Science Made Cool

A Skeptic's Holiday

Halloween marks the anniversary of the death of Erich Weiss, a Hungarian-American from Appleton, Wisconsin better known to the world as Harry Houdini.

Weiss became Houdini in 1891, when he took up a career as a vaudeville magician to get away from his family's hand-to-mouth existence.  He soon developed a specialty in escape tricks, and displayed an absolute genius for self-promotion.  Houdini escaped from anything and everything -- not just manacles, leg irons, and safes, but a giant football, a huge paper envelope, and the carcass of a "sea monster" in Boston.  His ultimate public escape stunt was to break out of a straitjacket while hanging upside-down over Broadway.

As vaudeville began to decline, Houdini made movies, got interested in aviation (he was the first man to fly in Australia), and became curious about psychic phenomena, especially spirit mediums who claimed to communicate with the dead.  Houdini was devoted to his family, particularly his mother Cecilia.  The idea that he might be able to speak with her had a great attraction for Houdini.  But what he found was nothing but shabby tricks and flim-flam.

Though his worst experience came at the hands of people who were sincere believers in spiritualism and weren't consciously trying to defraud anyone.  At a "spirit writing" session with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife, Mrs. Doyle suddenly began writing a message to Houdini from his late mother -- a message written in perfect English (a language his mother barely spoke) and adorned with crosses (rather odd for the wife of a rabbi).

Houdini became the self-appointed nemesis of occult frauds.  As a top-notch magician himself and an authority on the history of stage magic, he knew exactly how "spirit mediums" could produce their spooky effects.  In particular, his personal skill at slipping out of restraints and picking locks made him extremely suspicious of any "experimental controls" which relied on binding the hands of the mediums or locking them in cabinets.  He also had great dramatic timing, picking the perfect moment to catch fakers in the act, and his genius for publicity got the press firmly on his side.

Houdini's involvement in exposing spiritualist fakes cemented the alliance between stage magicians and skeptics which has continued for nearly a century.  James Randi demolished Uri Geller's claims of telekinetic powers -- his crowning moment came in 1973, during Geller's appearance on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (another former magician himself).  With properly-done controls in place, Uri Geller spent his entire time on air failing to produce any miraculous effects at all.  More recently the team of Penn & Teller have taken up the banner, with their Showtime series Penn & Teller:  Bullshit!  They've left few sacred cows un-gored.

Halloween is a night for kids dressing up as ghosts, playing tricks, and telling spooky stories.  It's all good fun and Houdini would approve.  But the rest of the year, when grown-ups do those things and try to get more than candy out of people, that's when all of us should be skeptics.

Friday Parasite #9: …Or Not to Bee

Carl Zimmer just posted a piece over at The Loom about the just-published honeybee genome. He outlines some of the reasons scientists decided to focus time and money on the project -- to wit: bees are commercially valuable, they have complex social systems, and they have interesting developmental patterns. But he leaves out one important reason – honeybees all over the world are being killed by an invasive mite.

               

Varroa destructor is an ectoparasite, and it’s deadly – mites indiscriminately attack adults, larvae, and pupating bees to drink their blood, and can destroy a hive in as little as one year. It was originally a parasite of Asiatic honeybees, but sometime in the 1960s it expanded its diet to include the European honeybee (Apis mellifera) . Then it started spreading around the world. It got to Florida sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and it's now found throughout the United States. They’re a major problem for beekeepers, and they’ve wiped out more than 90% of the wild hives in this country.

Granted, honeybees aren’t native to North America either. But they’re major pollinators that are instrumental in growing our fruits and vegetables. If the bees aren’t around to help the plants have sex, the plants are going to have to rely on other pollinators if they’re going to grow more seed-filled fruits for us to eat.

We know that some Euopean honeybees have “hygenic behaviors” that let them find and destroy infected pupae. If these behaviors are triggered by hormones that are coded in the bee’s genes, the genome project might be a step toward developing treatments using the bee’s own physiology to fight the mite.

Reference:
Spivak M, Reuter GS (2001) Varroa destructor Infestation in Untreated Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Colonies Selected for Hygienic Behavior. Journal of Economic Entomology: Vol. 94, No. 2 pp. 326–331

Photo from USDA.

A Mess of Links

Some things are really neat and interesting, but not really enough to hang a whole 'blog entry on.  So today I'm doing a little round-up of cool links.

First, for something serious and meaty:  a Salon interview with philosopher Michael Ruse about the ongoing battle between Creationism and "Evolutionism."  Ruse sees the flaws on both sides clearly and makes some excellent, complex points.

Next, something entirely fun and frivolous:  the Evil Mad Scientist Web page, with nifty projects like the amazing Dalek Pumpkin for Halloween. 

A useful resource:  The Filter, another Web log devoted to science and "stealth education" through Science Fun.  It's produced by the people at Science Creative Quarterly.

Another Serious Site.  Popular Mechanics magazine has lately taken on the thankless job of debunking myths and misconceptions about science and technology.  They did a superb job demolishing the 9/11 conspiracy theories, and have now turned a hard and skeptical eye on hydrogen power.  They aren't opposed to using hydrogen as an energy source, they just want people to understand the real issues involved.

