Correlations

Time to Say Goodbye

2008-07-07T18:28:49Z

Well, it's that time where I officially shut the blog down and close up shop. It's been an interesting and great experience managing this blog. WIRED SCIENCE was the first project where I was given the opportunity to stretch my social media muscles, and I am thankful that it was such a fun property to play with. It's unfortunate the show was not renewed, but at least the episodes will live on our website for your viewing pleasure.

Thank you to the Correlations team of bloggers for all your hard work and patience with blogging for us here at WIRED SCIENCE. We appreciate you're time and effort!

Signing off....

The Short Goodbye

2008-07-01T02:35:18Z

It seems like just yesterday I was making a science television show and writing a blog that would go the distance. Ah, my salad days, when I was green in judgment.

I'm sad to say that the blog (by)line ends here, but I've enjoyed the ride. From shining a little light on the great production staff that brought you WIRED Science, to inciting a little science fiction community infighting - writing on Correlations has been a great experience for me.

Thanks to the KCET staff for all of the support (big ups Liz, Will, Phillip and Jackie) and a huge thank you to my co-bloggers. Those of you from the show - I truly enjoyed working with you. To the scientists - thank you for supporting me and challlenging me to get it right. I hope the dialogue continues.

Anyone interested in keeping up with my (future canceled) film and television projects, I encourage you to check in on me at my website. Also - look for my next blogging effort on The Huffington Post.

And thank you, the readers. Really. It's an audacious undertaking to make things that demand people's attention. It's particularly audacious when someone like me takes on the task of communicating science to the public. It's a responsibilty with real weight. Sometimes I gave my work a little levity, but I never took it lightly.

Ciao...

2008-07-01T00:31:30Z

All good things must come to an end, I suppose. It's been a fun run blogging here for WIRED Science. It's been great meeting up with my co-bloggers (both online and in meatspace) and getting to see a bit of what goes on behind the scenes to create a show (and keep it running--or not, as the case may be). I think this blog was also a great mix of scientists and the folks from the show, providing a different and unique angle. Unfortunately, it appears that efforts to keep the show going haven't gone where we'd hoped, and so this is the end of the road for Correlations. However, I'll still be writing at my home blog, Aetiology. As Michael and Clifford mentioned, I think writing science for the public is a critical--but difficult--task, and I'm pleased that PBS/KCET launched this adventure last year, and I thank them for inviting me on board. I look forward to seeing more from everyone involved with the show.

It's been an interesting experience.

2008-06-30T18:03:40Z

I'd like to echo Clifford's comments. I value the friendships I've made through this effort.

Yes, WIRED Science is shutting down. It's been a valuable experience for me in many ways.

I've learned that communicating to a broad audience is not easy, and that doing it five times a month is pretty darned demanding. On the whole I've tried hard to have something worth saying every time. It sounded easier than it was, and in the end there's too much material for me to go back and improve the language and correct the typos! Well, as they threatened me in high school, this will go on my permanent record.

It seems to me that for scientists to speak effectively to the public needs a concerted effort. Whether the WIRED Science enterprise could have moved far enough in that direction was an open question until recently, when we found that the contract would not be continued.

I'm very interested in some sort of alliance between media and science and teaching of a sort that hasn't really been seen lately. If you have any ideas or prospects, don't hesitate to call on me. It's a shame we didn't get more of a chance to try to pull this together under Wired Science. I'd like to congratulate the KCET team for what they achieved on short notice and share my regrets that they didn't get a chance to really spread their wings on this project.

As for me, I'll be continuing to rant online at my own blog, so feel free to get in touch if you'd like to discuss climate science, environmental policy, or science education.

Don't Be a Stranger

2008-06-30T07:20:00Z

This is my final post here, as the blog is being discontinued. I won't say a tearful goodbye to all of you who've been reading. Instead I'll simply encourage you to continue reading more of the sort of things that you liked by visiting our blogs. You'll certainly be welcome as a regular visitor over at Asymptotia, so do come over and, from time to time, even leave a comment to say hi, ask a question, or share a thought.

It has been a really excellent experience, blogging at Correlations. My co-bloggers have been fantastic, and I've had a lot of fun interacting with them and have learned a lot from them. I'd like to publicly thank them all for being such excellent co-bloggers, both in terms of content variety, and in terms of how we all interacted (on and off stage) so well. I do hope to stay in contact with them in the blogosphere and beyond.

I'd also like to thank the people at KCET and WIRED for making the TV show WIRED Science that this blog is a companion to, along with the excellent online resources. Overall, I think that the whole project that KCET put together was a bold venture for public science education and entertainment that should be more widely recognized as such.

Thanks to everyone who came to read, and to those who also commented. It was all, of course, for you that each of us did this, regularly trying to share an interesting and fun slice of science-flavoured topics from various walks of life. I hope you liked at least some of what you found here.

