Science

A Void in Space-Time

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Forget invisibility cloaks, scientists at Imperial College London have come up with a way of designing a cloaking device that bends space-time around the item being cloaked so that, from our point of view, it ceases to exist. Nature has details.

Of course, this being a piece of quantum trickery, it is probably only practical on very small scales. Don’t start thinking about stealthing your warships just yet. However, the ability to hide sub-atomic goings on from prying eyes has surprising potential uses. Nature quotes Ortwin Hess, a researcher into metamaterials at the University of Surrey in Guildford:

Physicists are struggling to build quantum computers, because any accidental observation of fragile quantum properties can disrupt calculations before they have been completed. “This cloak could be used to shield quantum systems from being observed, long enough for calculations to be done,” he says.

So to get quantum computers to work we may have to hide their processors outside of space-time. Isn’t physics wonderful!

Playing Catchup

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

There was no blogging yesterday because I was busy. I spent a whopping 12 hours on the day job, which was a disaster in every way except that the clients seem happy and I can bill for it. Today I need to get on with Salon Futura #2 in half the time I had hoped to spend on it. But so that you don’t have to be bored for another day, here are a few things to keep you busy.

A BBC survey finds that 18% of British people are “uncomfortable” about having LGB characters on television. That’s depressing, but a good excuse to mention that The Salon this month features Nicola Griffith, Hal Duncan and Cat Valente (and me) talking about writing LGBT characters.

That report doesn’t address portrayal of trans people at all because, as you should be aware by now, the purpose of trans people on British television is to provide the audience with someone who won’t be protected by the Press Complaints Commission that can be the butt of any cruel jokes going. However, the Liberal Democrat part of our coalition government wants to have an “action plan” on transgender equality. It remains to be seen whether the Tories will allow Ms. Featherstone to actually act on the plan.

Talking of gender issues, Kyle Cassidy had a bizarre encounter in a bar last night with someone who is obviously well on the way to becoming a Republican senator. Who would have thought that Hello Kitty could arouse such ire.

Everyone has been blogging about the potentially habitable planet that has been discovered, but in case you missed it, here’s the story.

More worryingly (and because I haven’t given Kendall a “we’re all going to die” story for ages), here are some cosmologists worrying that the amount of time in our universe may be finite. Apparently we only have about 5 billion years left. Warning: even Hannu Rajaniemi might need to work a bit to follow the argument.

And finally on the science beat, the news that dinosaurs might have been a bit taller than previously thought, because they had a lot more cartilage in their joints than we do. It would have been a great article if it wasn’t for this:

Using a “cartilage correction factor,” Holliday determined that many theropod dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus, were only modestly taller whereas ornthischian and sauropod dinosaurs, such as Triceratops and Brachiosaurus, may have been 10 percent taller or more. For example, Brachiosaurus, previously thought to be 42 feet tall, may actually have been more than a foot taller with the additional joint cartilages.

I’m guessing what they mean is that a Brachiosaurus’s legs would have been 10% longer. Much of its height is, of course, in the neck, which perhaps doesn’t have as much cartilage. But really, someone should have raised a red flag before that article saw print.

Wave Power

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Every so often my day job turns up stories full of sfnal awesomeness. Take, for example, this press release from the University of Arizona about generating electricity from waves — quantum waves.

Bergfield designed the benzene ring circuit in such a way that in one path the electron is forced to travel a longer distance around the ring than the other. This causes the two electron waves to be out of phase once they reunite upon reaching the far side of the benzene ring. When the waves meet, they cancel each other out in a process known as quantum interference. When a temperature difference is placed across the circuit, this interruption in the flow of electric charge leads to the buildup of an electric potential — voltage — between the two electrodes.

The great thing about this is not that scientists are doing engineering on the scale of a benzene ring, but that the technique, if the theoretical models work in practice, will generate significant amounts of electricity from waste heat. That will make an enormous difference to the efficiency of any sort of engine. It is really very exciting stuff.

So hats off and good luck with the prototype to Professor Charles Stafford, to Justin Bergfield, the doctoral candidate who is doing much of the work, and especially to Michelle Solis, the undergraduate who discovered the phenomenon on which all this is based.

Who says girls can’t do science?

Sex and the Single Embryo

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

The Daily Kos has a remarkable post up outlining the various ways in which human embryos, which begin life largely undifferentiated, acquire gender-related characteristics under the influence of hormones, etc.

