I hope that readers are as eagerly looking forward to the big Leonid meteor shower show as I am. Planning to schlep a lawn chair to the railroad tracks where there is an unemcumbered view of the east/southeast sky and no light pollution to speak of, settle in with a blanket and toast to the solar system’s fireworks display.

It should be quite the spectacle if predictions are correct. It’s a new moon, so that source of light pollution won’t be an issue. They say we’ll only get 20 to 30 an hour, while Asia gets the really big boomers at 200-300 an hour, but I’m hoping they’ve miscalculated a bit. There should still be a few to see tonight. The Leonids put on their show every year as the planet travels through the remains of the Tempel-Tuttle comet. Our pass-through has the incoming debris originating from the direction of the constellation Leo, hence the name. This year, however, Mars is sitting right between us and the constellation, so it should look like our friendly neighborhood Martians are staging the show!

What I will not be doing is wearing a tin foil helmet to prevent those Martians from manipulating my brain waves. According to MIT research conducted in 2005, the metallic fashion statements actually amplify invasive radio frequencies reserved for use by the government in satellite communications rather than protect wearers from what they are most afraid of.

The abstract of On the Effectiveness of Aluminum Foil Helmets reads:

“Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government’s invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.”

Oh, well. Before some reader out there comes back with the obvious, yes I do know this is mostly tongue-in-cheek from a few undergrad CompSci geeks with way too much time on their hands. But it’s still pretty funny, so enjoy!

From Mike Moreu, New Zealand Cartoons

Or, how about “Angelina’s Alien Clone Babies!” (subtitle, “Brad stands by his woman even after UFO abduction…”. Or some such rot. We’ve all seen ‘em at the grocery store checkout line, and we’ve all been terribly tempted to read the funnies even if we absolutely don’t want to be seen buying one. I once saw a stand-up comedy act in which the comedian did nothing more than hold up a copy of the National Enquirer and read off the headlines and sidebar – with feeling. Then he’d say…

“But that’s NOT the real story! The REAL story is on page [whatever]…” whereupon he’d flip to some inside page with an even more bizarre headline and story. All with a perfectly deadpan face, fully animated only while reading the lurid details with Shakespearian delivery. He was so funny I saw the show three times.

Now, most of us actually do know better than to believe the sensationalized storytelling and photoshop creativity in tabloid rags like that. That’s what makes them such good comedy fodder. Nor do most of us purchase the magical anti-hex pendants or crystal healing rings or genuine eye of newt sure-love powder advertised in the pages of such rags. But somebody must be buying all that junk – as well as the tabloids they finance – and even if we do occasionally get a guilty pleasure out of light reading in the checkout line, most regular people would claim they don’t know anybody who’s really that dumb. Save perhaps an odd relative or friend of a friend.

Yet sometimes I wonder about how science and critical thinking are being taught (or not) in this country’s compulsory public education system, if this sort of “news” appeals to literally millions of people. Most all of whom got through at least the 10th grade, most all the way through high school. As a science news junky and long-time science-watcher, I am also sometimes surprised by how badly a ‘clever’ headline in the real science news misrepresents the nature or conclusions of studies or researches being reported on. Sometimes I’m more dismayed by how much mincemeat is made of the story itself, even when it’s spelled out clearly in the original institutional press release. Don’t science journalists have to know even more about science and critical thinking than the average high schooler?

So I think it’s about time to list the most important aspects of critical thinking about science news articles, so that regular people don’t end up getting fooled by pseudoscience or outright charlatans. Tabloid sensationalism exempted, of course, since that’s just adult comic book comedy. I’m quite sure all MY readers understand that.

When perusing a science news report that draws your interest, establish a few things right away. They should be clearly represented in the lede or first two paragraphs of the article -

1. Determine who is making a claim. Is it the reporter parsing something s/he may not understand, or is it one of the actual researchers?

2. Is what the researcher says something s/he is well qualified to know a lot about?

3. Is the research (and press release) originating from a respectable scientific/medical/research institution?

4. Is the research being reported upon published (or accepted for publication) by a respectable, peer reviewed scientific journal?