And finally, some bad news on the Robot Uprising front.  To robots, humans taste like bacon.   

Humans and Music

Why do we listen to music?

Think about it.  Music is a phenomenon which has no parallel in the natural world.  Yet it has a profound effect on the human brain.  Consider this story:  musical training affects learning ability in kids.  Children who learn music get better at other mental tasks.  It apparently provides a unique form of neurological stimulation.

It can control our emotions.  Listen to a pop hit from when you were a teenager and you feel, physically, a pang of nostalgia.  Listen to swelling patriotic music and you feel a rush of emotion.  Moviemakers understand this.  Even the most banal speech can be made into an uplifting, climactic moment on film with the right background music.  (And why haven't politicians tried musical accompaniment to their campaign stump speeches?)  Many religions use music in rituals, and some of Western civilization's greatest musical works were written for that purpose. You don't even have to be able to hear to enjoy music -- profoundly deaf people can nevertheless sense the vibrations of music through solid objects.


But where does it come from?  Why do our brains respond to something which is entirely artificial?  Musical perception seems to be distinct from language -- we have no "native" musical language, for instance.  And our spoken languages, even tonal ones like Chinese, make use of only a small part of our ability to perceive tones and musical patterns.  It's as if our brains are equipped to handle an extremely complex method of communication which we don't actually use.

Was there a time when language was more musical?  Before language, did humans sing like whales or mice?  Or did music help cement early tribal bonds, so that musical societies thrived while non-musical ones died out?  Music doesn't fossilize, so we can't know if ancient humans used this ability or not.

Or is music an "emergent property" of the brain -- something which arises from the interaction of other features?  In this case it might be our pattern-sensing ability, our language ability, and our perception of time. 

On a science-fictional note, this might mean that alien intelligences might have absolutely no interest in music at all.  It could be a unique feature of the human brain, completely incomprehensible to non-humans.  Which means no all-alien cantina bands or extraterrestrial opera divas.  Which is kind of a shame, really, since one very fruitful result of the growth of a truly global civilization is the way musicians have adopted and combined different styles.   

Friday Parasite #8: A Vertebrate Parasite

A quick entry today, because I’ve got a major project due soon and I’m about to get onto a plane to go to my cousin’s wedding.

Over the past few weeks, all the parasites I’ve written about have been either arthropods or nematodes. And most of them have been organisms that plague vertebrates. So for a change of pace, here’s a parasite that is a vertebrate and plagues invertebrates: Encheliophis gracilis -- the graceful pearlfish.

                   

Pretty, isn’t it? It’s a member of a group of fish called the Carapidae. All of the Carapidae look a bit like 6-inch long eels, and most of them live inside sea cucumbers. In most cases, the pearlfish use sea cucumbers as a living shelter. During the day, they hide from larger predators in their host’s gut. At night, they swim out through the sea cucumber’s anus and forage on tiny crustaceans. But why go to all the risk of swimming around in the open water when you have a house that's made out of meat?

Pearlfish of the genus Encheliophis have evolved into true parasites. Instead of leaving their host to forage, these fish spend their lives inside the sea cucumber’s body, biting off pieces of their host’s gills and gonads whenever they get hungry. Several fish can share a host, and you might predict that large infestations could be pretty unpleasant for the sea cucumber. But here's the mystery: although sea cucumbers can eviscerate themselves when they’re threatened, and that would seem to be a simple way to kick out their parasitic tenants, it doesn't happen. Why not? Is it not worth the effort? Do the fish somehow suppress the sea cucumber's gag reflex? More research is clearly necessary.


References:
Eeckhaut, I., et al. 2004. Parasites and biotic diseases in field and cultivated sea cucumbers. Advances in sea cucumber aquaculture and management: FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 463.

Photo by John E. Randall.

Addicted!

If you're reading this, you're an addict.

That's the conclusion one comes away with after reading this story about a Stanford University group's study of Internet use.  According to the story, the researchers interviewed more than 2,500 people by phone, and found that on average about 1 in 8 respondents showed signs of "problematic" Internet usage.

I have some problems with the study as it's described in the story.  In particular, the definitions of addictive behavior seem overly broad.  Consider:

   "*   13.7 percent (more than one out of eight respondents) found it hard to stay away from the Internet for several days at a time
    * 12.4 percent stayed online longer than intended very often or often
    * 12.3 percent had seen a need to cut back on Internet use at some point
    * 8.7 percent attempted to conceal non-essential Internet use from family, friends and employers
    * 8.2 percent used the Internet as a way to escape problems or relieve negative mood
    * 5.9 percent felt their relationships suffered as a result of excessive Internet use..."

Almost all of these describe just about any human activity.  Compare Internet use with a close equivalent:  talking on the telephone.  How many of those criteria apply to phone calls?  Certainly hard to avoid for days at a time, often run longer than intended, everyone would like to cut back (especially when the phone bill comes), non-essential calls routinely concealed, and often used as a way to relieve a bad mood.

The only characteristic cited which seems genuinely worrisome is the last one:  relationships suffering as a result.  I'll get back to that.

