Hi-Sci-Fi

This image was uploaded with the post Will Ferrel: The Future That Could Be.

[graphic: The people, places, and things that were once the future—but vanished.]

Wired.com has its magazine feature dedicated to Will Ferrel and the Future. Let’s just say that the results are as depressing as they are hilarious.

What happened (or is happening) to concepts such as nanotechnology, singularity, pill shaped food, or birthday cake containing a burrito? Read HERE.

By Irma Arkus

It is important to remind ourselves that recent deterioration of labour rights and working conditions does not only entail low skilled jobs, but those of higher skilled workers as well. I present to you the case of Becky McClain, a Pfizer molecular biologist, who has been battling her employer over disclosure of exposure to dangerous, cancer-causing chemicals.

Safe working environment is not only desired by workers in distant lands of seemingly infinite cheap labour - lack of safe working conditions will also affect YOU, and your friends and family.

BACKGROUND OF BECKY MCCLAIN:

Becky McClain is a 23-year career molecular biologist who has worked on cutting edge technologies in mouse embryonic stem cell, vaccine development, molecular genetics, neurobiology and developmental biology research within both academia and private industry.

In 2002-2004 she incurred biological exposures at Pfizer, Groton, CT from a biological hood and co-worker using a Lentivirus on her lab bench next to her desk. As a result of requesting the Lentivirus exposure records through OSHA she was terminated and filed a lawsuit in 2006. On April 1, 2010 she won her federal lawsuit against Pfizer, Inc. for whistleblower and freedom of speech claims. Pfizer still refuses to give her the Lentivirus exposure records.

The speech was given in New Britain, CT at the AFSCME Council 4 union office advocating worker rights to their biological exposure records for directed healthcare and public health and safety issues to be addressed to prevent work-related illness, to provide a safe work environment, and to protect the public’s health and safety.

Marketing is everything. Whereas Gene Ray and his TIME CUBE theory has been heavily ridiculed since the early days of the web, Rob Bryanton’s 10 dimension story is actually selling books and seeding hippy pseudoscience cults.

I always considered string theory to be too above my head for me even to fathom it, so I always avoided exploring it - I was saving it for later when I was old and had time to learn tensor calculus and stuff. When someone told me there was a video that makes sense of 10 dimensions and string theory in an easy to understand manner, I was all over it. I have to admit that I got suckered in by Bryanton’s slick animations and smooth narration. There was a moment where I was getting excited because I thought that mainstream physics condoned the notion of time travel and alternate realities. “Woah, I totally understand string theory,” I thought to myself. Then I did a cursory wikipedia search of string theory and 10 dimensions. At that point I realized that Bryanton’s imagination has nothing to do with reality or any educated theory whatsoever and that I was a sucker for believing him.

Normally I wouldn’t be angry - Bryanton’s 10 dimensions is a cool sci-fi concept that unifies time travel, alternate realities and alternate universes. But when you consider that he’s literally selling his imaginary world as truth to eager believers who don’t know any better, then this man is a unremitting charlatan.

Anyways. My main point: marketing makes all the difference. First we’ll have Rob Bryanton’s nice, polished bullshit:

10 DIMENSIONS

See. That was nice. Sort of cool. I’d buy that for a dollar if I didn’t know any better. And people are paying many dollars to buy his books.

Now Gene Ray’s Time Cube as a reference:

TIME CUBE

When you’re selling hot air it’s all in the technique.

Introducing “Insane Clown Posse,” a US-based band from Detroit (these days better known as hell), that started in 1984 and made its mark with 1995 Riddle Box which pushed the band to prominence up to such an extent that Disney purchased their contract only to relinquish it for the sake of rebuilding its “family values” public image.

This image was uploaded with the post Propylene Molecule Manufactured…Sans Chemical Waste.

by Irma Arkus

US Argonne National Laboratory has released an announcement that their scientists, Jeff Greeley, Stefan Vajda and Larry Curtiss, have recreated the propylene oxide molecule, used just about anywhere, from production of plastics to brake fluid.

Using silver nanoclusters, creation of propylene in a laboratory setting, has resulted in familiar chemical minus the environmentally toxic pollutants, a commonly found by-product of the current process in propylene production.

“While the process does not eliminate ALL of environmental hazardous substances, it does cut down on most of them,” Argonne’s media liaison Brock Cooper explains.

