Science Ain't So Bad

FBI CAPTURES A PRINT

FINGERPRINTS

No two people have the same fingerprints.

That’s how come we get to put people in jail or stick ‘em in the lectric chair based on fingerprint evidence. It’s “incontrovertible”

How DO we know that fingerprints are unique? That no two people have the same ones?

Well.. see.. that’s the thing.

Experts such as Simon Cole (New York Times) say its’ a lot of hooey. It’s just “folk wisdom”. Fingerprint matching, says Cole, isn’t nearly as reliable as we grew up thinking it was.

How many whodunits have you read where the bad guy left prints on the wine glass? If they matched, he’s catched.

Period.

You’ve always accepted that this was completely true. You don’t want to get into an argument with your own brain, do you?

But..

from an article in Wikipedia about fingerprints:

“Despite the absence of objective standards, scientific validation, and adequate statistical studies, a natural question to ask is how well fingerprint examiners actually perform. Proficiency tests do not validate a procedure per se, but they can provide some insight into error rates. In 1995, the Collaborative Testing Service (CTS) administered a proficiency test that, for the first time, was “designed, assembled, and reviewed” by the International Association for Identification (IAI).The results were disappointing. Four suspect cards with prints of all ten fingers were provided together with seven latents. Of 156 people taking the test, only 68 (44%) correctly classified all seven latents. Overall, the tests contained a total of 48 incorrect identifications. David Grieve, the editor of the Journal of Forensic Identification, describes the reaction of the forensic community to the results of the CTS test as ranging from “shock to disbelief,”..

Not so good, eh? Get yourself a mediocre fingerprint technician and who KNOWS what fate has in store. (Latents, by the way, are prints that don’t show up till you “dust em”).

EAR IDENTIFICATION (SERIOUSLY)

Maybe there’s a better way.

Dr. Mark Nixon (and others) at the University of Southampton say that  the little swirly thing in the ear,  the helix, is durn good for telling us apart with close to 100% accuracy. That’s what we’re looking for, right? 99+ %?  Will “earprints” replace fingerprints at Scotland Yard?

Not likely, according to A Wild at the University of Rhode Island (That’s as much identification as your gonna get; he’s one of Mister ScienceAintSoBad’s best kept secrets). Wild reminds us that accuracy isn’t enough. Criminal types, he says, would have to start scattering photos of their own ears around crime scenes or, perhaps, begin pressing the sides of their heads against corpses, for ear detection to have any forensic value. Whereas it is hard to avoid leaving fingerprints and DNA behind, your average perpetrator can probably figure out how to keep his ears off the walls.

OTHER APPLICATIONS

To be fair, Dr. Nixon and his colleagues probably had different applications in mind for the ear identification technique such as biometric screening. For that purpose, with further development, it may well turn out to be useful.

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EAR POPPER

Dear MISTER ScienceAintSoBad: My ears hurt. And they’re all clogged up. I’m 8 and a half years old. – Maggie

Maggie:

Over here at ScienceAintSoBad, we try to cheer you up. After all, it’s a mess out there where you people live.

I think it’s called the world.

Bad things happen every day. Who’s GONNA cheer you up if I don’t?

But, to be honest? Sometimes it’s tough. Even for MISTER SASB. I get letters from people, saying they need help now. I find “interesting” studies that bode well for the (distant) future.

Science advances. Patients? Not always.

I feel bad cause I love people and I wanna help. Also, I love science, in all its complexity, but I gotta admit that progress is slow. Someday there’ll be a cure for each nasty disease. I hope we’ll be able to afford it

So.

Back to Maggie.

Ear infection? Blocked Eustachian tubes? Oh my GOD! I’ve GOT something for you! I’ve actually GOT something!

Daniel Arick (New York Eye and Ear Infirmay) helped to develop a sensationally simple device which seems to work. He and Shlomo Silman patented an Apparatus for equalizing the pressure in the middle ear. They call it the “Ear Popper” (I told you I like this, right?)

You stick it in your nostril and let it release a puff of air which you swallow.

Simple, no drugs,  cheap (relatively), and very effective (about 85%).

COOLER than cool!

So. How do we rate this thing?

