Quantum Weirdness

Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean Carroll explains a recent paper in Nature whereby the authors were able to find the answer to a problem without actually doing the calculation. The author (Onur Hosten) calls it "counterfactual" quantum computation: "a way of probing the outcome of an event by looking at situations in which it didn't actually happen."

It's fairly mind boggling (even by quantum mechanics standards), but Sean does a heroic job to simplify it. As a tease, he uses steak, salad, and a puppy. Click here to give it a read, especially if you're in the mood to be confused.

Whew..... I Passed

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Science Wackos

Rolling Stone has a lengthy piece that investigates the Church of Scientology. I have always thought that the group was just a scam to make money (and Tom Cruise's antics only confirms this suspicion) but I'm even more appalled after reading this. L. Ron Hubbard a was nutcase and liar and I find it distressing how many kids are growing up with this tripe, never learning to question or think for themselves. Next time they get the Scientology PR Director on tv (or Tom Cruise for that matter) they should ask them about Xenu.

http://www.xenu.net/

Why Do We Have Sex?

One of the big questions in evolutionary biology is why some organsims utilize sexual reproduction. Although the mechanics are pretty straight forward, how different species respond to subquently becoming a parent can range from years of personal care (such as in humans) to outright abandonment right after birth (seen in many,many species). Either way requires a bigger investment in time and energy which can draw away from successfully reproducing in the first place.


With this in mind, it would seem that asexual species (e.g. bacteria, archaea) have a tremendous advantage. Parthenogenetic reproduction produces exponentially more offspring with none of the investment of finding a mate or rearing offspring, thus reducing their own fitness. Before you females begin to question the utility of the male gender, let me suggest a couple of reasons why sex persists (besides the obvious ones).


One idea holds that sexual reproduction (and the genetic recombination associated with it) helps protect species from parasites and other potentially dangerous hanger-ons. With our genome constantly changing, it is more difficult for a bacteria, virus, or other microbe to establish themselves.

A study out in the journal Nature (last week) provides some direct evidence for another explanation. It seems that asexual reproduction leads to a greater accumulation of deleterious mutations. The authors demonstrated this by studying the humble water flea (Daphnia pulex). Daphnia is a great model because the species includes both sexual and asexual populations, which can be compared. The authors compared 14 populations of each and found that the asexual populations had many more mutations with some sort of functional effect. Of these mutations, 90% were under selective pressure. This suggests that selection is not as efficient at getting rid of deleterious mutations compared to reproductive populations. This isn't the final nail in the coffin, but it is an important study in examining the role selection has in maintaining sexually reproducing populations. So, we males have some use after all!

Nielsen, R. 2006. Why Sex? Nature 311: 960-961.

Charlie's Wisdom

I think this is an astute quote from Charles Darwin, when applied to all of the ridiculous "controversies" in science found in the news lately:

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”

What Is There To Say?

We see Orrin Hatch and countless of Republican apologists continue to pretend that Iraq had something to do with Al Qaida in order to justify the clusterfrack in Iraq.

Then there's the United Arab Emirates. And what's the UAE record on terrorism?

The UAE was one of three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

The UAE has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Lybia.

According to the FBI, money was transferred to the 9/11 hijackers through the UAE banking system.

After 9/11, the Treasury Department reported that the UAE was not cooperating in efforts to track down Osama Bin Laden's bank accounts.

We bomb Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11, yet we hand UAE the keys to our ports.

That's the Bush Administration in action.

Update: More here and here.

(Via DailyKos)

Why We Need Algebra

Here is a pointed case for why math is important:

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote a column on February 15 enititled "What Is the Value of Algebra?" Cohen recounted the case of a twelfth grader at a high school in Los Angeles who failed an algebra course six times and finally walked out of school while struggling during her seventh attempt to wrestle with a class that was a requirement for graduation.

Cohen went on to acknowledge that he too flunked algebra and had to retake the course. He discounted any real-life need to know the subject and raised the question as to why it should be a requirement at all for high school graduation. Lecturing the student, he explained:

"You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it. You will never need to know--never mind want to know--how many boys it will take to mow a lawn if one of them quits halfway and two more show up later--or something like that. Most of math can now be done by a computer or calculator. On the other hand, no computer can write a column or even a thank-you note--or reason even a little bit. If, say, the school asked you for another year of English or, God forbid, history, so that you actually had to know something about your world, I would be on its side. But algebra? Please.

Cohen is obviously not alone in thinking along these lines. A lot of Americans agree with him. As a fan of history, Cohen should be familiar with the Biblical phrase "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." A day after his column appeared, the National Academy of Sciences issued a survey of 200 multi-national corporations that indicated that 38 percent were planning to shift an increasing amount of their research to countries like India and China that maintain solid educational systems. Surprisingly, the report concluded, lower labor costs were not the major factor in making these decisions. Instead, their plans were triggered by the availability of high-quality educational institutions and the resulting pool of scientists and engineers.

No one in Hyderabad or Shenzen is calling for getting rid of secondary algebra requirements.

Why? The math is simple:

No algebra=No calculus=No science=No technology=We're totally *&$#FRTDG!!!!!