The thing that impressed me most about the article is that it starts from the assumption that trans women are women, and trans men are men, they just have a rather more extreme case of developmental skewness than you find in intersex people. This is completely opposite to the usual media and medical (and common Feminist) view that trans women are “really” men and trans men are “really” women who can be surgically altered to look like the “other sex”. As the article makes plain, all human beings start out the same, and any medical treatment for trans people is adjusting what the body has done to itself.

The other important point that the article makes is that the natural variation in human development is far more significant than most people assume, and people with “abnormal” sexual characteristics are much more common than trans people. Furthermore, post-surgery, trans people fit well within the natural range of variation for their gender.

It is the most refreshing and complete article on trans biology I have read in a long time.

Warning: contains biology text book drawings.

Explanation for Blindsight

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Here’s one for Peter Watts fans. Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health believe that they have found an explanation for the phenomenon of Blindsight. It appears that the parts of the eye and brain that actually register visual information to our conscious minds have backups. There’s an overview here, and the full paper is available behind a paywall at Nature.

Trouble With Ra’s Acne

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

It is a long time since we had one of those “we are all going to die” posts, and I’m worried you might be missing them (hi Kendall!), so here’s a doozy.

Via Damien G. Walter I discover this article in New Scientist that suggests there’s something wrong with the sun. It is a very interesting survey of our knowledge of sunspot cycles, which appears to be somewhat lacking because there are currently nowhere near as many spots on Lord Ra’s face as predicted.

Of course this is hardy surprising. The sun is billions of years old, and we have only been observing it seriously for a a couple of hundred of them. Our data is incomplete. But there’s a prevailing view that sunspot activity is a bit like earthquakes or volcanoes: if you don’t get a lot of action for a long time, something big is probably on the way.

That something big is unlikely to be death rays, but it could play havoc with our technology. NASA, who have more interest in what happens in space than most organizations, is understandably worried. Cue the Daily Telegraph warning of “devastation”. Sadly they forget to mention Mayan prophecies or movies based thereon.

Gender Science Breakthrough

~ Cheryl

Via the National Institute of Medical Research I have learned of a major breakthrough in the understanding of how mammals (at least, but remember that other types of animals have very different sex systems to ours) develop major sex characteristics. We have known for a long time that physical sex is much more complex than simply having XX or XY chromosomes. According to this article we know understand the exact mechanism by which a body will develop either testes or ovaries. Of particular importance is the fact that this mechanism involves a gene that is not on either the X or Y chromosome, and is active for only a very short period in the embryo’s development. There are therefore definite possibilities for things to go wrong in an embryo with perfectly normal X, and Y if it exists, chromosomes.

Even more startlingly (and potentially annoying for feminist separatists) is the following:

The research challenges several long held assumptions, such that female development happens by default, or that once formed, mature tissues are immutable or fixed.

Really we shouldn’t need this sort of discovery to put an end to the nonsense that human beings exist in only two, mutually exclusive, genders, and I don’t suppose the religious fundamentalists will believe it anyway, but hopefully it will help convince courts and governments.

Medical science being what it is, much of the talk around the discovery is about how it may help us “cure disorders”, but equally it opens up some fairly radical possibilities for gender medicine. My position, as ever, is that brains are much more complicated than bodies, and we should apply whatever treatments help the patients be happier as themselves rather than try to enforce social norms and expect the patients to adjust mentally.

(Hat tip to Sarah Graham and Christine Burns via Twitter).

Catch-Up Linkage

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Because I have been busy for the past three days…

– One of the reasons I love cosmology is the timescales over which things happen. This story, about a star eating a planet, explains that the poor planet may only have 10 millions years left to live.

– Over at Deep Sea News Dr. M discusses what the effects of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico might be.

– Oliver Morton has a round-up of interesting discussion about the “artificial life” story, including Ken MacLeod’s article for The Guardian.

– Rose Fox has a fun new book out.

– That “gay couple” prosecuted in Malawi? Apparently not a gay couple at all. Natacha Kennedy explains.

– There will be a Tolkien Art Exhibition in Gloucestershire in August.

– Tero explains why Ã…con is so much fun (hint: chocolate!)

– There’s a new issue of Yipe! out.

Linkage Ho!

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Hmm, teh intrawebs appear to have been busy of late.

– The European Union has caught up with the fact that Wikipedia articles can tell lies about you and there’s nothing you can do about it. There is muttering about legislation.

– At Knowledge Problem Mike Giberson reports on the power of anecdote. Kevin and I are often frustrated at how often fannish online debate is derailed by someone insisting that something that is generally agreed to be broadly correct must be utterly false because his personal experience contradicts it. The UK press commented on how often the participants in the leader debates during the election used personal anecdotes (“I met someone who…”) to make policy points. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts have decided to study this problem, designing an experiment to test the power of anecdote to overcome statistical evidence. To make it tough for the anecdotes they used accountants as their subjects, and yet the anecdotes still proved more powerful. Human beings are scary creatures.

