ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 565
February 9, 2016
5 weird ways to put out a candle
What happens when you pour liquid nitrogen on a flame? What about when you blow on the flame with a cup in the way? Try these five unusual ways to extinguish a candle. Pour out the flame with CO2. Cut off the oxygen supply to the flame without fully covering it. Snuff out the flame with a coil of copper wire, and when it appears dead, it will amazingly come back to life!
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Concussion: Horror Of Sports-Related Brain Damage Is Only Now Emerging
Photo credit:
Will Smith as Dr Bennet Omalu. Columbia Pictures
Not so long ago, it was a diagnosis that was barely mentioned. Now it feels like there’s a plague of concussion in modern sport, with endless news articles and commentaries on the injury and its consequences.
Revealed: Honeybees Are Being Killed Off By A Manmade Pandemic
Photo credit:
Life hasn’t been sweet for the honeybees lately. Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters
We live in a world where large numbers of people are connected by just a few degrees of separation. But while having friends of friends all over the globe can be great for holidays, trade and networking, travel also allows viruses to move like never before.
Disease May Wipe Out World’s Bananas – But Here’s How We Might just save them
Photo credit:
Vanatchanan / shutterstock
Catastrophe is looming for the banana industry. A new strain has emerged of a soil-borne fungus known as “Panama disease” which can wipe out entire plantations – and it is rapidly spreading around the world.
Take Note Matt LeBlanc: Here’s The Scientific Way To Beat Car Sickness
Photo credit:
Feeling squiffy? You’re not alone. Shutterstock
Top Gear has a new presenter. Former Friends star Matt LeBlanc is to join the new incarnation of the world famous motoring show.
Is Primodos ‘The Forgotten Thalidomide’?
Photo credit:
Human embryo at 5 weeks. www.shutterstock.com
Primodos, an oral hormonal pregnancy test, was introduced to the UK in the late 1950s. A decade later, claims were made by some researchers that Primodos was linked to birth defects.
Chiral magnetic effect generates quantum current
Scientists at the U.S Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University have discovered a new way to generate very low-resistance electric current in a new class of materials. The discovery, which relies on the separation of right- and left-“handed” particles, points to a range of potential applications in energy, quantum computing, and medical imaging, and possibly even a new mechanism for inducing superconductivity—the ability of some materials to carry current with no energy loss.
The material the scientists worked with, zirconium pentatelluride, has a surprising trait: When placed in parallel electric and magnetic fields, it responds with an imbalance in the number of right- and left-handed particles—a chiral imbalance. That imbalance pushes oppositely charged particles in opposite directions to create a powerful electric current.
This “chiral magnetic effect” had long been predicted theoretically, but never observed definitively in a materials science laboratory at the time this work was done.
In fact, when physicists in Brookhaven’s Condensed Matter Physics & Materials Science Department (CMP&MS) first measured the significant drop in electrical resistance, and the accompanying dramatic increase in conductivity, they were quite surprised.
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February 8, 2016
The Big Bang is Giving Me Big Headaches
This past month I’ve slept terribly and it’s all because of the Big Bang. You see I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with Brian Kruse over at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific on a teacher workshop about the Big Bang this week (and again at NSTA next month).
Why is NCSE interested in the Big Bang? Aren’t we evolution and climate change people? Well, in addition to being wildly interesting science, the Big Bang pops on our radar from time to time in the form of academic freedom acts—inappropriately named anti-science bills that attempt to bring science denial into the classroom under the guise of “critical thinking”.
So while the Big Bang isn’t our bread and butter here at NCSE, it’s safe to say that it is our occasional clotted cream. As a result, when I got the chance to partner with Brian I hopped on it. Not only did I want to learn more about the Big Bang, I wanted to learn about common misconceptions (or as Brian likes to call them, “preconceptions”) and sources of science denial.
But I have to admit, the more I learned about the Big Bang, the less I slept. I think that, as a biologist, I’m allowed to say the Big Bang is freaky. It breaks rules that I’d always thought couldn’t be broken and stretches your brain in weird ways. Thankfully Brian has been very patient with me, although many of his responses force me to rethink the very basics of my understanding of science. I’ve definitely fallen down the rabbit hole—and it is freaking me out. But it’s also made me think.
Certainly some of the challenges to the Big Bang come from a fundamental misunderstanding of the science. A really neat paper from Prather et al., dives into how prevalent and deep those misconceptions are. But then there are the other challenges that arrive when you start asking what the Big Bang means.
The Big Bang means confronting Big Questions. How did the universe start? How will it end? Who invented liquid soap and why? It’s the sort of questions that make you start thinking not just about time and space, but your own mortality, the mortality of the Earth, the mortality of the Universe! And that is scary. It’s keeping me up at night and I’m not afraid to say, it: I REALLY, REALLY don’t like the way this makes me feel. In fact I hate it, and as a result, I sort of hate the Big Bang.
But that’s not science’s fault. And this is a truth that we often shy away from: science is not there to make us feel good. Science is there to answer questions. And sometimes those answers suck. This is something I talk a lot about when talking about climate change. Climate change is bad news. We are in serious trouble and the longer we wait to do something about it, the worse it will get. Understanding that can lead to disillusionment, despondence and yes, people waking up in the middle of the night, terrified at what the future might hold.
So what's the answer? Teachers everywhere have known for quite some time that the answer is not more data, but rather dealing with the emotional and psychological pieces. We’ve noticed this too at NCSE. Although data is powerful, most often the conflicts teachers experience have nothing to do with evidence. Lucky for me, I have an awesome teacher in Brian whose willing to coach me through both the science and my despondence regarding the Big Bang. We'd like to make sure that NCSE is helping teachers everywhere do the same.