Bearing in mind that production of silver nanoclusters itself is relatively intricate, the possibilities of creating man-made materials such as propylene without the usage of currently utilized raw resources would be an expensive and tedious process, but it does give hope for production of these when faced with scarcity, as well as in unconventional settings and locations.

by Irma Arkus

Do you know what is the largest civilization on Earth?

First, let me first assure you, it is not human, but rather a recently discovered ant colony.

What was touted as a first confirmed “supercolony” were related ants living in colonies that spanned miles across North and South America, Europe and even parts of Asia. Scientists determined that the ants are part of a larger body because they “recognized” members from different colonies as relatives, rather than engage in war-like response reserved for those who were considered other.

But now, the scientists say that it is not only nickel particles that once assembled start to behave like a rather predatory organism. The supercolonies too behave in these patterns, resembling a living biological organism.

When conducting an analysis of some 168 species of ants at University of Florida, it has been found that while members maintain a certain “individuality” as a collective group, a colony, they tend to organize themselves in such a way to suggest a “superorganism.”

What is a super-organism anyways?

Well, according to the researchers, these superorganisms very much correspond to life, development and behaviour of an individual. Essentially, if one is to undestand the actions of colonies that have captured our imagination for millenia, then perhaps undestanding them as a singular is the key (and this is where I fondly harken back to Greg Bear’s “Slant”)

Once more, the research applies to not only ants, but bees, termites, and wasps. The findings will be offering a new, fresh perspective on how societies evolve and develop, perhaps most importantly, giving us new tools to learn about humans, or…that superhuman organism? ([ufl]

According to the US-based Argonne National Laboratories, these self-assembled magnetic “snakes” very much emulate biological life, and do follow Markovnikov’s rule:

“Nickel particles float peacefully in a liquid medium until a giant snake seems to swim by and snatch several particles up, adding to its own mass. The self-assembled “snakes” act like biological systems, but they are not alive and are driven by a magnetic field. The research may someday offer some insight into the organization of life itself.”

This image was uploaded with the post Ancient Viruses Uncovered.

by Irma Arkus

Recent efforts to drill core samples of ancient frozen lakes in Antarctica and Arctic have been controversial to say the least.

Many in scientific circles have been outspoken over the facts that drilling those samples may contaminate precious life that still may exist in the lakes underneath the permafrost. Others have warned that collecting ice samples may even release ancient bacteriae and viruses.

But the value of these samples is undeniable. Not only do they represent an immense amount of information in terms of climate change, but recently, samples have uncovered a remarkable number of viruses which may shed light on evolution of life in general.

Recent study revealed some 10,000 virus species present in the samples from Lake Limnopolar at Antarctic Peninsula.

Furthermore, the viruses are extremophiles, meaning that many of them are still very much alive, prone to surviving in extreme conditions including low grade temperatures, low light, oxygen deprivation and low nutrient factors. [SciAm

The soft spongy properties of its body allow the robot to move and manouver through squeeze spaces.

This image was uploaded with the post Is Our Universe a Result of a Multiverse Collision? .

by Irma Arkus

According to Anthony Aguirre, a collision between our universe and an alien one, decimating everything in its path, may have already happened.

Apparently, “there are tantalizing hints that our universe has already survived such a collision—and bears the scars to prove it.” Not only are initial theories prompting scientists to think differently about our universe, but about the concpet of multiverses as well.

Our universe, for example, is superbly uniform and smooth. Physicists say that the reason for such uniformity is fast expansion at high rate. Andrei Linde and Alex Vilenkin at Tufts University proposed that such expansion does not occur only once, but could potentially reoccur. Every such event would cause a bubbling of yet another space and time bubble, and this continuous bubbling would lead to ongoing creation of multiverses.

But more importantly, these would, however unlikely, run into other bubbles and collide with them.

The question posed then is whether our universe would survive such collision, or whether such an event already occured?

According to Vilenkin, “when you think about it, in an infinite multi­verse, with bubbles being formed all the time, sooner or later a bubble will form near the boundary of our bubble, and we will be hit,” Vilenkin says. “There’s the possibility of a benign collision when the cosmological characteristics of the alien bubble are similar to ours, so that it doesn’t destroy us but recedes away.”

But what are these scars? They are everywhere, physicists posit, and since the idea is relatively novel, they are still uncertain as to what it all means.

Microwave radiation for example, shows variable hot and cold spots, which may imply scars of an earlier collision.

