WSJ on the Death of Michael Crichton

His viewpoints will be missed. He was respected by most, and his well-founded but contrarian views were at least considered by those holding conventional wisdom.

"Crichton was sometimes accused of being a Luddite. In fact, he was a champion of good science, and never more so than in a 2003 lecture at Caltech, hilariously titled "Aliens Cause Global Warming."

"As the 20th century drew to a close," he warned, "the connection between hard scientific fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part this was possible because of the complacency of the scientific profession; in part because of the lack of good science education among the public; in part because of the rise of specialized advocacy groups which have been enormously effective in getting publicity and shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the media as an independent assessor of fact."

Shuttle driver reflects on Nobel snub

From the Cape Cod Times. If I had the grant money I'd give him a call.

Twenty years ago, Douglas Prasher was one of the driving forces behind research that earned a Nobel Prize in chemistry this week. But today, he's just driving.

Prasher, 57, works as a courtesy shuttle operator at a Huntsville, Ala., Toyota dealership. While his former colleagues will fly to Stockholm in December to accept the Nobel Prize and a $1.4 million check, the former Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist will be earning $10 an hour while trying to put two of his children through college.

....

After stints at a U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory and working for NASA in Huntsville, Prasher was out of work for a year before he took a job at the car dealership.

Prasher said he has suffered from health problems and depression, some of which stems from being out of science for so long. But his sense of humor remains intact.

This year's physics and medicine prizes went to non-Americans. I think it's a trend.

China goes for methanol from coal

Now if we could also do the same. But we're sold on global warming, so no coal for us.

The production of methanol from coal gasification is a mature technology. In the United States, Eastman Chemical produces methanol from coal gasification at a plant in Kingsport, Tennessee that was built with support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). Based on this experience, the U.S. DoE estimates that methanol can be produced from coal for as little as 50¢ per gallon. In China, production costs from coal are generally RMB$800-1,200 per metric ton of methanol (US$110-165/metric ton, or 33¢ to 50¢ per gallon). In addition, coke furnaces in China generate 80 billion cubic meters of waste gas each year, enough to produce 40 million metric tons of methanol, and significantly reduce pollution in the coal-producing regions. Coal-bed methane deposits of 30,000-35,000 billion cubic meters in China represent another significant energy resource as well as a hidden danger that claims miner’s lives each year. Just 1000 cubic meters of coal-bed methanol can produce one metric ton of methanol.

Create your own slide rule

Warning - ultra nerd territory here. I've been looking for a site that has PDF's of slide rules. I calculate gas mileage in my car and have found that calculators can't hold up in the heat of a car interior. I used a slide rule in H.S. as in the mid-70's calculators were still expensive, about $70 or I guess about $200 in today's money. Here's a good web site:

http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/build.html

THE VOODOO SCIENCES

A CHAOS MANOR SPECIAL REPORT

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

THE VOODOO SCIENCES

This report is in two parts. Part one discusses the subject in a general way. Part Two began as the C. P. Snow Memorial Lecture in Ithaca, NY and was later revised for publication. Both discuss the subject as so are included here, but of the two, the second is the better known. I consider both important. (JEP, 2007).....[more]

John Polkinghorne

Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS, PhD, ScD, MA, (born October 16, 1930 in Weston-super-Mare, England) is a British particle physicist and theologian. He has written extensively on matters concerning science and faith, and was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2002...[more from Wikipedia]

A website where he answers questions about Science and God.

As Prices Soar, U.S. Food Aid Buys Less

From the NY Times. Something to think about in this upcoming push for "biofuels." Have you seen the price of milk in the US lately?


By CELIA W. DUGGER Published: September 29, 2007

Soaring food prices, driven in part by demand for ethanol made from corn, have helped slash the amount of food aid the government buys to its lowest level in a decade, possibly resulting in more hungry people around the world this year.

The United States, the world’s dominant donor, has purchased less than half the amount of food aid this year that it did in 2000, according to new data from the Department of Agriculture....[more]

Was the 'Big Bang' Creation?