It’s simple but clever and it is obviously effective. Gotta give this a ScienceAintSoBadRating = 10

With a footnote.

From a strictly scientific standpoint, the data could be stronger. The long term outlook isn’t established. But, in this case, simplicity rules.

MAN, I wish I had invented this thing!

A NASA THING!

THE DEMISE OF THE ROCKET SHIP

You and I have been using rocket ships as our basic transportation into orbit for as long as we can remember. Could say they’re the cruise liners of the IPad era. But they’re a bit rich at 1.3 billion dollars per cruise, aren’t they? They’re also inefficient and they’re not exactly “Environment Green”. Also, since each launch is a boo boo  away from a “big bang”, you would be right to conclude they’re dangerous as crap!

INEFICIENT BLUNDERBUSSES

Wasn’t it  Werner Von Braun who said that rocket ships give the Law Of Diminishing Returns a bad name, requiring, as they do, that the passenger list include the fuel tank, itself, which has to be dragged into orbit even as the stuff in it is being consumed? The tank (filled with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen) weighs about 1.7 million POUNDS and you gotta bring it along each trip if you hope to escape the pull of SOL (Stupid Ol’ Earth).

Well it’s not as inefficient as democracy but it’s close.

So, where was I? I had a point here..

(MISTERScienceAintSoBad shuffles his papers).

Ah.. I think I was telling you that NASA’s having a change of heart about this idiocy of flying 10 story buildings into orbit. If a rocket scientist’s THAT smart, he.she oughta be able to think him.herself right outta business. Least, that’s the theory.

So Stan Starr, Chief of the Applied Physics Laboratory at the Kennedy Space Flight Center has been scratching together a proposal to combine some existing technologies and then throw lots of money at them to see if the bills’ll stick. The idea seems to be a three phase system where the first phase is some kind of track or sled (could be electromagnetic propulsion or something else) which would accelerate the craft faster and faster, horizontally.  Then, after reaching some horrifying number of machs, scramjet engines (phase two) would cut in to fly the beast up to the point where, in phase three, a relatively dainty “second stage” type rocket would boost it on its way to its mission. And, instead of jettisoning the usual singed and dented crap to be hauled back for retrofitting, the launch vehicle would simply return to base and land.

Elegant.

Really, really, elegant.

And fictitious.

None of this exists. But all the basics are there. Rail guns exist. Rocket sleds? check. Neither is anywhere near “up to spec” as a space launch platform but, in astronautics, hope springs eternal. Ramjet supersonic spaceplanes? Che… well, coming along, anyway. Point is, that each phase has advanced technology to build on and could, with appropriate guidance and a humongous “stimulus check”, become part of an entirely new vision of space transport.

ScienceAintSoBad greets this proposal with lots of enthusiasm.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 10 big ones. Go for it, guys!

CLASH OF EGOS. STEPHEN HAWKING VS GOD

How do I introduce Stephen Hawking?

Monumental.  The best of the best in Physics. Creatively brilliant. Reaching up, out of an ALS destroyed body that barely keeps him alive, to the highest order of accomplishment in one of the most difficult fields of endeavor.

Impossible.

How could anyone ignore the most profound handicaps to accomplish what he has?

As for God, what can I say?

Really he needs no introduction.

Like Hawking, he stands alone and his very existence seems filled with miracles. He is beloved  and admired by billions who look to him for comfort and guidance.

G_d (Image suffers from the usual deficiencies of trying to capture an ubiquitous being)

So what is one to make of the current clash between the two?

Hawking says God’s role in the creation of the universe  has been overimagined. In his new book, The Grand Design, Hawking asserts that the laws of physics provide a perfectly adequate explanation  for the beginnings of the universe and that, therefore, God’s role is redundant,  unnecessary, and suspiciously convenient for the religious establishment which benefits from the widespread belief that nature needed a hand from the Big Guy (the Big Guy, being God, by the way,  not Hawking).

He confronts, directly, the argument that only God could create something from nothing, discussing the quantum mechanical implications of doing that very trick.

God, on the other hand, has chosen to ignore Dr. Hawking.

So far, at least.

A guy as smart as Hawking will surely appreciate the advantages of leaving things that way.