Image by Tom Hall via Flickr
Why Do People Go Bald?
Photo credit:
screenpunk/Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0)
There's no cure for baldness just quite yet. However, we could be edging towards that goal, as scientists have now pinpointed the cause of age-related (rather than male pattern) baldness, according to a new study published in the journal Science.
A Single Concussion May Triple the Long-Term Risk of Suicide
As the Panthers and Broncos faced off in the third quarter of last night’s Super Bowl, wide receiver Philly Brown suffered a possible concussion—and to the disappointment of Panthers fans, he never returned to the game. But for good reason: concussions are now known to be much more serious injuries than once thought. And the danger may not be limited to the immediate repercussions. Researchers have already linked more severe traumatic brain injury to later suicide—particularly in military veterans and professional athletes—and have more recently explored the connection between concussion and depression.
Now, new research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows that even mild concussions sustained in ordinary community settings might be more detrimental than anyone anticipated; the long-term risk of suicide increases threefold in adults if they have experienced even one concussion. That risk increases by a third if the concussion is sustained on a weekend instead of a weekday—suggesting recreational concussions are riskier long-term than those sustained on the job. “The typical patient I see is a middle-aged adult, not an elite athlete,” says Donald Redelmeier, a senior scientist at the University of Toronto and one of the study’s lead authors. “And the usual circumstances for acquiring a concussion are not while playing football; it is when driving in traffic and getting into a crash, when missing a step and falling down a staircase, when getting overly ambitious about home repairs—the everyday activities of life.”
Redelmeier and his team wanted to examine the risks of the concussions acquired under those circumstances. They identified nearly a quarter of a million adults in Ontario who were diagnosed with a mild concussion over a timespan of 20 years—severe cases that resulted in hospital admission were excluded from the study—and tracked them for subsequent mortality due to suicide. It turned out that more than 660 suicides occurred among these patients, equivalent to 31 deaths per 100,000 patients annually—three times the population norm. On average, suicide occurred almost six years after the concussion. This risk was found to be independent of demographics or previous psychiatric conditions, and it increased with additional concussions.
For weekend concussions, the later suicide risk increased to four times the norm. Redelmeier and his fellow researchers had wondered whether the risk would differ between occupational and recreational concussions. They did not have information about how the concussions happened, so they used day of the week as a proxy. Although they do not know why weekend risk is indeed higher, they suspect it may be because on weekends medical staff may not be as available or accessible or people may not seek immediate care.
Although the underlying causes of the connection between concussion and suicide are not yet known, Redelmeier says that there were at least three potential explanations. A concussion may be a marker but not necessarily a mechanism of subsequent troubles—or, in other words, people who sustain concussions may already have baseline life imbalances that increase their risks for depression and suicide. “But we also looked at the subgroup of patients who had no past psychiatric history, no past problems, and we still found a significant increase in risk. So I don’t think that’s the entire story,” he notes. One of the more likely explanations, he says, is that concussion causes brain injury such as inflammation (as has been found in some studies) from which the patient may never fully recover. Indeed, a study conducted in 2014 found that sustaining a head injury leads to a greater risk of mental illness later in life. The other possibility is that some patients may not give themselves enough time to get better before returning to an ordinary schedule, leading to strain, frustration and disappointment—which, in turn, may result in depression and ultimately even suicide.
Lea Alhilali, a physician and researcher at the Barrow Neurological Institute who did not participate in this study, uses diffusion tensor imaging (an MRI technique) to measure the integrity of white matter in the brain. Her team has found similarities between white matter degeneration patterns in patients with concussion-related depression and noninjured patients with major depressive disorder—particularly in the nucleus accumbens, or the “reward center” of the brain. “It can be difficult to tease out what’s related to an injury and what’s related to the circumstances surrounding the trauma,” Alhilali says. “There could be PTSD, loss of job, orthopedic injuries that can all influence depression. But I do believe there’s probably an organic brain injury.”
Alhilali points to recent studies on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive degenerative brain disease associated with repeated head traumas. Often linked to dementia, depression, loss of impulse control and suicide, CTE was recently diagnosed in 87 of 91 deceased NFL players. Why, then, she says, should we not suspect that concussion causes other brain damage as well?
This new study may only represent the tip of the iceberg. “We’re only looking at the most extreme outcomes, at taking your own life,” Redelmeier says. “But for every person who dies from suicide, there are many others who attempt suicide, and hundreds more who think about it and thousands more who suffer from depression.”
More research needs to be done; this study was unable to take into account the exact circumstances under which the concussions were sustained. Redelmeier’s research examined only the records of adults who sought medical attention, it did not include more severe head injuries that required hospitalization or extensive emergency care. To that extent, his findings may have underestimated the magnitude of the absolute risks at hand.
Yet many people are not aware of these risks.
Redelmeier is adamant that people should take concussions seriously. “We need to do more research about prevention and recovery,” he says. “But let me at least articulate three things to do: One, give yourself permission to get some rest. Two, when you start to feel better, don’t try to come back with a vengeance. And three, even after you’re feeling better, after you’ve rested properly, don’t forget about it entirely. If you had an allergic reaction to penicillin 15 years ago, you’d want to mention that to your doctor and have it as a permanent part of your medical record. So, too, if you’ve had a concussion 15 years ago.”
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