As a scientist spending most of my life as an agnostic, and cultural Catholic, it always seemed to me that the Big Bang was the beginning of creation. It certainly fits Genesis 1's description. Einstein appeared to pull back from the idea of the Big Bang as it would imply a creator. he preferred to think of constant universe rather than one with a beginning:

• Albert Einstein's reaction to the consequences of his own general theory of relativity appear to acknowledge the threat of an encounter with God. Through the equations of general relativity, we can trace the origin of the universe backward in time to some sort of a beginning. However, before publishing his cosmological inferences, Einstein introduced a cosmological constant, a "fudge factor," to yield a static model for the universe. Einstein later considered this to be the greatest blunder of his scientific career.
• Einstein ultimately gave grudging acceptance to what he called "the necessity for a beginning" and eventually to "the presence of a superior reasoning power." But he never did accept the reality of a personal God.

Einstein didn't believe quantum theory either as it would imply God played dice.

I couldn't get to sleep last night and listened to radio, a physicist, Lawrence Krauss was on declaring that the Big Bang was evidence that biblical creation do not happen. Radio host didn't press with more questions, but this is one Christian who wholeheartedly disagrees.

Krauss went on to say intelligent design was bunk and the theory of evolution is the basis of modern drug design. I don't believe as a physicist, Krauss has designed any successful drugs. I know of at least one who has. Phil Skell, a former professor of mine at Penn State and a member of the National Academy of Sciences has this to say:

• Evolution Theory is a broadly overarching historical theory that pertains to the developmental history of living organisms over the past 3.5 billion years. It is reasonable to examine its credentials and determine its current utility. Does it have a directive impact in the inductive, or experimental, sciences, such as Physics, Chemistry, and Biology? Despite statements in the literature that make it out to be vitally important in modern Microbiology, Neurobiology, Genetics, Plant Biology, Medicine, Surgery, Pharmaceutics, etc., I believe this assignment to evolutionary theory cannot be justified. Nobel Laureate, Francis Crick wrote: "It might be thought that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in guiding biological research, but this is far from the case." I am mindful of the statement of a professor at a prestigious medical school, that Darwin is not mentioned in the four-year medical program. And, another from a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry, that his company does not have a Division of Darwinian Concepts to help in making more effective their choices for future research.

• Over A half century ago, during WW II, I was personally associated with an antibiotics research group, engaged in the full range of activities, from finding organisms which inhibited bacterial growth to the isolation and proof of structure of the antibiotics they produced. Since then there has been astounding sophisticated advances in instrumentations and methodologies, but nonetheless persons engaged in current activities make no more use of Darwinian Concepts than in those earlier days; those Concepts do not, and did not, have a determinative impact on the conception and prosecution of the projects.

Militant Darwinists seem to promulgate the idea that all of modern science rests upon the theory of evolution. Everything from microchips to drug design will suffer if evolution isn't taught in grade school without any doubts. Evolution should be taught, but there are holes big enough to fit a truck through with clearance.

I have a good friend, and colleague who invented the glucose detector while we were both graduate students at Penn State. The device is the one you can buy anywhere, and has probably saved 10,000's of lives. He was then and is now a 6-day creationist. I believe in old earth so we differ there. But he and I would agree that the everyday successful functioning of science does not depend on accepting evolution without doubts.

Solution to Randomness and the Genetic Code

From the BBC:

The research has proved that a Rubik's cube can be returned to its original state in no more than 26 moves.
The supercomputer took 63 hours to crank out the proof which goes one better than the previous best solution...

It took some smart thinking by graduate student Daniel Kunkle and Gene Cooperman from Northeastern University in Boston to come up with the proof because cranking through the 43 billion billion possible Rubik's cube positions would take too long even for a supercomputer....

The study brings scientists one step closer to finding the so-called "God's Number" which is the minimum number of moves needed to solve any disordered Rubik's cube.

