Science Made Cool

Entropy, Information, and Time

There's an interesting article on the PhysOrg science news site about a possible solution to the "arrow of time" problem.

The "arrow of time" problem (it's sometimes called a paradox, but it isn't, really) is as follows:  the laws of nature aren't time-dependent. They work just as well in reverse as forward. When something falls, it releases energy. Put energy in, and you raise it up. The energy in the system remains constant. And yet we never see things spontaneously rise up into the air as the surroundings become slightly cooler. There's no law that says they can't, we just don't observe it. Over time the amount of entropy (disorganized, unusable energy) in the universe increases, it never spontaneously reverses itself.

Friday Parasite: Emerging Infections

Last Saturday the Wall Street Journal reported that a growing number of people in the United States are showing up in doctors’ offices with parasitic infections. They’re not infected with relatively harmless parasites like pinworm -- they’re carrying potentially debilitating species that were once found mainly in tropical countries.  Some people are bringing hitchhikers home from their Costa Rican vacation, but the vast majority of infections are in people who are poor and living in either the South or the mountains of Appalachia. And that means these parasites aren’t accidental visitors to our shores – they’re living among us now.

Now, I can’t solve the problems of poverty or health care access on a blog. But the article mentioned that medical schools often give short shrift to these parasites, so many doctors don’t even know they exist. That, I can do something about. For the next three weeks our Friday Parasite will focus on the parasites discussed in the WSJ article, describing their life cycles, how they manage to get inside people, and what they can do once they’re there.

First up: Toxocara canis – a parasitic roundworm that doesn’t even want to be in you. As the name suggests, the worms are normally found inside of dogs, where they live in a kind of arrested development because they can only grow to maturity inside very young puppies.

Taxonomy of Design

Interior design isn't usually considered a "science" the way quantum physics or paleontology are. But why not? It deals with matters of perception, psychology, energy use, flow of air and traffic, and a host of other topics which are entirely within the bounds of science. Like all arts, it is based on judgement and taste -- what looks good or looks right -- and has generally been done in an intuitive, subjective manner.

Free Spirit

The Spirit rover on Mars is stuck. It's gotten bogged down in a pit of soft sand for the past four months, and shows no sign of getting free. The NASA mission team are trying to work out a way to solve the problem, and are testing it using a duplicate rover in a sandbox here on Earth, but the prognosis isn't good.

Spirit has been on Mars more than five (Earth) years and is just plain wearing out. One wheel hasn't worked since 2006, and some of the instruments have quit. Still, it's a tough little machine and the NASA team aren't willing to throw in the towel just yet. At this point, shutting it down would be a bit like shooting your dog.

Meanwhile, Spirit's sister probe, the Opportunity rover, keeps chugging along.

Attack of the Tomato Killers

Normally at this time of year, we’re buried in tomatoes. Pyramids of them sit on our kitchen counter ¬– literal piles of tomatoes from our CSA share. We try to keep up by putting them into nearly every meal: sliced in salads and BLTs, pureed into gazpacho, or simply salted with oil and basil. But this year, there’s nothing but dead and dying vines in the fields. We’re living through the Great New England Tomato Famine.

OK, I’m being flip. But the parasite that’s attacking the tomatoes is a strain of the same fungus that caused the Irish potato famine 150 years ago. Phytophthora infestans, or “late blight” is native to central Mexico, where it infests many different members of the genus Solarium – a group that includes not just tomatoes and potatoes, but also nightshade and bittersweet. The fungus doesn’t survive well in our typical hot, dry summers, but this July was wet and cool, creating the perfect conditions for it to spread. When spores from mature P. infestans land in wet fields, they open and release zoospores. The zoospores are tiny, but their paired flagella help them swim over the moist leaves and drill into them. Once inside the plant, P. infestans acts like any other fungus, growing a network of threadlike structures called hyphae to digest the surrounding plant tissue. And as soon as the fungus is mature, it sends hyphae out of the leaves to release more spores into the wind.

Photo: P. infestans infects a leaf. (Cover image: Grenville-Briggs, L. J. et al. 2008. Cellulose Synthesis in Phytophthora infestans Is Required for Normal Appressorium Formation and Successful Infection of Potato. Plant Cell 20: 720-738.)