Best Wishes to all.

-cvj

Summer reading!

2008-06-30T05:00:00Z

As I was on the road quite a bit in May, I finally had time to catch up on some reading. I still have stacks of books on my shelves awaiting my attention, but the stack is down by three (and I have another review on the way for next week). In the meantime, some good summer reads: The Devil in Dover" by Lauri Lebo. Lebo is a former journalist and a native of the Dover, Pennsylvania area--site of 2005's "intelligent design" ~~circus~~ trial. Her story of the trial brings home not only the science and the politics, but the behind-the-scenes material that's lacking in other books covering the situation. Richard Preston's "Panic in Level 4". Preston's new release is a collection of essays on "the edge of science," covering familiar ground (Ebola) as well as mathematics, genetic disease, and invasive pathogens (of trees!). Good Germs, Bad Germs" by Jessica Snyder Sachs. Sachs brings together a mountain of research into an excellent narrative discussing how bacteria are both our friends and foes--and what we can do to avoid the latter and encourage the former.

Out of Balance

2008-06-30T01:14:15Z

In the last few articles, we have been talking about how energy flows through the earth system, and have been using the approximation of an equilibrium system. I made the point that it takes the system just a few weeks to equilibrate, so if we average over months or longer, we should get a nearly perfect balance.

This is, in fact, what I was taught, but it's an oversimplification. Let's look at where energy can go other than into heating the surface or the atmosphere. Primarily there are two other things it can do: it can heat the deep ocean, and it can melt ice. What we may see as greenhouse gases accumulate is periods of less warming of the surface, accompanied by more warming of the depths or more warming and melting of ice.

While there has been a spectacular decline in Arctic sea ice cover, it has been compensated by an increase in Antarctic sea ice cover. So sea ice is not a sink. ANd there's been little sign of melting of the great mass of Antacrtic ice. Greenland presents quite another picture, where signs of accelerating melting are troubling, as does a small area in West Antarctica. However, while these areas have the potential to really take off spectacularly, they are not yet currently melting fast enough to make a big impact on the energy balance.

The ocean is another story. Here, until recently observational trends were neutral, but a bias in the instruments was noticed and corrected recently, changing the picture. This implies that some of the extra heat is going into the deep ocean at present. This is not warming averted, it is merely warming delayed, as the warmer ocean will also become a player in the energy balance.

Getting the numbers right is not easy. It's a big world with lots of complications going into the simple global averages. But thinking about the picture globally is for all that correct. Energy is conserved at teh global scale. Once you understand that, you will see that changing the greenhouse has concentration of the atmosphere must result in changes in the world. The details can be and will be argued with, but the fact of climate change can't be avoided in any way except by stopping our changes to the atmosphere.

The River of Energy

2008-06-28T04:41:09Z

In our last three installments, we looked at the energy balance of the earth, at the ground, at the top of the atmosphere, and at the middle of the atmosphere. In each case we saw that what comes in is balanced by what goes out. This is not a coincidence. Energy is a "conserved quantity"; like silver or gold or oxygen or carbon, it is (for practical purposes on the earth) never created or destroyed in significant quantity. Unlike the elelments, though, it comes in from the sun and escapes by infrared readiation.

We saw that the amount of infrared radiation going out has to be set by the amount of solar radiation coming in (and not reflected immediately). But the amount of infrared radiation depends on the temperature of an object. This is why it is informally called "heat radiation", confusing generations of tech-savvy people trying to learn physics. (Heat is not actually a form of radiation, but light, radio, and infrared are.) The reason an infrared camera "sees" warm objects is because they radiate more brightly in the infrared.

On worlds with no atmosphere, like the moon, that's pretty much the whole story. What comes down goes up, and that balance sets the temperature.

In the case of a planet with an atmosphere, it's complicated somewhat. If the atmosphere can itself absorb and reradiate infrared (that is, if it contains gases that are opaque at those frequencies), then the atmosphere helps set the temperature of the surface. This is what we saw in our diagram, where more energy hit the surface from teh atmosphere than directlyf rom the sun. The temperature is determines not only by the sun, but by the transparency of the atmosphere. And this is where we are getting into trouble, because human activities affect the transparency of the atmosphere substantially, both in the visible (dust) and the infrared (mostly CO2 but also methane and some other stuff.)

So we cannot have the same climate if we keep doing this. In the 70s and 80s there was some controversy as to which was winning, the dust or the greenhouse gases, so some people were concerned about cooling the earth. It turns out that the reason the greenhouse gases win is because they accumulate: they stay in the atmosphere a long time.

(The right way to think about this isn't obvious, and the press sometimes get it wrong, but the important fact is that about a half of out current CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere long enough to make a difference, and about tenth of our current CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years.)