– In Barcelona researchers are using virtual reality to put men’s minds into women’s bodies. Quick, someone grab Rush Limbaugh and stick him on a plane to Spain.

– Forbidden Planet International points me to a Financial Times article about the current state of the Tintin franchise. Ignore the gossip and scroll down to the sorry tale of Bob Garcia who has been fined €50,000 for publishing small-press books about Tintin. French fans have an appeal going to help Bob pay. You can find them on Facebook.

– Anil Menon has posted a long and thoughtful essay about the Ramayana on his blog.

– It may be only 1mm long, but the copepod is the strongest and fastest animal in the world.

Some Brief Linkage

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

I ought to write something more intelligent today, but I have had a frustrating evening struggling with really badly written web sites and I’m not in a good mood. In lieu of anything from me, here’s some other folks:

– Sam Jordison reviews Mary Renault’s Fire from Heaven for The Guardian;

– The Independent gets the low down on gay animals, including talking to Bruce Bagemihl of Biological Exuberance fame;

– The Economist discovers that gender development is even more complicated than anyone thought;

– Jennifer Ouellette takes a look at an amazing gestural user interface;

– Kay Holt and Sarah Goslee write about ecosystems for Science in my Fiction. (So how come women never submit science articles to Clarkesworld, hmm?)

Going Geek

~ Cheryl

Last night I attended a Girl Geek Dinner in Bristol. It was a lot of fun. The speaker was Dr. Julie Greensmith of Nottingham University. Julie’s main academic interest is in analysing large quantities of data, and she gave me a very interesting lead for my energy economics work, but her talk last night was about something much more fun – roller coasters.

One of the more interesting areas of modern scientific research is bio-feedback systems. Basically the idea is to monitor people’s bodily functions, and modify some experience on the basis of that. As you can imagine, it has a whole lot of science fictional application, all the way from the armour worn by the military in Starship Troopers to sex toys. You can expect to see it turning up in video games fairly soon. But the work Julie was doing was aimed at allowing theme park owners to better tailor their rides to the needs and desires of their customers. As academic research projects go, that’s pretty neat.

The work is being carried out in collaboration with an organization called Thrill Laboratory, who seem to be a lot of fun.

The Psychology of Reviewing

~ Cheryl

One of the questions that often troubles reviewers is why people get so wound up about what they write. At long last it seems that science is investigating. A paper in the Journal of Consumer Research looks at the general field of product reviews. The authors conclude that the questions, “Will others like it?” and “If others like it, do I?” involve very different psychological processes, and how people respond to them is heavily bound up with each person’s personal need to feel unique, or not.

I suspect that there’s a lot more work to be done here. The current study doesn’t address the question as to why even a mildly unenthusiastic review can induce blind fury in a fan of the work being reviewed. However, the whole question of how you think others will view the work under consideration, and whether that matters, is probably key to understanding reviewer psychology.

The Immortal Jellyfish

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

It has been known for some time that some species are able to regenerate entire limbs if they lose them. However, one species of jellyfish, turritopsis nutricula, goes much further; it uses the same cell re-purposing technique to turn itself back into a polyp (its immature form), thereby re-starting its life-cycle. Apparently the jellyfish use this cunning technique when they need to travel in hostile environments, such as when hitching a ride on cargo ships. This has led some people to speculate that a similar process might be used to allow human beings to travel to the stars.

The Power of Fear

~ Cheryl

Oliver Morton’s Twitter feed today contained a link to a new article on the Nature web site. It reports on a study of children with a rare neurological condition called Williams Syndrome that causes them to never develop a fear of strangers. The study concludes that such children also do not develop racial stereotypes. It is the clearest connection yet between racism and fear of “the other”.

Obviously such studies are highly controversial and I recommend that you read the Nature article before making “yes, but” comments. The authors of the study do seem to have tried hard to control for external factors. They do not draw any conclusions about whether genetic factors are involved in developing stereotypes. Because the syndrome is rare, the numbers involved in the study are inevitably small.

Another interesting result of the study is that the Williams Syndrome kids appear to have developed exactly the same gender stereotypes as kids without the condition. It isn’t clear whether there is a different mechanism involved here, or if the result is simply a consequence of gender stereotypes being developed at an earlier age.