Biological Countermeasures

Here's a nifty press release from the Scripps institute -- they've discovered a variety of marine worm which uses bioluminescent flares to dazzle predators. It's very much like the countermeasures military planes use against heat-seeking missiles. They've nicknamed the worms "green bombers" but the "bombs" don't explode. They're defensive flares, not weapons.

Marine animals seem to have anticipated other aircraft defenses by millions of years: cephalopod ink is analogous to radar-blinding "chaff." And many species use very advanced camouflage. The cephalopods, again, even have "reactive camouflage" which changes to match the surface they're hiding on. That's still on the drawing board for military applications, though apparently Japanese hipsters have already mastered it.

Mind Your Manners

There's a tendency to think of manners as mere useless ritual -- table etiquette in particular is often dismissed as a matter of "knowing which fork to use," of interest only to grandmothers and Judith Martin. Paying attention to manners means you're anal-retentive, sexually frustrated, and don't know how to enjoy life.

Ha! Turns out the development of table manners may have been a major step in the formation of human civilization. Dr. Mary Stiner of the University of Arizona has been researching Paleolithic remains at Qesem Cave in Israel. The earlier Lower Paleolithic hunters were evidently just as capable of bringing down big game as the later Upper Paleolithic humans were. But their descendants were noticeably more polite about serving it out.

Earlier bones show a variety of cutting methods used on the same bones, suggesting a kind of self-service scramble which wasted some of the food. Later animal bones show a more orderly approach indicating that one person carved the meat, and didn't waste as much. Table manners ("meat-sharing rituals," in anthropologist jargon) were a survival trait allowing tribes to make better use of the animals they killed. One suspects they also cut down on dinnertime fights over who got the bigger piece. Over time, one can assume that well-mannered tribes out-competed their boorish neighbors.

So:  mind your manners or your descendants won't thrive.

Lovelace! Babbage! Wild Adventure!

Charles Babbage was an English mathematician and engineer who designed the first general-purpose programmable computer. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was an English mathematician who wrote the first program for Babbage’s Engine. In real life, the two met in 1833, became friends, and corresponded until Ada died of uterine cancer in 1852. Babbage never built his calculating machine.

But that’s so … ordinary. Sydney Padua wants you to imagine what might have happened if Lovelace hadn’t died young. Naturally, she would have teamed up with Babbage to FIGHT CRIME. Right?

You can see the “origin story” in her irregularly posted webcomic: 2D Goggles.

Tentacles! Ia!

Our Crack Team are still recovering from Worldcon -- we picked up some useful contacts, some fun acquaintances, and at least one virus. All of which are taking up valuable blogging time. Until we get back up to speed, have a look at some freaky octopus pictures from Japan, courtesy of the Nipponomaniacal Pink Tentacle blog. Evidently H.P. Lovecraft could have made a good living as a toy designer in Japan.

Indeed, just to get all thoughtful and ponderous, it's remarkable how accepting we've become of inhuman-looking creatures just in the past couple of decades. Once Rondo Hatton was cast as a monster simply because he was kind of funny-looking. Even as recently as 1966 NBC worried that the pointed ears and funny eyebrows on Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy were too bizarre for the audience to accept him. By the 1980s we had the vaguely froggish E.T. as a lovable protagonist instead of a monster from space. Humans have gradually become aware that something can look inhuman without being dangerous or evil. In fact, one thing which nowadays makes UFO contactees sound so silly is how plonkingly un-alien their aliens look.

Hugo Awards!

Our Crack Team of schmoozers and partygoers attended the 56th annual Hugo Awards ceremony at the World Science Fiction convention in Montreal. The results:

Best Fan Writer:  the talented Cheryl Morgan
Best Fan Artist:  the amazingly enthusiastic Frank Wu
Best Fanzine:  the unanticipated Electric Velocipede
Best Semiprozine:  the venerable Weird Tales
Best Related Book:  the venomous Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008, by John Scalzi
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form):  the charming Wall-E
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form):  the melodic Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Best Editor (Long Form):  the impeccable David Hartwell
Best Editor (Short Form):  the irrepressible Ellen Datlow
Best Graphic Story:  the exciting Girl Genius!
Best Professional Artist:  the gentlemanly Donato Giancola
Best Short Story:  the inspired "Exhalation," by Ted Chiang
Best Novelette:  the Lovecraftian "Shoggoths in Bloom," by Elizabeth Bear
Best Novella:  the touching "The Erdmann Nexus," by Nancy Kress
Best Novel:  The inevitable The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

Congratulations to all the winners from Zygote Games!