The Internet (a highly untidy way of lumping together Web sites, email, and instant messaging) is a form of communication.  Humans are social animals.  We like to communicate.  In modern society, many of us find our opportunities for meaningful face-to-face communication are limited.  "The Internet" provides opportunities for human contact which we otherwise wouldn't have.  Far from pathologizing "Internet use" as a form of addictive behavior, the researchers would do better to investigate the converse:  people who don't make use of this opportunity to expand your circle of friends and contacts.

Moreover, it's fun.  Why is an enjoyable way to spend time described as an addiction?  One might as well call hanging around in coffeehouses, lounging, reading, playing Monopoly, or puttering in the garden "addictions."  One might also call conducting psychological surveys an "addiction" under the same definitions.

Okay, so what about the 6 percent of respondents who felt their relationships were suffering as a result of 'net use?  Well, let's look at some numbers:  About 60 percent of Americans are married, and the divorce rate is 0.4 percent.  So in any given year 0.6 percent of marriages fail to the point of breaking up, it seems reasonable that ten times as many relationships are "suffering" in some less-than-terminal way.  People blame all sorts of things for their problems, and if two-thirds of Americans are 'netting, naturally it will be cited.

Of course, this could all be desperate rationalizing by an addict in denial. 

Science History Bonanza!

Alert readers of this Web log may have noticed that we're kind of fanboys when it comes to the Royal Society.  In particular, during its early years the Society was the most amazing gathering of scientific intellects since the Museum of Alexandria.  You had Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, John Wilkins, and Christopher Wren all rubbing elbows at meetings. 

But it was more than just a chowder society for eggheads.  The Royal Society took the innovative step of publishing all the discoveries and experiments presented before the group.  As far as I'm aware this was the first time scientific knowledge was systematically made available to anyone who might be interested.  In those days one could stay absolutely up to date on the cutting edge of science by simply reading the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Well, good news:  you can do it now.  No, this isn't a subscription pitch.  The Society has made its archives available online -- FREE -- until December.  Go forth and browse.

Friday Parasite #7: Lousy Fish Today

Last week, a new study in PNAS (1) attracted some media attention – the authors presented compelling evidence that juvenile salmon get infected with sea lice as they migrate past fish farms. Most of the news reports I saw focused on the fish. Do the parasites kill the young fish? Can fish farming coexist with wild salmon? So far, none of them have answered one pressing question -- What is a sea louse, anyway?

               

Where Do Planets Come From?

For a long time nobody knew the answer to this question.  There were two main theories of planet formation.  Immanuel Kant (and Laplace, and a whole passel of others) figured planets condensed out of a disk of gas and dust swirling around a young star.  Before the Galaxies were identified as such, they were sometimes identified by astronomers as star systems in the process of formation.

The second theory was a bit more catastrophist in nature -- near encounters of stars pulled out material which then condensed into planets.  This theory always seemed a little improbable, and it had the depressing corollary that planetary systems would be vanishingly rare.

But nobody really knew the answer.  Even the discovery of extrasolar planets didn't really settle the issue -- it did demonstrate that planetary systems are common, but didn't tell us anything about how they form.  Astronomy is one of those irritating sciences in which one can't run controlled experiments to test your hypotheses.  The Kant-Laplace "nebular" hypothesis was the default assumption, but only because nobody could think of anything better. 

Well now we know.  The venerable Hubble Space Telescope has observed a disk of gas and dust with at least one planet embedded in it, orbiting Epsilon Eridani.

Epsilon Eridani is best known in fiction as the home of Babylon 5.  The Hubble observations suggest it might be a rather cluttered neighborhood for a space station.  No wonder the first four failed.

Squeezing Data

Science depends on tools for gathering information.  One factor in the 17th-Century Scientific Revolution was the development of optics, which suddenly opened up new worlds to human senses.  Literally:  Galileo looked at the Moon and saw mountains, craters, and rilles.  A few decades later Robert Hooke investigated the microcosm, finding animals stranger than anything anyone had yet seen.
    A second boom came at the dawn of the 20th Century, when humans began to investigate the electromagnetic spectrum beyond visible light.  This eventually led to radiotelescopes, infrared imaging, electron microscopes, radiation detectors, and all the tools of modern Big Science.
    But there has been a second, less obvious but equally important process accompanying the development of new scientific tools.  People have also invented ways to squeeze more information out of what they see.  Optical telescopes let us look at Jupiter -- but spectroscopy let scientists analyze its atmosphere more than a century ago.  Photography (coupled with motorized telescope mounts) let astronomers take long exposures of faint objects, so that they could make out the structure of distant galaxies.
    There's a great example of "information squeezing" in some new results from the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn.  Some researchers at the University of Arizona wanted to study the deep levels of Saturn's atmosphere.  But, of course, those levels can't be seen because the upper levels reflect all the sunlight.  If only there was a light source inside Saturn. . .
    And there is!  Saturn's core generates heat, so by looking at the planet in infrared light, they could see it lit up like a big paper lantern -- with the swirls and eddies of the deep atmosphere silhouetted against the light from the core.
    It's an awesome picture, and it's awesome science.