It is so named because God would only need the smallest number of moves to solve a cube. Theoretical work suggests that God's Number is in the "low 20s"....[more]

Contrast the above with an American Scientist article from a few years ago:

Freeland and his colleagues compared the biological code with another set of a million random variations. The natural code emerged as the uncontested champion. They wrote of the biological code: “...it appears at or very close to a global optimum for error minimization: the best of all possible codes.”....

The idea that the genetic code is evolving under pressure to ameliorate errors—or indeed that it is evolving at all—has not won universal assent. Some cogent objections were set forth as early as 1967 by Carl R. Woese of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Among other points, he noted that if a trait is actively evolving, you would expect to see some variation.....[more]

Antibiotics, Bacteriophages, and Super Bugs

From the BBC:

An old-fashioned treatment for bacterial infections which was once found in every Red Army soldier's kit bag is being touted as a new weapon against hospital superbug MRSA....[more]

More on MSRA

Science v. Religion?

From Today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Religion and science are two different ways of knowing. Both have a place. Religion tends to deal in the "Why?" questions. Why is there a world? Religion answers, "God." No one has to accept that answer, but it is an answer that science can neither confirm nor deny. Science works on the "How?" questions. How have the world and its diverse life forms come to be?...[more]

Ivory Tower Blues - The Book

This book describes the demise of higher education in Canada and the USA. I just got a copy from Amazon. I read the first 70 pages. So far it presents a very accurate description of the problems compounding higher ed. It does tend to drone on a bit but that's to be expected from a pair of academics.

A review from the National Post.

The demise of university?

By Allison Hanes, National Post

Published: Friday, April 27, 2007

There was a time when James Ct would spend hours marking up the margins of the essays his third-year sociology students at the University of Western Ontario would submit - challenging their arguments, critiquing their prose, making thoughtful suggestions and correcting their grammar.
Now, he does not even return the papers once he tabulates the grades.

Sometime over the past decade, Prof. Ct realized he was ending up with a stack of abandoned essays on his desk at the end of every course, and a sense of futility over the effort he put into providing helpful feedback.

"The students never came to pick them up," he said....[more]

Postmodern Physics

Professor Tipler of Tulane University, hits upon a topic that I wrote about a few weeks ago. It is possible to obtain a Ph.D. in physics from a prestigious American university without a working knowledge of Einstein's theory of relativity. He goes on about the Standard Model of particle physics. He has this to say:

• "a degree in physics from an American university is no guarantee that the student with this degree understands basic physics. The physics faculty’s increasing ignorance of basic physics is starting to show up in their research, as I describe at length in my recent book, The Physics of Christianity (Doubleday, 2007). I show that, across all disciplines, a collapse of belief in Christianity over the past several decades among university faculty has been accompanied by a collapse in the belief that there is fundamental truth which should be imparted to students."

He attributes the problems with physics faculty's increasing ignorance, and a collapse of Christian beliefs in fundamental truths. I have a less nefarious hypothesis. I teach chemistry and I know faculty that are purposely watering down course material. Why? It's because university administrations, parents, and students believe that the university degree is a credential to the good life. So barriers are lowered and all are happier, including faculty whose performance and thus pay is now judged by student evaluations of teaching. The more credentialized adults the better, right? Let's all rejoice as we pump out ever more degreed nitwits, whose studies consists primarily of underage drinking, and picking up an STD or two.

Fred on Students in the Sciences

From Fred's May 6th 2007 column (number 356).

English Majors with no Shakespeare , Physics with no Relativity

Over in Phi Beta Cons there's a post on the disappearance of relativity from the physics curriculum. One can go through the Ph.D. level in physics without any study of Einstein's relativity. A physicist equates this with the study of English with no Shakespeare. A chemist from Oregon thinks it's a good idea to leave out relativity. I disagree with the chemist, the point of education is not only to equip the student with factual knowledge necessary for today's context but also to be able to acquire and expand upon new ideas and concepts. A first rate mind will also conceive of and/or seek these new paradigms. For this relativity is an excellent tool. When I took relativity, we got to see how Newtonian physics failed under circumstances of high speeds and how Einstein stepped in. This is an excellent exercise in how to learn how to be creative. Many professors in the sciences and engineering are bemoaning students that demand "just enough knowledge" to fill in some formula. University administrators eager to fill seats are very accommodating to this attitude through student evaluations of teaching. These students are being set up for a lifetime of mundane jobs that can be easily outsourced or automated.