5. Is the reporter adding extraneous and possibly sensationalized statements to the researchers’ own conclusions, or doing the interpreting FOR you in a sensationalized way?

Using these five simple methods of critically approaching science news won’t always keep you from getting snowed, but assuming you aren’t inclined to believe that I really am Bigfoot’s love slave, they’ll probably keep you from being too embarrassed at the water cooler.

Or you could always just take a tabloid in to work in a plain paper wrapper, and do the whole comedy routine in the break room at lunch. A good laugh is always good medicine, they say…

Way back in 2005 researchers at Texas A&M determined that humor – an appreciation of the absurd hilarity of life – can significantly increase Hope, and that hopefulness helps people cope with stresses in daily life and during illnesses as well.

In January of this year a communications professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, demonstrated that in a medical setting, laughter is the best medicine. Humor helps both the doctors and the patients cope. The finding was extended to the workplace and to educational situations as well, eventually reaching the conclusion that regardless of the content, humor seems to be beneficial and productive. It helps to get the point across in almost any situation.

Then on June 12, 2008 Alastaire Clarke published his Pattern Recognition Theory of Humor, which purportedly explains the reason that humor is common to all human societies. In Humor Shown to be Fundamental to Our Success as a Species, Clarke claims that humor is fundamantal to the evolution of human beings, and continues to be important in the cognitive development of infants and children.

Alas, Clarke’s Pattern Recognition Theory can’t tell us what’s funny or why, so it probably won’t be used by comedy writers or clowns to formulate their skits any time soon. And while humor can progress from basic slapstick to childish jokes to ridicule to satire, he does not attempt to explain why slapstick still makes us laugh even if we’ve progressed all the way to dry British satire. A clown would have a handy explanation for that, but I don’t think Clarke asked one. Oh, well.

The articles do make a strong case for the survival value of humor to human beings, and that may be all we really need to know about it.

Links:

Humor Can Increase Hope, Research Shows
Laughter is the Best Medicine

• Nearly 50% of the bacteria in your body (and humans harbor 3 times more bacterial cells than human cells) live on the surface of your tongue, which (by the way) is the strongest muscle in your body. Probably a good reason why Mommy-Kisses work better than Mommy-Licks on boo-boos.

• The incidence of immune system diseases has increased more than 200% in the last five years. Yikes! Is that environmental?

• By the time a person is 35 years old, s/he begins losing about 7,000 brain cells a day which are never replaced. Whoa. I’d say something profound about that, but I forgot what the subject was…

• A moderate sunburn damages blood vessels in the skin so seriously that it takes between four and fifteen months for them to heal. The reason I keep SPF 50 on hand all summer.

• Right-handed people live an average of nine years longer than left-handed people. Need I remind readers that correlation does NOT equal causation?

Go on over to One Big Health Nut and read the rest for yourself!

That great practical joke that life’s designer [be it blind nature or purposeful god] played is still with us to confound orderly notions of biological evolution. The genome of Australia’s duck-billed platypus has been sequenced by an international group of scientists led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The venomous, egg-laying, duck-billed, web-footed, beaver-tailed mammal is one of the earliest offshoots of the mammalian lineage from when it split off from primitive ancestors some 166 million years ago. The genome confirms the chimeric status of this odd animal which displays traits of reptiles, birds and mammals.

As part of their analysis, researchers compared the platypus genome with human, mouse, dog, opossum and chicken genomes. Chicken genome was chosen because it represents a group of egg-laying animals that includes extinct reptiles that passed on much of their DNA to mammals over the course of evolution. When analyzed, the genetic sequences for venom production in the male platypus was found to have arisen from duplications in a group of genes evolved from ancestral reptilian genomes. They hypothesize that duplications in those very same genes led to the evolution of venom independently in modern reptiles.

The project involved sequencing about 2.2 billion base pairs and 18,500 genes. The Platypus has 52 chromosomes and an unusual 10 sex chromosomes. The platypus X chromosome also bears a striking similarity to the sex chromosome of birds.