Furthermore, New York University physicsist Thomas Levi, doing work on string theory, has also located a spot in the universe that defies explanations. Except that the explanation of a multiverse, and more specifically, a multiverse collision may lie at the heart of it. [Discover]

This image was uploaded with the post Hadron Collider: The Future Works Against It.

by Irma Arkus

Large Hadron Collider, the multi-billion dollar machine that just won’t start up, has been plagued by numerous problems since the moment of announcement that “she’s ready to go captain.”

Last year, we’ve patiently awaited its start, and since then, the damn thing was breaking and facing numerous technical issues.

But a pair of physicists, Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, say that this may not be an accident, but rather that the Higgs boson particle is so dangerous, that the time itself is rippling, trying to stop the collider from starting in a roundabout time-travelling sort of way.

In fact, they’ve written two papers on the subject: “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” available on arXiv.org.

According to the NYTimes musings: “It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

In other words, the physicists say that god, or rather some angry deity, is putting halt to the CERN collider because it hates the idea of Higgins Boson particle, thus engaging in time travel to halt it from being found.

As farfetched as this may sound, they say that this may explain why US abandoned its plans in 1993 for a similar collider after already investing billions of dollars.

My question though is, if something doesn’t want us to turn the damn thing on, why not stop the project at its inception? Why wait until its built?[NYTimes]

This image was uploaded with the post Papua New Guinea: The Undiscovered Flora & Fauna.

by Irma Arkus

“Fanged frogs, grunting fish and tiny bear-like creatures” have been identified in a volcanic crater in Papua New Guinea.

The pristine habitat is host to numerous species unafraid of humans, untouched by civilisation. Until now that is…

A giant rat, potentially largest in the world, has been identified along with numerous species of frogs, birds and insects never seen before.

Papua New Guinea’s forests are currently undergoing a devastating deforestation efforts, disappearing at an alarming rate of 3.5% a year, and yet they represent untold plethora of fauna and flora that has not even been encountered or recorded. [Guardian]

This image was uploaded with the post Dino Footprints Found in Switzerland Alps.

by Irma Arkus

Remember Ricola guy? He was probably chewing on his herbal candy, while stepping on some fosilized dinosaur prints. Yes, dinosaurs roamed Switzerland (and evolved into bankers???).

Natural History Museum in Basel has revealed its findings from Ela Nature Reserve, in Switzerland, revealing fosilized print of animal estimated to be between 15 and 20 feet long.

The prints are estimated to be approximately 210 million years old [Discoveryon].

This image was uploaded with the post New Element Added to the Periodic Table.

by Irma Arkus

Yeey for science! The Periodic Table is being updated with a new, superheavy element added to the roster. he International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) will add the element 112, known only as UUB, is a lab-manufactured element, produced by using zinc and lead.

The decision to include the superheavy element in the Periodic Table will undoubtedly result in various teams competing for production of an even heavier element.

Time to burn your old chem books now. [New Scientist]

This image was uploaded with the post Population Control: Are We To Limit Number of People on Earth? .

by Irma Arkus

This morning I awoke to find a strange, yet relevant article on SciAm: “Population and Sustainability: Can We Avoid Limiting the Number of People?”

Good question. Or is it?

For a long time we’ve been asking the question of how many people is enough people? Most of these questions however, were prompted by popularity of horrific socio-political ideologies. Eugenics comes to mind for one. In 18th century, the poor were identified as too fruitful. Of course, that is if you entirely dismiss their value and ignore the fact that it is these poor that fueled the economy, working dirtiest, and lowest paid jobs that ultimately built the empires of colonial powers.

Similar questions were asked of certain populations deemed undesirable. Natives in North and South America, for one. Or Jews, during the 20th century. How many Jews is enough Jews? Speaking as one, I’d have to shrug as say that I’m not entirely certain of the number, but since there are about 13 million Jews in a 6.9 billion people world, and counting the fact that 6 million Jews perished in WWII, I quite frankly believe that we could use a few more.

See what I mean?

Many sociologists have wondered: how may rich people do we need? After all, with all this power of the billionnaires, and the preposterous ideas of liberal politics including gems such as “consumers voting with their dollars,” seems to imply that however many extremely wealthy people there are, there seems to be too many of them. They do seem to require a remarkable amount of resources. Private jets, extraordinary paycheques that could feed entire countries, multiple domiciles, huge car collections, etc…

While the article in SciAm asks this pertinent question, I am counfounded by its monumental nature: “Whereas more people once meant more ingenuity, more talent and more innovation, today it just seems to mean less for each.” It goes on to list: less water, less food, less land for farming, less capacity in the atmosphere to trap gasses.