The Paradox of Secular Scientism

Another American Thinker article:

It has become an accepted tenet of conventional wisdom to begin all discussions about science and nature with the understanding that religion has no place in such debates and that, in fact, faith is diametrically opposed to reason and scientific thought. To this end the concept of classical education, including any mention of God has been thoroughly removed from all Western public schools and replaced with a rather drab and mundane scientism.

This, however, need not be and was not always the case; in fact, Christian scholars had been on the cutting edge of scientific thought since the Middle Ages and the application of human reason to theological and later scientific questions has been a hallmark of Christianity since its very beginning - a fact which is evident to anyone who has read the work of Augustine and Aquinas, among others. How, then, did this notion of religion as the enemy of science first take root? And what are the dangers it poses to man and society?

..... [Read More]

Selenium pills 'may combat HIV'

From BBC:

Taking daily selenium supplements may block the build up of HIV in a patient's blood, research suggests.
The University of Miami found a lower HIV viral load in patients who took selenium supplements for nine months.
Selenium deficiencies have been recorded in HIV patients, and evidence suggests the mineral can improve the function of the immune system
The Archives of Internal Medicine study suggests the supplements may be a cheap and easy way to help keep HIV in check......

The researchers said the exact mechanism by which selenium exerts its effects on HIV is not known.

One hypothesis is that selenium's antioxidant properties may repair damage done to immune cells by oxygen, which is produced at higher levels in the bodies of patients with HIV..........[read more]

This is interesting in that that it's been suspected that HIV is a form of chronic inflammation and involves cellular damage though oxidations. Selenium is an antioxidant. Care must be taken when administering selenium as it is toxic.

The Bio-friendly Universe

The Bio-friendly Universe

An interesting take by Paul Davies of Arizona State University.

"Once you’ve got that linkage, you have the basis for the universe being able to engineer its own bio-friendliness through this sort of quantum feedback."

But why does the universe engineer its own bio-friendliness?

"Some people have suggested that. They have suggested that cosmic bio-friendliess is precisely due to some super-intelligence that went back in time and fixed up their own power, or something like that. Or that a super-intelligence in another universe created this universe with bio-friendly parameters. All of those things have been tried – all wildly conjectural, of course. But what I find lacking in all of those theories, including the more conventional intelligent-design argument, is that they appeal to something outside the universe that has to be accepted as given and cannot be proved. I’d like to try to explain as much of the universe, including its bio-friendly laws of physics, from within the universe – and in a way that doesn’t appeal to something outside of it."

Paul Davies is of the mindset that is biased against ID because it invokes a higher power. This is a flaw in logic as nothing in the scientific method demands that we as scientists must discount such possibility. The modern scientific mind is replete with such notions.

Music from DNA and Protein Sequences

Music from DNA and Protein Sequences.

The code of life is based on four chemical residues abbreviated as A, T, G, and C. They appear in a long spaghetti string of a molecule know as DNA. Proteins which are the cinder blocks of life have 20 residues that students of biochemistry are required to memorize as a rite of passage. Surprisingly, when these residues are rendered to musical notes, we don't hear random noise as one might expect but a melody. The algorithms in which the authors used to create music from DNA and protein sequences is described in Link 3.

Link 1 Link 2 Link 3 Link 4

from Link 2:

• Prof. Susumu Ohno (of Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope, who died on January 13, 2000, at the age of 71) proposed years ago that the repetition process governs both the musical composition and the DNA sequence construction . see this paper by Ohno in Immunogenetics (1986) titled: "The all pervasive principle of repetitious recurrence governs not only coding sequence construction but also human endeavor in musical composition".