Science Ain't So Bad

TOO TOXIC FOR THIS ONE

Accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Living hell for workers. Gamma rays galore.

Frail human bodies are battling to tame the damaged (and lethal) nuclear power plants. MRS ScienceAintSoBad would NEVER let ME do such a thing. (“Forget it, hero boy.”)

It’s inspiring. It’s amazing. It’s just.. the only word that comes to mind is..

ROBOTS! Where are the GOSH DARN robots??? This is Japan? This is Sony? This is Toyota? What’s the deal? Where are your tractor tread Nuke-agons?

BrianVastag (Washington Post) explains something that’s been bothering me throughout this crazy (and very sad) crisis. The robotics industry of Japan just never focused on high hazard applications. In retrospect? Yea-ah. It woulda been handy.

In Japan, there are elegant, versatile, humanoid robots around practically every corner but throw a few rads at one and that’s it for the warranty.

Fine.

Maybe the domestic robotic industry didn’t have the foresight to prepare for a thousand year meltdown, but why not utilize specialized robots from other friendly (heck – even hostile) countries?

Vastag says there are a few such devices on premises; it’s not clear what they’re doing though. If anything.

(See why I’m confused?)

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I READ THIS ARTICLE, SEE..

ANN COULTER EFFECT

Conservative author Ann Coulter read an article ( Science Section of the New York Times) which, she says, shows how a certain  amount of nuclear radiation’s okay. Healthy, even.  She said most physicists are on board with this.

Which they’re not.

Coulter’s confusion (?)  isn’t hard to understand. Science is a slippery thing.

In an interview with Bill O’reilly, Ms Coulter says “It’s not me I’m citing, it’s a stunning number of physicists”. She said that there’s science going WAY back about how low doses of radiation may be a good thing.

What IS she talking about?

HORMESIS

This is the brainchild of  Dr. Abraham Lessismore (Montgomery Junior College) who tried to poison some  geese which were despoiling his dock. Couldn’t get rid of them. Tried everything. Finally decided it was time to stop foolin’ around.

Lessismore, a graduate student in 1998, couldn’t afford the recommended 10 bags  of  Gretchen’s Goose Killer so he only bought one . “I figured it might not kill ALL a those sonna bitches but even two or three would make me happy.”

Lessismore spread the Goose Killer stuff  and watched the geese peck at it while he crouched behind his fake coyote to enjoy the dying paroxysms of these horrible creatures.

When they had finished eating the Goose Killer, they stood around. Lessismore, thought the fat one looked bad.

It wobbled.

Then it turned turned toward him, locked eyes,  and pooped.

Large one.

It  fluffed its wings, and waddled away.

After some time, it occurred to Lessismore that the poison hadn’t harmed the geese at all. If anything, the flock appeared sturdier than before. They had  more energy. The one with the growth on its neck? Was he imagining it? Each day, the growth appeared smaller. Eventually, the growth disappeared and that goose turned up leading a group of new hatchlings.

Undaunted by his failure to roust the geese, Dr. L turned to the scientific implications of what he had just witnessed. Giving the geese a reduced dose of a toxin didn’t result in reduced casualties and, instead, seemed to have some kind of curative effect. This, it seemed to Lessismore, could be a new scientific principle. Thus was born the idea of “Hormesis”.

(If you don’t believe my goose story, here’s another version of the thing.)

Seriously?

Are things that are bad  in large doses, good  in small doses? Sure. That’s why medicines have labels. A truck full of aspirin would probably give you a REAL headache, wouldn’t it?

Researchers such as Edward Calabrese   believe toxins in low doses stimulate some kind of protective reaction without doing real damage. The problem? The evidence is weak and confusing which isn’t surprising. There’s always a “signal to noise” issue when you’re measuring something very small.

And some of the researchers may be a little  ”intense”. One wore a radioactive vest around for its health benefits . Enthusiasm amok.

Here’s the deal. There IS a lot of info about hormesis. If you google it, you get the impression that hormesis is the real deal.  In fact (and strangely) you don’t find much serious criticism. Not in the first 25 hits, anyway.  So I don’t blame Ann Coulter.

Not really.

Unfortunately, googling isn’t always the best way to settle a scientific question. Sometimes you just need someone you trust and, yes, I do hope MISTER ScienceAintSoBad’s on your list.

The  basis for hormesis is pretty sketchy. Even if it is, ultimately, confirmed, it will only apply to some stuff.

What about radiation?

Let me put it this way, most physicist do NOT walk around wearing radioactive vests.

Trust me on that.

WHAT THE HECK? IS THIS THING BROKEN?

QUAKES, TSUNAMIS, POWER PLANTS

Yesterday an earthquake and a tsunami hit Japan.  The earthquake (magnitude 9.0) was a THOUSAND times more powerful than the one that killed 2 percent of the population of Haiti.

And  Haiti didn’t have tsunamis. Or exploding  nuclear power stations which are thought to be melting down.

As I’m writing , they’re still searching for victims so the number of injuries and deaths is still growing. The excellent planning that the Japanese do for such disasters should help. If the sympathetic hearts of others makes any difference, that’ll help too.

SCIENCE ISN’T AN EXACT SCIENCE

Probably yer thinking “What’s WRONG with those guys? If they can make something as good as a Toyota, why can’t their power plants stand being bounced around ?”

Not fair.

I especially didn’t like that little Toyota dig, but I’ll let it pass.

Here’s the thing. Engineers  don’t know fer sure the worst disaster that’ll hit their projects, do they?  So how does an engineer know how strong to make a bridge. Or a house? Or a nuclear power plant? How does he.she know what size earthquakes, winds,  waves, and so on, a power plant will have to deal with in its lifetime? This, after all, is the “loading” to which it must be designed.

You’re not gonna like this, but it’s  a game of chance.

A building, a bridge, an airplane, is designed to handle everything that gets thrown at it.

Almost.

Course, no matter how tough you make the design, there’s always something worse. A 10 ton meteor will NOT bounce off of yer roof and leave it undented. Sorry to say. Honestly? Your roof wasn’t even designed for 14 feet of snow. If you and your house live long enough, you will GET 14 feet of snow. It seemed like we got that much in Boston this winter. Or, if you don’t live where it snows, your house, for sure,  isn’t designed for a category 7 hurricane.

Always something!

Engineers try to anticipate everything that’s likely to happen. Then they throw in a little extra. But what about spectacularly awful things that only happen every 100 years? Or every 1000 years? How unlikely and how huge an event should you build for?

Magnitude 9.0 earthquake don’t occur in/near Japan very often – certainly not accompanied by a massive tsunami.   Very rare. So if you DO beef up your power plant design  for these conditions which include a 30 foot tsunami, what about the possibility of a 35 footer?

See what I mean? You gotta stop SOMEWHERE or you’ll NEVER get a mortgage on that overbuilt monstrosity.

It’s called engineering. Balancing practicality against perfection.

WAS IT A SCREW UP?

I’ll get back to you on that. If the designers simply failed to take tsunamis into account, you bet it was. If they designed for big, bigger, and biggerer but this was biggereryet, it’s just one of those things.

WHY USE URANIUM BASED NUCLEAR POWER?

Is there a way to make nuclear power plants that can’t melt down? Of course.

BACK TO EARTHQUAKES

Now it so happens that I have a lot to say about earthquakes. Because I definitely have an app for THAT. Our product, resQvox ( US Patent 7,839,290) will save your butt next time YOU’RE in one. We’re just in the beginning stages of looking for a licensee (interested?).

Here’s how it works.

You find yourself trapped in the rubble of a collapsed structure, right?

Talk about sucky! The first 24 hours you’re down there are the critical “Golden Hours”. After that first day, your chances of getting out alive get so poor that if they DO happen to drag you out of there with a heartbeat they will describe it as a “miracle”.

Maybe it is.

Anyway, here’s the catch. In most places where there’s an earthquake, it takes LONGER than 24 hours for  the pros to show up. They have to get notified, grab their equipment, search dogs, supplies, and whatnot, and get transport to the disaster site. While this happens, you’re down there under a filing cabinet getting weaker and weaker and weaker.

What to do?

That’s where resQvox comes in. It’s aimed at attracting the attention of the “locals” – the “guys in the neighborhood” – who’re running around trying to dig people out with anything at hand – garden spades, rakes, even bare hands. They don’t have infrared detectors or search dogs. Just their eyes and ears.

Like smoke detectors, resQvox locators are small and inexpensive and are positioned in key spots around a building. Its  sensors tell it if a building collapses (so do yours, but that’s another story) and it uses its speech capabilities to chat up survivors, reassuring, describing survival techniques, and collecting info on their condition. Then, no matter what shape they’re in (maybe drifting  in and out of consciousness or sleep), resQvox uses its “sonic beacon” to draw rescuers to the location  and to help  ”triage” based on the condition of the survivors and the number in each location.

Here’s how it works . (You can contact us at scienceaintsobad@gmail.com).

SceinceAintSoBadRating = 10 (I’m a little prejudiced).

THE OVERRATED PHYSICAL KEYBOARD

I MEANT WELL

In November of 2009, I wrote an article (first one of this blog series) about “app phones”. (Smartphones.) At the time, the IPhone was blazing brilliantly through the firmament as Android (Google’s then new Iphone competitor) sat on a rock, watching  wistfully.

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad‘s article was about Google’s (turned out to be successful) Droid app phone. Which has a physical keyboard.

I liked the phone. (Good job, me). For the wrong reason.

My article was about physical keyboards on phones – those  compromis-y fingers-don’t-fit-things that slide under.

In my article,  I clarified, nicely, the concept that I, and only I, “get it” where keyboards are concerned. I explained that physical keyboards mean you don’t have to use up precious screen space which I (not too originally) termed “real estate”. The “soft” (simulated) keyboards that show up on those teeny screens subtract from space you need to SEE what you are editing or writing (said I).

Why nobody ELSE observed this silly mistake on the part of phone innovators, I can’t say. But MISTER ScienceAintSoBad has, as mom used to say, “a real head on his shoulders”.

Doesn’t he?

Strangely, though, for all their supposed advantages, I don’t have a physical keyboard on my own phone.

Isn’t that curious?

Well my mom (same one) used to say (about real estate) that they’re not making any more of it.

Which is true of the ground-y kinda real estate but not so true of the touch – screen-y kind. After all, phones ARE getting bigger. Some of the newer models come with handles on each end so your buddies can help you portage them through the weeds.

Which does make screen “real estate” less of a big deal. Doesn’t it?.

Still. MISTER SASB, at the moment, has a modest screen on his modest Android phone (a Droid Eris) and, yet, even I, feel no need for a clumsy sliding keyboard with clicky keys. So where was I wrong?

SOFT KEYBOARDS  FINE

Here’s where.

First of all, having gotten around to trying them, I gotta say that even the best of those miniaturized keyboards are kinda tough. OK for texting, I suppose, but you won’t be doing your thesis on one.

Bear in mind, I’ve seen teenagers use these things at jet speed without even looking.

But that’s teenagers. I’m not even gonna GO there.  I’m talking about NORMAL people. OK?

Anyway, my real problem is that I was still thinking INSIDE that notorious “box” everyone talks about. I’m a touch typer and I’m used to a physical keyboard on my own PCs. And isn’t an app phone/smartphone a smallish PC?

Well.

Not really. See. That was my mistake.

It isn’t.

Because, with an app phone (and unlike a PC)  you can hold it up to your ear. Or put it in your pocket. Or walk into a sink hole, holding it in front of yer face.

As computers go, app phones are so personal that they’re INTIMATE. They go where you go. And that’s different, isn’t it? So you might use it in the doctor’s office.. Or propped up in bed. Or at the PO-lice station.

Handy indeed.

So popular “apps” tend to emphasize mobility. GPS and maps. Store payments. Casual entertainment and games.

Fart apps are popular.

So why sit straight up on your butt while your writing?

No reason.

COOL (SOFT) KEYBOARDS + SKILLED USERS

I use mine standing, slouching, reclining, and upside down (me, that is). In other words, at times, and in ways, that call for a more innovative approach to inputing information.

And thus (and, at last)  my point.

“Soft” keyboards? More than you can count. There are dozens and dozens – hundreds, actually – available as free and paid apps on the various smartphones. Big keys and small keys. All kinds of key arrangements and even new approaches to typing, itself. One that’s  catching on, involves sliding the finger from key to key. The technique’s hard to describe. Swipe and Slide-It are two keyboards that use this strange but effective approach. At first, it’s seems ridiculous. But, you learn the keyboard, and the keyboard learns you. Gradually, your own vocabulary drains into the thing and your typing speed gets faster and faster. I AM still faster at a full sized keyboard, but I’m surprisingly good, glissading around that Slide-It thing . There’s also a peculiar side benefit. It’s kinda fun.

And do the pop up keyboards REALLY get in the way of what you’re editing, as I claimed in my first review? Well sure. Kind of. But it’s like anything, you get good at making it go away. You can flip yer ‘board up to type and down to look. Up to type and down to look.

It works. It really does.

TALKING INTO YOUR HAND

Why type if you can slide? And why slide if you can dictate?

Seriously. I’ve been using my phone to, for example, to right this article.

right? Did I say right? Well. Not perfect, I admit.

But, like the sliding keyboards, the dictation software which is basic  to the Android phones (but certainly available on other phones) is adaptive. As I have, tentatively, used it more and more for serious writing, I am starting to appreciate the speed advantages of the voice input cycle. You speak a bit, correct the boo boos, and speak some more. You get good at this.It’s faster and easier than it sounds.

(It would have to be.)

A FINAL NOTE

I tried out the “soft” keyboard on the new XOOM tablet  computer . Sliding? Voice recognition? Why would you do that? This is a keyboard that fits your fingers and works great. I haven’t tried the equivalent trick with an IPad but, surely, that’s nice too.

The benefits of ultra-portable, ultra-smart devices are already becoming clear but the best way to talk back at them is  still evolving.

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TYPICAL VEGAN

Dear Mister ScienceAintsoBad,
Was Dr. Spock a Vegan? – GetItAllWrong

A Vegan? From the planet Vega?

Good GRIEF, GetItAllWrong. Spock was a Vulcan, not a Vegan. Very serious. Pure logic. Big ears. Mind-melds. Telepathy. His planet was nipped by a black hole before its  population had a chance to switch to a more enlightened diet.

Vegans currently live on OUR planet. Earth. Not the planet Vega. Most Vegans are very serious and logical. They have big ears and they’re kinda empathetic, if not telepathic. The difference, my dear GetItallWrong, is meat.

Not having any of it.

At all.

No milk, no pig’s knuckles. No seafood. No poultry. No eggs. No dairy products.

Pretty extreme, you may say. But, you know what? Healthy as pineapples. (Was gonna say “pigs” but some vegans do read this blog, after all.)

Here’s the thing.

An article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Duo Li), reviews lots and lots of studies about Vegans here on earth over about 30 years.

The conclusion?

They can do better.

Cutting out the animal products is a very, very good thing. However, Vegans tend to be a little light on iron, zinc, B-12 and Omega 3 fatty acids.

Not good, since that can lead to atherosclerosis, heart problems, and stroke. But tweaking things a bit with fish oils and nuts should do the trick here.

This is a worthwhile report.

Scientifically sound.

But this is a “may increase the risk” thing. I don’t see any “Vegans Keeling Over In Large Numbers” data.

Could be next.

Take yer supplements.

OK?

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