Science Ain't So Bad

WHAT WALL?

 TOO OLD TO DRIVE?

Passenger: Could you pick up the pace a LITTLE?

Me: Are you NUTS? This is a safe speed.

Passenger: You’re driving like you’re a hundred (instead of just 71.)

Here’s the thing. You get older, you get more cautious. Sometimes you actually OBEY the speed laws. Which means extracting some tailgaters from your rear bumper after you arrive. I’m not braggin’ or nothin’ but when you get older.. okay .. it’s p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e your eyesight and hearing aren’t as good. Maybe. Even your reflexes aren’t..uh.. THAT sharp.

But screw you. I drive just fine. And you ain’t gettin’ MY keys!

Well.

In fact – and contrary to what you probably think – statistics favor geezers who, while doing everything wrong and forcing YOU off the road, tend to compensate for their degraded skills by not taking so many gee-whiz chances. And – yeah – after a hundred years behind the wheel, they DO recognize black ice better than a teenager does.

Wisdom, see?

Doesn’t mean geezering around in a vehicle’s perfect. The risks are real. Some older drivers are b-a-d! And I MEAN bad! Some oldsters could take you out  as you’re leaving the church with your top hat on. At the TOP of the steps.

What to do?

Senior drivers have, obviously, earned the right to a little consideration. It means a lot to be able to drive.

Independence and self respect.

For some, it doesn’t feel like a choice. They don’t have anybody in their lives to take the wheel.

HEAR THE SIREN? I DIDN’T EVEN SEE THE FLASHING LIGHTS, OFFICER

So.

The Intelligent Transport team  (Newcastle University) with Dr. Amy Guo at the head, has created a duded up car. It’s a mobile lab with sensors and monitors to figure out if customized aids such as night vision systems, specialized navigation systems, adaptive speed management, and various other innovations can keep older drivers behind the wheel longer and, hence, keep them healthier and more independent overall. The work is to be presented to the Aging, Mobility and Quality of Life conference in Michigan.

For those who are too far gone for Guo’s technology, autonomous (self driving) vehicles should offer another option before long.

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Credits for the car plowing through the stone wall to Martin Addison  
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

EASY ON THE RADIATION, OKAY?

EVEN HOPELESS STUFF’S NOT HOPELESS

If you get a big dose of radiation (like some of the workers at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant) you’re hosed, aren’t you?

Not necessarily.

Here’s the thing. Radioactivity’s scary. If the blast don’t get you, the “vapours” will.

It’s invisible, insidious, and inevitable.

Until now, if you got overexposed to radiation, all anyone could do was to toss you in the shower, give you a pill (which didn’t do much good) and keep you comfortable while your hair fell out.

Seriously.

GOOD NEWS

If  ”the bomb” blows you up, no pill is going to put you back together again. But Rebecca Abergel (Berkeley Lab’s Glenn T. Seaborg Center) is doing great work on a decontamination pill. It’ll flush the actinides (the “nasty stuff”)  out into your urine before much damage is done.

Maybe bombs ARE being made under the mountains of your least favorite countries. But you can rest easy now with an antidote by your bedside.

Science. An answer for everything, eh? Snide comments aside, this is a terrific project with the potential to save lives; it deserves a ScienceAintSoBadRating = 10 .

Thank you for the good work, Gleen T. Seaborg Center and Dr. Abergel.

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Image credits to Intergalacticrobotos.blogspot.com
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

HEY! IT AIN'T FROM A FETUS.

The Governor of Texas just injected himself into a ScienceAintSoBad debate.

Remember The Mystifying Case Of Chloe Sohl? Move over, Chloe.  Rick Perry (same one as wants to run the United States) just had his own stem cells stuck into his back to “cure” degenerated vertebra.  (Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times) .

Science.

You can’t live with it. You can’t get it straight.

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Credits for the above image to Robert Scoble and Flickr photostream

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

BUDGET HERO

Looks like a game. Under the covers?  Computer simulation with a friendly face.

YOU CAN’T MAKE IT ANY WORSE!

Congress is a bunch of nitwits, right? You could do better. Here’s yer chance.  I’m not vouching for Budget Hero. MisterScienceAintSoBad doesn’t have time to vet everything he sees. Maybe there’s a built-in bias to make some sneaky point for the Tea Party. Or the Green Party. Or the Whigs.  But you’re bound to get SOME insight from this exercise.

KIDS DESERVE BETTER

A CRAPPY FACT

Maybe it’s bad to let yourself get too personally involved in the numbers .  Still, MisterScienceAintSoBad’s heart felt sad when he flipped past a report in The American Journal Of Public Health (Heather Corliss) which tells us that one in four teens who “choose” (SURE they do) not to be heterosexual are also “choosing” the street. Gay kids – lots of ‘em – are homeless kids.

You wanna know what I think?

You can guess.

Pathetic.

It says (up at the top) that I make science funny.

Not today.

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(Please don’t think I’m saying the Journal article says that teens “choose” homosexuality. It doesn’t.  But the “choose” thing’s still out there causing  lots of misunderstanding.)

Credits: Thanks to The Italian Voice for the use of the image of a sad young face.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.