Population control is evidently something we need to consider. But who is “we” and how are we going to apply our considerations?

Is it just me or is the problem in the system we’ve developed, that devoured the planet as we know it? Is it just me, or have the technologies (and I am using that term widely) created scarcity of land, water, and food?

Is it also just me, or is our global economic system hooked on concept of “growth.” This fidgety concept is very much dependent on steadily growing population. Sheer beauty of Fordism demands that we expand the pools of consumers for our goods, and the simplest way to do so is to enlarge our populations.

The question of population control brings up a lot of old wounds and prejudices. And though it may be relevant to ask, in light of recent climate change issues, it may be better still to inquire whether we require more profound changes to existing systems: from manufacturing, consumerism and trade, to pinning responsibilities for creating pollution where it deservedly belongs. Should we not examine those issues at length, prior to demanding birth control and limiting number of people?

I highly recommend you read the article on SciAm, and do keep these questions in mind when doing so.

This image was uploaded with the post Stem Cells Restore Sight.

by Irma Arkus

Three patients suffering from acute corneal disease had their sight restored using an experimental stem cell technique.

The findings, published in journal Transplantation, reveal a simple technique using stem cells that would attach themselves to damaged areas of removed corneal lens tissue. The technique is touted to be so simple that it require no sophisticated equipment and could be used to restore sight in third world countries.

The process lasts only 10-14 days and results speak of moderate improvements in sight. [TheAustralianNews]

This image was uploaded with the post Ida: Missing Link Or Slow News Day?.

by Irma Arkus

The biggest newsbuster to come out in the world of anthropology / paleonthology is the discovery of Ida, an fossilized lemur from Eistocene period. The finely preserved lemur is 47 million years old, and is said to posses opposable thumbs and a particular bone in its foot, that ties development of simians in a single, unified swoop.

News have been all over this. The most interesting part of Ida’s story is the background of the find itself though.

Ida was apparently found over 20 years ago, and has been admired as a Picasso or a fine Gaugan in private hands of a collector. If it wasn’t for Prof Jørn Hurum, who painstakingly collected 1 millon pounds from various European parties, the fossil would have remiained in private collectors hands.

The second part of the story is the Messier quary, near Frankfurt, Germany. The site, now recognized as a World Heritage Site for its abundance in paleonthological finds, was initially recognized as a great site for refuse dumping.

And finally, the solemn conclusion of swarming interest regarding this particular find comes from the mouth of ever-genial and ever-controversial P.Z. Myers (well worth reading his blog, Pharyngula) who says:

“She’s beautiful and interesting and important, but I do have to take exception to the surprisingly frantic news coverage I’m seeing. She’s being called the “missing link in human evolution”, which is annoying. The whole “missing link” category is a bit of journalistic trumpery: almost every fossil could be called a link, and it feeds the simplistic notion that there could be a single definitive bridge between ancient and modern species. There isn’t: there is the slow shift of whole populations which can branch and diverge. It’s also inappropriate to tag this discovery to human evolution. She’s 47 million years old; she’s also a missing link in chimp evolution, or rhesus monkey evolution. She’s got wider significance than just her relationship to our narrow line.”

Well said Mr. Myers. Well said indeed.

This image was uploaded with the post Soybean: This Stuff Will Grow Anywhere.

by Irma Arkus

According to Wired, new research into how hearty is soybean plant has astounded scientists, who revealed that the plant will flourish in impossible conditions, even radioactive soil.

The hostile ground surrounding Chernobyl has supported soybean plants which adapted to the polluted and radioactive grounds.

The world’s largest nuclear accident is still home to plants that manage to defend themselves against radiation. Biologists explain that the cause of their survival are proteins activated when plants try to protect themselves against genetic damage.

Martin Hajduch, a plant biotechnology expert at the Slovak Academy of Sciences has analysed the plants proteins, determining that the plants have adaptation mechanisms which protect them against heavy metals, salt, and radiation. As a result of these protective mechanisms, the levels of Cesium-137 in the soybean plants and their seeds were found to be remarkably low.

While Hajduch does not encourage eating the plants, the discovery may lead to new techniques of scrubbing radioactive areas, and even terraforming of other hostile environments on Earth and other planets. [Wired]