Energy is like water flowing down a mountain side. If you look at a patch of the slope, you will see that what flows in eventually balances what flows out. A piece of bare rock won't hold much water in the process, but if plants start growing there and making cracks and soil, your piece of mountainside will get wetter. The same amount will still pretty much go out as came in; the a mount in storage to make it wetter is tiny compared to the flows. The wetness is a property of how smoothly the water passes over the territory.

By adding to greenhouse gases we make the atmosphere more capable of holding energy, just as more soil makes a slope able to hold more water. To overcome that, the soil gets wetter until the system is back in balance. And the atmosphere gets warmer.

Could something else be happening? Maybe the plants opened up a special underground crevasse and the water is now rushing through more quickly? It's conceivable but I wouldn;t bet the farm on it. Similarly it is conceivable that something bizarre will happen and the world won't warm up. The important thing to understand is that NOT warming is the peculiar outcome. T

here really is no strong reason not to expect global warming.

Plight Of The Postdoc

2008-06-27T17:39:22Z

Regular readers have followed my investigation of the the arduous road ahead for many early career scientists. I've posted troubling figures and statistics while exploring the state of funding and future for science in the United States.

Today at Science Progress, I've composed a column called 'Plight of the Postdoc: Is modern American science strangling its young talents in the cradle?' Here is an excerpt:

Thus, the frustrating pursuit of funding in science severely constrains productivity and creative departures--and the United States will suffer from the loss of a healthy research enterprise if job market, tenure, and funding patterns continue to prevent innovative young researchers from pursuing their most daring ideas. While we obviously need to create some hurdles so as to identify the most gifted and dedicated minds, our current model goes far beyond a reasonable winnowing process. Even the most promising young scientists, those with the natural ability and discipline to fulfill their potential and become tomorrow's leaders in innovation--an eventually upon which the nation's future depends--are struggling.

You can read the entire column here.

Mars Lander Awash in Data

2008-06-27T16:58:27Z

I've throttled back on the Mars Lander news updates of late, but I can spare you my astrophilia no longer. The latest from the Red Planet is that Phoenix has dug its robotic hand into the dirt and come out with a fistful of chemical data that points toward - you guessed it - water. A lot of water.

The Phoenix Mars Lander performed its first wet-chemical analysis on Mars and it has left the scientists here on Earth - in the words of Michael Hecht - 'awash in chemistry data." Hecht, it should be noted, heads up yet another fantastically acronymed branch of the research team called the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA. MECA is an instrument on Phoenix that aids in soil analysis. As Hecht explained, "we're trying to understand what is the chemistry of wet soil on Mars, what's dissolved in it, how acidic or alkaline it is. With the results we received from Phoenix yesterday, we could begin to tell what aspects of the soil might support life."

Here's a look at the soil sample being analyzed.

Phoenix co-investigator and lead scientist for the wet-chemical investigation Sam Kounaves explained the significance of Phoenix's soil work: "This is the first wet-chemical analysis ever done on Mars or any planet, other than Earth... This soil appears to be a close analog to surface soils found in the upper dry valleys in Antarctica. The alkalinity of the soil at this location is definitely striking. At this specific location, one-inch into the surface layer, the soil is very basic, with a pH of between eight and nine. We also found a variety of components of salts that we haven't had time to analyze and identify yet, but that include magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride... This is more evidence for water because salts are there. We also found a reasonable number of nutrients, or chemicals needed by life as we know it."

But Damon, you ask, is this such a big deal? Umm, YES! I mean, it's not like we're gonna be headed to Mars on space cruise holidays that reveal our suppressed secret agent identities and the discovery of the subterranean, alien-constructed, atmosphere-building, ice-core melters anytime soon. But the science doesn't need to be fiction to make for good spectacle. Just ask the experts.

Hey there, Phoenix co-investigator and lead Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) scientist William Boynton, what do you think?

"The scientific data coming out of the instrument have been just spectacular...At this point, we can say that the soil has clearly interacted with water in the past"

Indeed. And you, Professor Kounaves, to what conclusions have you come?

"Over time, I've come to the conclusion that the amazing thing about Mars is not that it's an alien world, but that in many aspects, like mineralogy, it's very much like Earth."

Space tourism may not get to Mars in my lifetime, but just in case - dibs on the window seat.