IRRITABLE BOWEL

FECAL MATTERS

FLATULENCE.

Pretty funny!

And cramping pain, diarrhea, constipation, general misery.

I’m KILLIN’ you, right?  Hard to say what causes such symptoms in so many but let’s call it irritable bowel syndrome so we can have a medical billing code, OK?

Maybe 20% of grownups “live with it” (IBS) because – what’re ya gonna do? Just the way it is. It’s common and it’s not well understood. Gastroenterologists  call it a functional disorder. Know it when you see it.

Its REAL! It’s REAL! You’re NOT (that) crazy!

Dr. Michael Schemann leads a team at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (Munich) which has been trying to figure out what’s up with this hard-to-define disorder. They’ve described some  interesting work . In the case of IBS, the mucus membrane’s just a bit inflamed and, at the same time, the nervous system of the gut is very jacked up. Probably wouldn’t make much difference somewhere else in the body but the intestines are much more sensitive than you would think for an organ that spends so much time in close contact with – well you know.

When the lining of the intestine gets irritated, it releases a “cocktail” of chemicals like protease,  seretonin, and histamine.  And this chemical fog  may be the real reason for the symptoms of IBS.

This is supposed to come as a relief to IBS sufferers who might feel on the defensive cause maybe they’re making it all up. But IBS is real enough. MISTERScienceAintSoBad can tell ya and he ain’t no crank!

By the way, did you notice that histamines are part of the “cocktail”? Histamines. As in immune response? Isn’t that what ANTI-histamines for allergies are all about? What would happen if IBS sufferers took antihistamines?

Well their noses would stop dripping. That’s for sure. But Dr. Robert Wascher (mensdailynews.com) describes a double blind study for IBS where an antihistamine is taken for 8 weeks.

WHAT a surprise! The subjects did lots better.

What to make of all this?

It’s all good. It’s medical science doin’ its thing.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 9 . Not definitive. But it moves things onto more solid ground and exposes a possible mechanism for a widespread and annoying illness.

Nice.

Credits for the image: Just me.

SANCTIONS MAKE A SPLASH

FREEDOM OF SCIENCE. IN IRAN.

Thinking about being a physicist in Iran?

Can’t blame you. It sounds like a really, great life.

Hashem Rafii-Tabar  ( Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences)  says nobody’ll talk to you. You can’t get invited to scientific meetings. Can’t buy equipment or supplies and yer gonna pay double if you do.

WHY?

Cause sanctions – those very same sanctions that, supposedly “don’t work” – are KILLING research in that garden of scientific freedom known as Iran.

In case you’re not up to speed on all this, unless western intelligence is VERY much mistaken (and, no, it would NOT be the first time), Iran is closing in on a nuclear device which could be an atomic bomb.

Could be a hydrogen bomb.

Could be a time machine.

Or not.

Cynical western countries certainly don’t “get” all the centrifuges, missiles, and other activities which they say are aimed ONLY at nuclear bang bang.

Iran says it’s a simple case of demonization of Israel’s rivals. A country has the right to its own science and Iran’s only thinking about its future energy needs.

Who’s the fibber here? MisterScienceAintSoBad wouldn’t know fer sure. But he tilts toward the West cause he’s brainwashed by the Boston Globe.

Nobody knows for sure. Maybe Iran’s just “blowin’ neutrons”. But,just to be on the safe side, the “world” is clamping down hard on Iran. Four UN resolutions. And the European Union has its own sanctions regime.

North Korea thinks it’s somewhat overdone.

Can’t please everybody.

MEANWHILE..

Rafii-Tabar says the sanctions are screwing up his life.  ”You cannot buy workstations or supercomputers.” Can’t even get free software. Click on a link and the Internet “recognizes the IP address as being in Iran and a message comes through that we cannot download.”

Can you imagine?

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad believes in freedom of science, freedom of the Internet, freedom of the airwaves.. well, you know. And sympathizes with the many, many modern, progressive Iranian men and women who are so frustrated by the consequences of decisions in which they did not and could not participate.  It would be just AWFUL if Iranian scientists felt they had to flee the country just so they could rejoin the scientific community.

Wouldn’t it?

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