More Linky Stuff

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

It’s a busy day today:

– For those of you planning to attend the Hay Lecture at Eastercon, The Economist has all the gossip from a recent conference on geoengineering.

– The guys at Geek Syndicate have discovered a new UK comics convention, coming up in just a few weeks time.

– And the Archbishop of Canterbury reminds his fellow bishops that Christians in the UK actually have a pretty easy time of it compared to their fellow believers in other parts of the world, so maybe they should be a bit less vocal about their self-pity.

Still With the Linkage

~ Cheryl

Tsk, lazy blogger than I am:

– People have known for a long time that animals seem to have some sort of sixth sense when it comes to earthquakes. Slowly but surely, we may be beginning to understand how it works.

– At The Guardian Book Blog Alison Flood considers the Clarke short list and David Barnett looks for real fear.

– Peter Murphy recycles an old review of the wonderful Godspeed You Black Emperor. (Can you imagine how bad music journalism would be if people like Peter had to put up with the same po-faced, self-righteous nonsense about “how to write reviews” that we get in science fiction?)

– I was going to nominate Greg Bridges for a Hugo next year because of this, but now he’s gone and done this as well.

Late Night Linkage

~ Cheryl

Because I have booked 10 hours on the Day Jobbe today and have had #ALD10 to worry about.

– The music industry is considering a Trustmark scheme to indicate download sites that are not piracy. Worth checking out if you are an author worried about similar issues.

– MORAL PANIC! MORAL PANIC!!! The Telegraph says that Facebook causes syphilis. Mashable is more cautious, and I gather that Ben Goldacre is on the case, so expect something amusing on Saturday.

– Mega sale of old mimeo fanzines on eBay (mostly comics-related). Thanks to Forbidden Planet for the tip-off.

– Justine Larbalestier ponders one of the age old questions of the Internet (the one I tend to call, “Why do you see the fact that I don’t like the same books as you as a threat?”) She also considers forcing John Scalzi to wear a ballgown.

– The Economist does a daily blog post linking to interesting writing about economics. Today’s links included one to this post by Charlie Stross on the economics of book length.

– One of the more interesting presentations at the recent DEMO conference was about the use of quantum dots in camera phones. Mashable has a nice summary. I like seeing technology I first read about in SF novels finding its way into everyday life.

– Mind control: wear this simple helmet and you can control a computer just by thinking.

Mary Anning – #ALD10

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Mary AnningFor this year’s Ada Lovelace Day I’d like to focus a little closer to home. Like many young proto-fans, I was very fond of dinosaurs while I was a kid. That may have been in part because I also happened to have an aunt who lived near Lyme Regis, one of the most famous fossil-hunting sites in the world. Why is it famous? Because it was in this little Dorset seaside town that the whole dinosaur story started.

Mary Anning was one of two surviving children from a poor Dorset family. Her father made a meager living by collecting interesting shells and other curiosities from the local beach and selling them to tourists. Mary and her brother, Joseph, were trained in the family business, and when Richard Anning died of consumption in 1810 Mary and Joseph had to take over. Mary was just 11 years old at the time.

The following year Joseph found what appeared to be the skull of a crocodile protruding from a cliff by the beach. Mary was fascinated and began the painstaking work of excavating it. When she had finished she became the owner of the first known fossil of an ichthyosaurus.

Further discoveries followed: a plesiosaurus, a pterodactylus. The scientific world began to take notice, and young Mary was obliged to defend herself from accusations of fraud. Despite having little formal education, Mary was able to hold her own and establish herself as a world expert in the new science of fossil hunting. But, as a woman of working class origins, she was unable to join the scientific establishment. Instead she continued her work at Lyme, interacting with scientists and wealthy patrons when they came to visit.

As a woman, Mary was unable to attend the Geological Society meetings where her discoveries were presented to the scientific world. Indeed, according to her Wikipedia article (which appears well researched and is heavily footnoted) she was not even mentioned when her discoveries were announced. As the Natural History Museum puts it: “William Buckland, Henry de la Beche and William Conybeare were some of the many scientists who owe their achievements to her.” (My emphasis). And because ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs are only distantly related to the giant land-dwelling creatures of the time, you will still see Buckland credited as the discoverer of the first dinosaur, because his later find was of a land animal, Megalosaurus.

The picture accompanying this article is a portrait of Mary and her dog, Tray. As you can see, she has a bag to collect her fossils, and a hammer to extract them. As this BBC article reveals, that hammer can still be seen in the little town museum at Lyme Regis.

And to finish, here is a charming, if somewhat fanciful, animated film about Mary that I found on YouTube.