Mega Scientist

A week ago I had the pleasure to take my students to a lecture given by Dr. Michael Fay, a conservation biologist made famous by his Mega Transect and Mega Flyover projects. National Geographic helped fund and document the projects and sponsored the lecture we attended.

I won't focus much on the content since it can all be read in the National Geographic articles that covered it. Fay flew over 25 countries, at an altitude of around 300 feet, taking digital pictures every 20 seconds. He ended up with roughly 150,000 images. Each image also had a GPS tag. With that info, Fay was able to attach his images to Google Earth to provide a visual tour of his trip. If you go to Google Earth and focus on Africa, you will find little red planes scattered over the continent. These represent the shots Fay took during his trip.

Using this format made the lecture much more interactive, although, he has so many images, and covered so much ground (70,000 miles) that it was difficult to get a well organized talk in one hour. Still, what we did see was spectacular and really allows you to visualize the human footprint on the land.

In addition to his discussion of conservation and ecological issues that Africa faces, he recounted some of his more harrowing tales, such as stalling in mid-air, confronting poachers in the bush and being gored by an elephant. Fay represents a true adventurer/scientist. My students were lucky to meet someone to see how their education could be put in action.

Cheney & Hunting

From the Daily Show:

Jon Stewart: "I'm joined now by our own vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst, Rob Corddry. Rob, obviously a very unfortunate situation. How is the vice president handling it?

Rob Corddry: "Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Wittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush.

"And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington's face."

Jon Stewart: "But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak."

Jon Stewart: "That's horrible."

Rob Corddry: "Look, the mere fact that we're even talking about how the vice president drives up with his rich friends in cars to shoot farm-raised wingless quail-tards is letting the quail know 'how' we're hunting them. I'm sure right now those birds are laughing at us in that little 'covey' of theirs.

Jon Stewart: "I'm not sure birds can laugh, Rob."

Rob Corddry: "Well, whatever it is they do ... coo .. they're cooing at us right now, Jon, because here we are talking openly about our plans to hunt them. Jig is up. Quails one, America zero.

Jon Stewart: "Okay, well, on a purely human level, is the vice president at least sorry?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, what difference does it make? The bullets are already in this man's face. Let's move forward across party lines as a people ... to get him some sort of mask."

New Dinosaur

A new dinosaur has been described in this weeks Nature. It is an interesting tyrannosaurid (Guanlong wucaii) that lived about a 120 million years ago. What makes it unique is the crest it sported (see picture). For a good summary of the article head over to Carl Zimmer's the Loom for his take. For other discussion and pictures see here and here.

Some Morning Humor

"A comet is, of course, frozen bodies of ice and dust formed over 4.6 billion years ago---or created 6,000 years ago, depending on whether or not you're wrong."
---Jon Stewart

SOTU Mistatements

Factcheck.org has an article examining President Bush's speech. They found he left out some relevant information. Their summary:

• He proudly spoke of "writing a new chapter in the story of self-government" in Iraq and Afghanistan and said the number of democracies in the world is growing. He failed to mention that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan yet qualify as democracies according to the very group whose statistics he cited.
• Bush called for Congress to pass a line-item veto, failing to mention that the Supreme Court struck down a line-item veto as unconstitutional in 1998. Bills now in Congress would propose a Constitutional amendment, but none have shown signs of life.
• The President said the economy gained 4.6 million jobs in the past two-and-a-half years, failing to note that it had lost 2.6 million jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office. The net gain since Bush took office is just a little more than 2 million.
• He talked of cutting spending, but only "non-security discretionary spending." Actually, total federal spending has increased 42 percent since Bush took office.
• He spoke of being "on track" to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009. But the deficit is increasing this year, and according to the Congressional Budget Office it will decline by considerably less than half even if Bush's tax cuts are allowed to lapse.
• Bush spoke of a "goal" of cutting dependence on Middle Eastern oil, failing to mention that US dependence on imported oil and petroleum products increased substantially during his first five years in office, reaching 60 per cent of consumption last year.

SOTU Mistatements

Factcheck.org has an article examining President Bush's speech. They found he left out some relevant information. Their summary:

• He proudly spoke of "writing a new chapter in the story of self-government" in Iraq and Afghanistan and said the number of democracies in the world is growing. He failed to mention that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan yet qualify as democracies according to the very group whose statistics he cited.
• Bush called for Congress to pass a line-item veto, failing to mention that the Supreme Court struck down a line-item veto as unconstitutional in 1998. Bills now in Congress would propose a Constitutional amendment, but none have shown signs of life.
• The President said the economy gained 4.6 million jobs in the past two-and-a-half years, failing to note that it had lost 2.6 million jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office. The net gain since Bush took office is just a little more than 2 million.
• He talked of cutting spending, but only "non-security discretionary spending." Actually, total federal spending has increased 42 percent since Bush took office.
• He spoke of being "on track" to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009. But the deficit is increasing this year, and according to the Congressional Budget Office it will decline by considerably less than half even if Bush's tax cuts are allowed to lapse.
• Bush spoke of a "goal" of cutting dependence on Middle Eastern oil, failing to mention that US dependence on imported oil and petroleum products increased substantially during his first five years in office, reaching 60 per cent of consumption last year.