Monthly Archives: February 2009

The DiHydrogen Monoxide Effect

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If It’s Difficult to Pronounce, It Must Be Risky.

ABSTRACT- Low processing fluency fosters the impression that a stimulus is unfamiliar, which in turn results in perceptions of higher risk, independent of whether the risk is desirable or undesirable. In Studies 1 and 2, ostensible food additives were rated as more harmful when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce; mediation analyses indicated that this effect was mediated by the perceived novelty of the substance. In Study 3, amusement-park rides were rated as more likely to make one sick (an undesirable risk) and also as more exciting and adventurous (a desirable risk) when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce.

I assume this is a correlation to “the risk of the unknown is often overestimated” in that difficult-to-pronounce is deemed “more unknown” than something that’s easy to pronounce.

via Schneier

And some interesting comments there — would you rather drink water distilled from urine or taken from a mountain stream?

Peek-a-Boo

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Light Transmitting Concrete

Litracon is a combination of optical fibers and concrete. A wall made of Litracon has the strength of traditional concrete but thanks to an embedded array of optical glass fibers, which lets in the view of the outside world, such as the silhouette of trees, or passersby, that are displayed inside the building.

The glass fibers allow light to travel by points between the two sides of the blocks. Due to their parallel placement, the light-information on the brighter side of such a wall seems unchanged on the darker side. Also there is no change in the color of the light.

Attack of the 50' Woman Science Blogger

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Women in Science: 50 Must Read Bloggers

Women have long played an important role in scientific developments and discourse, however, this role has historically received relatively less recognition and coverage as compared to their male counterparts. Over the last few years, however, blogging has opened up a way for leading women in science to bring to light the important improvements women have made, the struggles they still encounter, and the strategies they set up for their work to be recognized.

In this article, we highlight and recognize what we consider to be the 50 best blogs covering the vital roles played by women in science

via

It's Warm on the Grassy Knoll

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Global-warming denialism as a conspiracy theory

One possible reason that global-warming denialism is more prevalent in the U.S. than elsewhere is that more Americans than Europeans are Biblical literalists. That involves believing that all biologists and paleontologists are either massively incompetent or deliberately trying to mislead the public about the central facts of their disciplines. [The alternative theory, held by some, is that the entire fossil record is a trick by Satan, intended to deceive those whose faith isn’t firm.] I haven’t seen any data on the overlap between global-warming denialism and creationism, but thinking about Sarah Palin and her fans you’d have to guess at a strong correlation between the two beliefs.

Global-warming denialism is a special case, of course: the policy implications of the facts about climate change threaten some very large economic interests and some dearly-held political beliefs. So global-warming-denialist brochures are printed on glossy paper. Other than that, though, it’s fairly standard-grade fringe pseudoscience, not much different from the folks who write endless papers full of gibberish proving that Einstein was wrong.

And yet the Washington Post continues to make op-ed space available for flat-earth climatology.

I think that you should take any science you read on the op-ed page with a huge grain of salt. But why is that? Why are the people writing and publishing these things thinking that they are opinion in the first place? One of the effects of scientific inquiry is to remove opinion from the analysis, and leave something that is objectively true. If you really think that there are multiple ways of interpreting the data, then you need to take a closer look at at the data you have, and possibly get more data. But in a lot of these cases, while more data is usually good, it isn’t what is required — the “alternative” interpretations don’t stand up to scrutiny. But this is the op-ed page, and making it up doesn’t seem to carry any penalty with it. On the contrary, one can lie to a large audience and then source amnesia takes over; nobody remembers that it was a lie or came from a disreputable source — all they remember is the claim. Which is a very different situation from scientific publishing, where publishing lies usually kills (or severely impedes) your career.

Do We?

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At Backreaction, Bee asks, “Do we need Science Journalists?”

I don’t think science blogs are ready to replace science journalism, or even if that will ever come to pass. This harkens back to the argument of what is the purpose of blogs; if the niche that a blog fills isn’t competing with traditional science journalism, then that blog isn’t likely to present much competition. And if a blogger doesn’t present their work in a way that’s an alternative to journalism, then so be it — I don’t think I’m going to run anyone out of business, and if I find something interesting, I’m an asset, because I’ll link to it. To the extent that science blogs do compete with science journalism, I think that good blogging will force science journalism to get better, because good blogs will be read at the expense of poor journalism, and bloggers tend to not be shy about pointing out crap. And that’s a Good Thing™ because we can always do with better material all around. There will always be a place for good science journalism; the question will be on the size of the niche.

Quantum Biology

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The Quantum Dimension Of Photosynthesis

In the initial steps of photosynthesis, the energy from a solar photon is transferred through the protein by sequentially exciting electrons in the organic molecules and is eventually delivered where it’s needed. Biologists have long thought that the energy moved like a hot potato: an excited electron in one molecule passes its energy to an electron in another, nearby molecule, and so on.

However, laser-based experiments have suggested other possibilities. In 2007 a team hitting a photosynthetic protein with laser pulses and measuring the time variation in the output light found strong evidence that some of the electrons were coherently coupled. The quantum wave nature of the electrons seemed to be connecting some of the chlorophyll-like molecules and helping energy flow through the protein like a wave on a string.