makes me wonder why policiticians must do everything? Politicians are not the ones doing the majority of the polluting. Politicians just pass needless laws for special interests. They're not the major polluters, though their friends might be.

It's people like you and me and the companies we work for that pollute. So why do we need to hold politicians accountable for what we do instead of holding ourselves and the people we know and work for accountable? If you work for a company that has a nice smoke stack, it's not to hard to ask what is being done to insure it's not bellowing out greenhouse gases. It's not to hard to plant a tree either, or pay five bucks to goto the zoo.

Then again it's also easy to chop down trees and keep on doing the same hold thing.

This was on Slashdot.org. It talked about an asteroid that is going be pretty damn close to Earth on April 13th, 2029. It happens to be the day after I turn 46. If their prediction is right in that it won't hit, I won't be getting the big rock I want on my 46th. I suppose I can wait.