Final conclusion? The duck-billed platypus is just as bizarre a mix-and-match critter genetically as it appeared to be when the first specimens were shown to the scientific community some 200 years ago. Skeptics then believed the animal was someone’s idea of a practical joke hoax. Turns out it really is a genetic practical joke, but it comes as-is in nature.

Links:

Platypus Genome Explains Animal’s Peculiar Features
Daily Mail: It’s a bird, it’s a beaver…

A research scientist at UMich School of Public Health has established through interviews with 475 undergraduates that humans exchange resources (or merely clout) for sex, just like penguins, hummingbirds and other species of beings on this planet. His paper, “Young Adults Attempt Exchanges in Reproductively Relevant Currencies,” is published in this month’s Journal of Evolutionary Psychology.

Not that the idea of trading sex for resources is something unheard of in human society. Or even that in cultures where marriages are arranged among parents and grandparents before the young are old enough to walk, the arrangements are all about relative wealth and social standing – things considered valuable in the societies.

It is interesting that biologists (yes, the evo-psych folks too) have just recently figured out that their traditional reliance on exclusivity in sexual selection as a primary mechanism of directional evolution is not nearly as cut and dried as they long assumed it was. Given that cheating on spouses and general promiscuity have turned out to be fairly rampant in birds and beasts – the beauty of that peacock’s tail or the size of that ape’s manly parts doesn’t prevent lesser males from getting their genes into the pool after all…

There’s a reason we call it “The Oldest Profession.” Turns out, it’s even older than humans!

The science blogosphere erupted this week after biology professor Paul Myers [a.k.a. PZ Myers] was summarily expelled from a pre-release screening of the Ben Stein movie Expelled, even while his wife, daughter and guest Richard Dawkins were allowed in to see the film.

Myers blogged about the incident in several posts to his #1 rated science blog for Seed Media Group, Pharyngula. Other science bloggers for the same outlet also blogged about it – Greg Laden bestowed sainthood on PZ and compiles the buzz from Dawkins, other bloggers, national and international media… it’s an exhaustive (but dated) list.

And the whole affair is really quite humorous, in my humble opinion. I am still holding out the suspicion that Myers – who appears in the film for about five minutes, according to reports – is getting a cut of the net for all his promotional efforts. This suspicion is further enhanced by Myers’ crashing an ‘invitation only’ media conference call on Friday. He has an explanation for how he managed that on his blog, but I’m taking the whole thing with a large grain of salt.

The buzz and massive publicity being stirred by irate science bloggers is guaranteeing the film’s commercial success, even if it’s as bad as Myers claims. That seems highly suspicious to me, given the sheer antiquity of the Creationism versus Evolution debates, the generations of religious believers and biologists who have come and gone without changing a thing, and the actual legal situation in the U.S., where it is unconstitutional to teach Creationism or Intelligent Design in public school classrooms.

If PZ is not getting paid to promote this film, he’s a bigger idiot than the IDiots he rails against so frequently on a science blog that is mostly NOT about science. Amazing.

This is the final installment of our 50 Weird Science tidbits, odd factoids and strange-but-true trivia. There are of course more weird things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But these 50 should get you through at least one championship round down at the pub. By the way, the word “dreamt” is the only word in the English language that ends in “mt.” That’s a freebie!

41. Plants Have Family Values Too

Researchers from Canada found that plants can have complex social interactions despite being… um, vegetative. Plants will grow more aggressively near unrelated plants than when they grow near relatives from the same maternal family.


42. The World’s Most Dangerous Animal

The not-so humble mosquito wins this award hands down. Mosquitoes transmitting countless diseases kill more animals – including humans – than any other animal (or plant) on Earth.



43. Hot Bed [Bugs] of Sexual Deception

Both the males and females of the African bat bug, a relative of bed bugs, have evolved fake genitals in order to protect themselves from the species’ violent mating practices. Some females have fake genitals of both male and female variety! The species does manage to reproduce prolifically anyway.


