Ponderings of a Scientist

I have a subscription to Science News magazine.  The magazine is a weekly, summarizing important journal articles and other findings from a wide range of scientific disciplines.  These are some highlights:

1.  G.W.’s FY07 budget cuts ~3 million from EPA’s library budget, forcing multiple libraries to close and limiting EPA scientists’ and the public’s access to environmental documents.  The kicker - the library system brings in a profit of close to ~30 million a year.  Um, you do the math!

2. A group of ecologists and economists measured the energy effectiveness of producing biodiesels from soybeans and corn.  Accounting for the costs of production, including farming equipment, pesticide and soil treatment use; and the manufacturing costs to refine the product, then comparing those figures to the amount of energy yielded, corn ethanol provides 25% more energy then it consumes and soybeans provide 93% more energy than the process uses.  Additionally, soybeans per unit of energy gained require 1% of the nitrogen, 8.3% of the phosphorus and 13% of the pesticides required to grow corn.  Compared to burning traditional gasoline, corn ethanol reduces greenhouse emmisions by 12%, soybean diesel reduces emmisions by 41%.  So why do American car companies favor corn?  Could it be all the subsides we give the corn farmers (I mean the big businesses that own the corn fields - and some of the car companies - and some of the mainstream media).

Not mentioned in this article, but also interesting: sugarcane biodiesel is supposedly the best out there.  Countries in South America are producing more than they can use, so why don’t they import to the U.S.?  Oh yeah, we have a 100% tariff on sugarcane biodiesel!  Um, protecting the corn field owners again?

3.  Scientists have created a new atomic clock based around the ultraviolet electromagnetic wave oscillation of a mercury ion.  Compared to the gold standard cesium atomic clock, this new clock is 10 times more precise, erring only 1 second every 70 million years.  This new clock has all sorts of applications.

4.  Just incase you were worried, you will be happy to know that a group of chemists have developed a taste sensor that can distinquish among 18 commercial beers.

“The Senate began work Wednesday on an election-year bill that would open a large area of the central Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling, but would fall far short of a broader offshore energy development measure already approved by the House.” - Associated Press.  Link to full article

Don’t they get it, finding more oil is not the solution!  We are running out of oil; let’s not ruining our few remaining unpolluted (minimally polluted) natural environments searching for a few more drops.  G.W. and his cronies are rich enough, let us stop supporting them and start supporting inventors and business using creative, cost-efficient, energy-efficient, environmentally sound means to create power!

“Skin secretions from five Australian frog species, including the green tree frog (pictured), might be the source of next-generation natural mosquito repellents. New research shows that mice with frog fluids placed on their tails received fewer bites than mice without the amphibians’ juices.” - National Geographic

Guys who think they can impress women (other men) by revving their car’s engine at stop signs and then speeding crazily ahead after the light turns green.  These men get an extra pet peeve point when they do all this in first gear.  Shift man shift, the loud whine of your engine is pathetic, not cool!

On a related note - men (people) who taunt, cat-call, or honk at runners and cyclists.  One its rude, two its rude, three its rude, and four it scares the shit out of me when I have my headphones on (Although, I still have to give creativity points to the teenager who told Zipy to “pedal hard retard!” )

Another one:  the man who tried to pick me up while I was running, by switching directions to running with me and telling me all about how fast he was and how may races he has won.  If I wanted to go out for a fast run I would have been with my husband!  I didn’t enjoy having my nice, slow Sunday morning run interrupted by a tag-along flirter!

I’m reading a book entitled Edge of Battle by Dale Brown, which is a fictional novel about illegal immigration.  In the book, terriorists start using the Mexican border to cross into the U.S. and do harm. The fictional president enacts an offensive and upsets a lot of people who think he is militarizing the border and acting like a bigot, xenophobe, and racist.  I’m only on page 90 of 300 or 400, but it has already inspired me to rethinking my opinions on illegal immigration.

Last time I posted anything on the topic, my stance was rather wishy-washy, however no I’m swaying more  toward the idea that:  illegal immigrants are criminals.  I don’t really think it matters why you want to come into the country, doing so at an undesignated border crossing is still illegal and that makes you a trespasser, at the least, and a criminal, at the most.  Its not that I want to prevent Mexicans the opportunity to come to the U.S., they just need to do it legally and the U.S. administration has a duty to improve the legal immigration procedures such that legal migration is a viable option.

Also I’m so sick of the excuse that:  illegals will do jobs Americans won’t.  If you mean they will subject themselves to near slave labor and not complain because they are afraid of deportation, then yes Americans won’t do slave labor.  However, Americans would willing do the job tasks themselves, if they were treated humanely and paid a living wage to do so!  The employers of illegals need to be procesuted more so then the illegal immigrants themselves.  There would not be illegal immigration if there were no jobs.

I’m sure y’all have different opinions and I’d like to hear them!

Just completed The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson.  Written circa 1945 (second edition circa 1955), this is one of Rachel’s first (if not her first) full length book, previous to her famous Silent Spring.  If you’re interested in the Ocean you should check it out.  If I had to describe the book in one sentence:  Poetically written prose describing the oceans’ history, geology, geography, oceanography, bathymetry and marine biology.  Its interesting to read something so old and see how much (how little) our understandings have changed.  Rachel, even prior to getting DDT induced cancer, was an environmentailist and a forward thinker.  Many of her ideas and concerns are still relavent today.

I’d give this book a 6 (if you dig ocean science) on the 1-10 scale.  I think I would have appreciated it more with about 1/3 of each chapter cut.  I enjoyed the topics, but she was a bit long winded at parts.  I’m a facts sort of person, I don’t tend to enjoy books full of descriptors (thats why I like the fast paced mystery genre) and this was a bit to poetic for me in parts.

“Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people’s characters.”
- Margaret Halsey

This week I chose an individual, rather than an entire species (although I do have an particulary interest in this species). This two-toned lobster was pulled from a trap in Bar Harbor, Maine, some time last week. Lobsters, as you can see, have a growth pattern that (just for you Georgy Boy) allows each side of the body to develop independently. Lobster shell color is determined by a pigment, astaxanthin, which bind to shell proteins in different layers of the shell. Astaxanthin can appear red, yellow, or blue depending on a number of factors. Usually, all three variants are present and the resultant color is a molted green/brown. However, when a part of the system is mutated all sorts of colors or color combinations can appear. The blue lobster, likely the most infamous, color mutant, occurs in one in one million lobsters, whereas this two-tone mutation is only present in one in 50 million lobsters. What a catch! The lobstermen donated this lobster to the Bar Harbor Aquarium.

“Checks and Balances”  I thought that statement was the cornerstone of our governmental system.  However, apparently, while the rest of us were learning all about the division of labor and power in our government structure, in US history classes, G.W was busy smoking dope in the alley behind his prep school.  I’ve always felt that the power wasn’t exactly balanced, but at least we had some sort of system of checks and balances.  Now instead of a democracy we are ruled by a barely cloaked wantabe dictatorship.  Since when does the president get to 1) make his own rules 2) disregard the rules made by Congress 3) disregard the interpretation of the rules by the Court and my favorite 4) claim that the rules don’t matter because they don’t apply to the Presidency - his position is some how above the rules!  This little rant stems from the BBC article I just read titled “Bush ‘blocked phone tap inquiry’”.

So I have progressed this blog-site to a place where I don’t feel ashamed letting you all look at it. Starting now I will blog exclusively at this location. Please update your links accordingly. So what do you think? Not bad for someone with limited coding skills huh? I only had to have the Monkey help me with a few things!