After the flood--starting to assess the damage

2008-06-24T14:30:00Z

As rivers are cresting to the south of us, communities in Iowa are starting cleanup efforts. The prospects are daunting, and the water hasn't even cleared out everywhere yet. Still, roads and bridges are re-opening, and home and business owners are being allowed back into their residences and establishments. This, however, has the potential to create much more mess and problems. I wrote previously about potential health hazards that can come from flooding and flooding cleanup, including injuries and infections. Some of the infections are immediate, due to contact with contaminated flood waters; others have the potential to increase in the coming weeks, including mosquito-borne infections and mold exposure. However, what's likely to be even worse is just the astronomical amount of trash that this flood has created--a years' worth all at once:

In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where the raging Cedar River spilled into 1,300 city blocks, one official estimated the mountain of ruined furniture, household goods and other belongings left behind would be enough to fill two football stadiums to a depth of 60 feet, the city's Gazette newspaper said.

The city is opening up an old landfill to assist with trash management, but they don't know yet if even that will be enough; and residents are demoralized from the mountains of trash--all that's left of years of their lives--piled up high on the curb.

Bucky

2008-06-23T07:23:02Z

Ever heard of Richard Buckminster Fuller? If not, then there's a nice opportunity to do so by visiting an excellent new retrospective on him that is in New York's Whitney Museum. Short of doing that (and, of course, whether you've head of him or not) there's an excellent article in the New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert (June 9th edition) about him and the exhibit. (There's also a short Wikipedia article here.) The guy was clearly a bit odd, to say the least. I don't consider that a negative, in and of itself - in fact it is often a positive feature of someone, in my opinion... He had a rather optimistic and (in retrospect - and probably at the time to some extent) naive view of the world and the role of technology in it.

Technology as a a solution to everything - all our ills - seemed to be his motto. That's a mistake, of course, although it is is interesting to see the same mistaken view underlying much of what our society does today - perhaps more masked in its deployment sometimes, but plainly there often with the same level of blind faith as Fuller had.

Anyway, he was a dreamer, and dreamers are good to have, in balance. Dreamers are essential, I'd go as far as saying. He dreamed up a lot of stuff, and most of it never really saw the light of day, and that which did lives mostly in museums now, as curiosities from a romantic age. (I don't say that as a scoff either - I'd be lucky to get anything I thought of ending up in any museum - anywhere!) I'd love to wander the Whitney and see some of these dreams, and the shapes they take. If you're in New York, I hope you might consider doing so.

His most famous and successful product range is probably the geodesic domes that he championed. They are undeniably beautiful - although for most of the applications he envisioned, utterly and comically impractical. (You can read more in the article.) Rather nicely, his name will live on as attached to these shapes not really because of his attempts to use them in architecture (he had the idea that we'd essentially seal ourselves off from Nature by building these domes entirely around complete cities) but in chemistry and physics. There's a form of carbon (discovered in 1985) made of many carbon molecules fit together into geodesic dome shapes - it is called Buckminsterfullerene, or fullerene. Sometimes they are affectionately known as Buckyballs. (Here's a Wikipedia article.)

So there. Immortality of a sort, as a result of a dream retooled.

-cvj

Micro-Beauty

2008-06-22T22:29:42Z

I just came across these fantastic images from Lennart Nilsson's site and had to post them. Seriously, who would think subway scum and malaria could look this beautiful? Nilsson is one of the pioneers of medical photography, and was also the first person to ever capture images of the HIV and SARS virus. And for those of you who saw our in-studio segment with the brilliant Felice Frankel - Felice was recently awarded with the Lennart Nilsson Award recognizing extraordinary image makers in science!

Fallopian tube
Skin and particles from the city subway system
Pollen grain
Malaria parasites have multiplied inside two red blood cells. One has burst open

The Black Mallet :: Mathematical Pudding

2008-06-22T20:43:35Z

Last night I watched what could oddly be described as a moving math documentary. It's the story of Andrew Wiles, a Princeton University professor who spent seven years of his life ploughing away at one of mathematics' last great unsolved puzzles - Fermat's Last Theorem. On the surface the problem looks pretty simple:

xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ

Basically, it states that n can never be an integer greater than 2 or the equation will have no solutions. But finding the definitive proof for that statement eluded even the world's top mathematicians for centuries.
Of course, that's not the kind of thing that's likely to keep me up at night. In fact, my zⁿ is more likely to mean, hit the snooze button. But Fermat's Last Theorem is a compelling film: it's got childhood dreams, an age-old puzzle, failure, success, elliptical curves and a vicarious epiphany to boot. At the end of it all your brain might feel like pudding, but at least it'll contain the proof.

Journey To South Africa!

2008-06-22T16:34:35Z

Esteemed wildlife photographer and biologist, Nicolas Devos, is back in South Africa... and he's bringing Correlations readers on the adventure!

This incredible photograph arrived in a set that reached my inbox this morning. A young male lion wanders the landscape during the dry season. Looking at this gorgeous big cat, I cannot help but feel nostalgic to return to the magnificent country I visited this week last year.

Visit The Intersection for another beautiful photo from the field!