44. One Species In Which Dad Does All The Work

In seahorses it’s the male who gets pregnant. He incubates the offspring for three weeks, spends about 72 hours in labor, then gives birth to up to 200 baby seahorses at a time.


45. Alternative Recycling of Humans

A Swedish company has developed a new, environmentally friendly means of dealing with the bodies of the dead. They freeze the bodies in liquid nitrogen, then use sound waves to smash them to powder. From which water is removed in a vacuum chamber and metals are screened out.


46. And Now for the Weather Report…

In the days when apothecaries kept leeches in jars, it was observed that when the weather was calm the leeches stayed at the bottom of the water jar. But when a change in the weather was coming, the leeches would rise to the top of the water. For storms the leeches would rise quickly, descending again when the storm passed.


47. Forecast: Sunny

A solar panel array covering an area of 100 by 100 miles in the US Mojave Desert would produce enough electricity to replace all the coal fired power plants in America.


48. Old Sol Is Expecting Visitors

A red dwarf star labeled Gliese 710 is traveling toward our sun at nearly 50 times the speed of sound. In a million years it will be within just over half a light year away. Our current closest neighbor is Alpha Centauri, just over 4 light years away. But don’t worry. In only 10,000 years a red dwarf called Barnard’s Star will be our closest neighbor.


49. Please Don’t Lick the Walls

The world’s only hotel made entirely of salt (including the dining tables and chairs) is the Hotel de Sal Playa in the Uyuni salt flats of Bolivia.


50. …And Don’t Drink the Water

97% of the water on earth is undrinkable. An estimated 20% of the world’s surface fresh water supply is contained in Lake Baikal in southern Siberia (the world’s deepest lake at more than mile in depth).

The Entire Series:

1-10 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
11-20 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
21-30 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
31-40 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
41-50 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities

More obscure facts and scientific oddities that most people haven’t filed in their brains…

31. How Crowded Are We, Really?

10% of all the humans who have ever lived are alive in the world right now.


32. And You Thought Stillness Was a Meditative Virtue…

The planet Earth travels through space in its journey around the sun at a stunning 67,000 miles per hour, and we’re all moving that fast along with it!



33. Good Old Dihydrogen Monoxide

The human body is about 60% water, which is 2/3 hydrogen. All the hydrogen – in our bodies and everywhere else in the universe – was created ~12 billion years ago in the Big Bang.


34. No Burped Compliments to the Chef on the ISS

Astronauts in space cannot belch – without gravity, gas cannot separate from liquids in their stomachs.


35. They’re Just Creatively Falling Down

Actually, there IS gravity in space. It’s just that astronauts in orbit are in a continual state of falling – gravity being equivalent to acceleration. There are no regions of space entirely without gravitational forces, just as there is no true vacuum in space – there are lots of loose atoms and particles out there.


36. And You Thought It Was Watson and Crick

DNA – the molecule of inheritance – was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss biologist Friedrich Mieschler, just a decade after Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution. Mieschler called the phosphate-rich chemical “nuclein.”


37. Mom Knows Whereof She Speaks

While Mom’s chicken soup won’t really “cure” your cold, it will make you feel much better. There are anti-inflammatory properties in the broth that have been shown to reduce congestion and ease fevers.


38. My, That’s a Funny-Looking Chicken

If the brain stem is left intact after beheading a chicken, it can continue to live (with some care in feeding). There is one documented case of a headless chicken living on for 18 months after he was supposed to have become Sunday dinner!


39. Beware the Random Bagel Test!

You will test positive for opiates on a drug test if you eat just two poppy seed bagels (or muffins) for breakfast.


40. Facts Sometimes Come Later Than Fiction

In Jonathan Swift’s immortal Gulliver’s Travels [1726], the author described the size and speeds of rotation for two moons of Mars – Phobos and Deimos – more than 100 years before either were discovered!

The Entire Series:

1-10 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
11-20 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
21-30 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
31-40 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities
41-50 of 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities