10 February 2011

Workout notes AM: yoga class. I admit that I didn’t try that hard. After class, my yoga buddy and I exchanged kisses on the cheek and shocked each other with static electricity (yes, my buddy is a “she”).

PM: after my 11 am class, I went to our university gym. I stretched, got on the treadmill and started to jog; I just didn’t like it. So I switched to walking at a 13:20 pace and increased the incline gradually (.5 every .25 miles) until I was at 4, where I stayed for 1.25 miles. Then I went down and walked the last mile in 12:30 for 1:06 (5 miles total; 540 feet elevation gain). It was a very uninspired effort, though I enjoyed moving. Then sit ups (100), rotator cuff stuff, hip hikes for the pirformis, stretches, etc.

Good news: the back and piriformis weren’t issues.

Posts
Science: here is a collection of interesting news on evolution. Highlights: a certain type of frog has been found to have “re-evolved teeth” which is an exception to a law (thumb-rule?) that says that once a feature is lost, it doesn’t re-evolve in its original manner. Also, a snake fossil was found that revealed the vestiges of a “lost leg”; the idea is that snakes evolved from a lizard type reptile.

Sexuality: a study (a detailed study) suggests a strong link between sex and anger…in male mice:

Sex and violence are intertwined in mice. A tiny patch of cells buried deep within a male’s brain determines whether it fights or mates, and there is good reason to believe humans possess a similar circuit.

The study, published February 9 in Nature, shows that when these neurons are quieted, mice ignore intruding males they would otherwise attack. Yet when the cells are activated, mice assault inanimate objects, and even females they ought to court.

The cells lie within an area of the hypothalamus with known links to violent behavior. An electrical jolt to this vicinity causes cats and rats to turn violent, but neurophysiological experiments conducted decades ago stimulated too big an area to identify the specific brain circuits, let alone the individual neurons, involved in aggression.

More recently, scientists studying mice engineered to lack specific genes have found that some of them act more aggressively than normal mice. “We really don’t know which part of the brain went wrong in those mice. Consequently it’s tough to make sense of that behavior,” says Dayu Lin, a neuroscientist now at New York University and an author of the study, who began searching for the seat of aggression in mice while working with David Anderson at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. [...]

Surf to the link to read the story in Scientific American.

Politics Remember all of that impressive party discipline that the Republicans had when they were in the minority? Well, it isn’t that easy when one is in the majority, is it?

Under pressure to make deeper spending cuts and blindsided by embarrassing floor defeats, House Republican leaders are quickly discovering the limits of control over their ideologically driven and independent-minded new majority.

For the second consecutive day, House Republicans on Wednesday lost a floor vote due to a mini-revolt, this time over a plan to demand a repayment from the United Nations. Earlier in the day, members of the party’s conservative bloc used a closed-door party meeting to push the leadership to go well beyond its plans to trim about $40 billion from domestic spending and foreign aid this year, demanding $100 billion or more.

The spending rebellion came after the House on Tuesday rejected what was expected to be a routine temporary extension of anti-terrorism Patriot Act provisions when Democrats and about two dozen conservative Republicans balked at a fast-track procedure. Republicans, still searching for their footing after assuming control in January, were also forced to pull a trade assistance bill from the floor after conservatives raised objections. They found themselves mediating other internal fights as well.

Speaker John A. Boehner conceded that the fledgling majority was encountering turbulence. “We have been in the majority four weeks,” Mr. Boehner said. “We are not going to be perfect every day.”

Well, what do you know?

I don’t wanna go outside…

*^%$#@!!!!

Listen Canada, you can take your &*^%$ arctic air mass back anytime you’d like to….

Education: Gap Between Rich and Poor Toddlers

This study showed some things that surprised me:

A new study in Psychological Science found that at 10 months old, children from poor families performed just as well as children from wealthier families, but by the time they turned 2, children from wealthier families were scoring consistently higher than those from poorer ones.

“Poor kids aren’t even doing as well in terms of school readiness, sounding out letters and doing other things that you would expect to be relevant to early learning,” Elliot M. Tucker-Drob of the University of Texas at Austin, lead author of the study, said in a press release.

I am encouraged that there is little difference in 10 months though, of course, that might mean that there is little VISIBLE difference in 10 months. But then:

Researchers attempted to disprove a genetic explanation by comparing the aptitude tests of each set of twins. Among the 2-year-olds from wealthier families, identical twins had much more similar test scores than fraternal twins, who share only half of their genes.

However, among 2-year-olds from poorer families, identical twins scored no more similar to one another than did fraternal twins.

The implication is that children’s genetic potential is subdued by poverty, though the study stopped short of drawing a scientific conclusion as to what specifically was causing the achievement gaps. Researchers did postulate that, generally speaking, poorer parents may not have the time or resources to spend playing with their children in stimulating ways.

What I’d like to know is: among poor kids, was there more variance between identical twins than there was between identical twins of the rich kids, or was there simply less variance between fraternal twins in poor kids than there was in rich ones? I’ll have to dig a bit deeper.

Downfall Parody on Palin….not the usual scene

I know that some don’t like the Downfall parodies but I do. This one is on Sarah Palin, and not the usual clip.

Bill Maher: O’Reilly ‘unpatriotic’ in his Obama interview | Raw Story

Bill Maher: O’Reilly ‘unpatriotic’ in his Obama…, posted with vodpod

Why do so many Americans Distrust Science?

I got the idea to write this article after reading this article (via facebook):

Although it may seem like old news, science and the teaching of science remains under attack in many parts of the country. This “anti-scientifism” is costing the United States dearly.

A country that distrusts science is condemned to move straight back to medieval obscurantism.

While many countries are working hard to educate their young about the values of science and of scientific research, in the U.S. countless people are teaching them to mistrust science and scientists, taking every opportunity to politicize and theologize the scientific discourse in ways completely incompatible with the goals and modus operandi of the scientific enterprise.

Now, many will say that they are not anti-science per se, just against the science that clashes with their religious beliefs. So, antibiotics are fine, but the theory of evolution is not. If only they’d take the time to learn about how antibiotics work and about how over-prescribing can result in germ mutations that render some antibiotics ineffective. It’s is a real-time illustration of the theory of evolution at work.

Or take the statement made by Bill O’Reilly, that my co-blogger Adam Frank posted here yesterday, concerning the tides and the existence of the moon. Can a man living in the 21st century, and with enormous media clout, actually state that God put the moon around the Earth to promote the tides? Apparently, yes [...]

Ok, anyone who has read even part of what I have to say knows that I am no fan of religion and yes, religion bears a good deal of blame. But it doesn’t bear ALL of it.

1. Of course, creationism is nonsense. But creationism, though harmful, is far from the whole story in the United States. To see this, check out the religious education programs in, say, almost any Unitarian Universalist Church in the country. You are likely to find programs which discuss things like astrology, dousing, Reiki, and homeopathy. Those who dismiss such things as crackpot nonsense are themselves dismissed as being “close minded”. Woo comes in several forms and not every form of woo is from fundamentalist religion.

2. Science reporting is often terrible, especially in the mainstream media. Often, the headlines scream out things like “X is good for you” when, in fact, they are reporting on a (sometimes non-replicated) study which found that in a double blind study, people in category A who did X showed a statistically significant improvement over those who didn’t do X”. What is missing is that the result was narrow (only applies to those in category A), applies to one aspect and that the p-value of the test was, say, .03 (which means that, even if treatment X had no effect at all, there was a 3 percent chance that you’d see improvement at this level just due to randomness).

Consequently, when another story comes out that either fails to replicate the results, or perhaps does the test on people not in category A, or perhaps looks at another aspect of well being, the headlines might say “X has no effect” or “X is bad for you”. The confused lay-person throws up their hands and says “I wish that THEY would make up their minds.”. In the process, some trust in science is improperly eroded.

3. It is often the case that science results are properly understood in terms that even most educated people don’t understand. I’ll give you a classic example: remember the report about mammograms for asymptomatic women in their 40′s? The result of the report was that a positive reading on such a test was far more likely to be a false positive than a true positive; that is, giving a test to such a woman would, in essence, provide no new information. But it would expose thousands to radiation doses and it would cause much unnecessary anxiety and that the problems induced by the anxiety and the radiation doses would induce more harm than the mammograms would prevent! (here are some related articles: here, here)

But how were these studies received?

Bottom line: I am skeptical that much of the public can be brought to the point to where they can understand such results.

Sure, there are times when science gets it wrong, and there are times when scientists lie and cheat. But those times are fairly rare.

I don’t know what the answer is, and frankly, I doubt if there IS an answer, at least in the United States. Remember we are a country in which everyone thinks that they are smarter than average.

Good luck getting people to trust science more than their “common sense” and superstitions.

9 February 2011 am

Workout notes
5 miles of: 10 minutes of walking, 20 minutes of run 1, walk 1, 18 minutes of run 5, walk 1, 12 minutes of running.
Total was just over 5 miles in an hour.

Yes, the workout was more or less a glorified warm-up, but it got me sweaty and it worked the lungs; the walk breaks were to remind me to use a running motion when I “ran”.

I admit that I am a bit tired.

Posts
Science marches on; here is an advance in medicine:

A new study finds that many women with early breast cancer do not need a painful procedure that has long been routine: removal of cancerous lymph nodes from the armpit.

The discovery turns standard medical practice on its head. Surgeons have been removing lymph nodes from under the arms of breast cancer patients for 100 years, believing it would prolong women’s lives by keeping the cancer from spreading or coming back.

Now, researchers report that for women who meet certain criteria — about 20 percent of patients, or 40,000 women a year in the United States — taking out cancerous nodes has no advantage. It does not change the treatment plan, improve survival or make the cancer less likely to recur. And it can cause complications like infection and lymphedema, a chronic swelling in the arm that ranges from mild to disabling.

Removing the cancerous lymph nodes proved unnecessary because the women in the study had chemotherapy and radiation, which probably wiped out any disease in the nodes, the researchers said. Those treatments are now standard for women with breast cancer in the lymph nodes, based on the realization that once the disease reaches the nodes, it has the potential to spread to vital organs and cannot be eliminated by surgery alone.

Experts say that the new findings, combined with similar ones from earlier studies, should change medical practice for many patients. Some centers have already acted on the new information. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan changed its practice in September, because doctors knew the study results before they were published. But more widespread change may take time, experts say, because the belief in removing nodes is so deeply ingrained.

“This is such a radical change in thought that it’s been hard for many people to get their heads around it,” said Dr. Monica Morrow, chief of the breast service at Sloan-Kettering and an author of the study, which is being published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The National Cancer Institute paid for the study. [...]

This shows the value of such research; some pain and suffering is unnecessary. So while this research might not lead to a greater survival rate, it might lead to less suffering, which is a good thing.

Politics Some issues don’t split down “left-right”; some provisions of the Patriot Act failed to get the needed 2/3′rds majority to advance under expedited rules; it turns out that many Democrats and some “tea party” Republicans voted the same way. I agree with those voting “no”.

8 February 2011: Asteroids, Sarah Palin, Hooters, Snow, Smoking, Creationism and Fractals

Peoria Problems I know that I joke about the bad winter that we are having. But this is a real problem that could have tragic consequences:

PEORIA —

After a four-day hiatus from classrooms, students at District 150 – as well as many other area schools – were back at it Monday.

But with snow piled high on the sides of streets, at street corners and covering sidewalks, thousands of students are now walking in city streets to get to school or bus stops.

“Until it melts, the snow is going to be an ongoing problem,” Chris Coplan, a District 150 spokesman said Monday, making a plea to motorists and residents to keep a watchful eye for students. “We just ask that people drive slow and if possible clear a safe place kids can stand (while waiting for buses).

“Obviously, where a lot of the snow is piling up is at corners, impairing vision and where a lot of bus stops are located.”

No incidents were reported Monday, though clearly children were vying for the same snow-cleared space as cars and trucks after school. A school bus and car did collide near Virginia and Missouri streets in the afternoon. No injuries were reported.

Remember we aren’t talking about, say, a foot or so of snow that you can trudge through with boots. We are talking about huge piles 3 or 4 feet deep in places; you simply can’t walk though these.

Yes, I went out and cleared my walk, even after the “to the curb” plows buried them. Yes, I sounded like a soundtrack from The Exorcist when I shoveled but I got it done. But on our block, our house is one of TWO that have shoveled walks; then again most of the houses are rented to snowflakes (aka “college students”).

This brings us to a topic that I sometimes think about: “change”. When I hear that our university is making “improvements” I cringe. Why? Well, we just went through some massive remodeling. The good: our building no longer has leaky ceiling tiles (leaking from the pipes overhead). The bad: they took out classrooms from our building; hence we teach many classes in other buildings; that can be tough when you have 2-3 in a row. They also put in annoying whiteboards and took out chalkboards (which most math professors prefer).

They good: the new gym and pool is outstanding. The bad: the construction closed off a road, hence our formerly low-traffic road became a more major thoroughfare making it harder to walk. They also closed my former shortcut…not a big deal during good weather but during this crap fest of a winter it makes for a miserable slog over icy roads.

Articles
President Obama has had some success with quitting smoking! Now it is your turn, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps President Obama can sponsor Speaker Boehner during the next American Smoke Out.

Republicans
I thought that Sarah Palin shot herself in the foot with her awful “Arizona Shooting” speech. Now there are some rumblings that she really doesn’t have a realistic shot at the GOP nomination in 2012. Though those rumblings might be wrong (remember that many thought that John McCain’s campaign ended soon after it started?), I fear that they are not. I was really looking forward to the Obama vs. Palin campaign for 2012; it would have been a ton of fun.

This doesn’t mean that we won’t have Republicans keeping us in stitches. There is still Christine O’Donnell who is starting a “keep an eye on the liberal groups” PAC. Yes, THIS Christine O’Donnell:

Then there is the GOP state lawmaker from Tennessee who credits Hooters for her success in politics.

The comedy remains…though a Palin presidential campaign would have been fun.

Science
Well, the creationism intellectual virus continues to infest our high school science classrooms. At least some of the high school kids might be able to grow out of it.

Speaking of science a “near earth asteroid” is discussed here:

Yes, NASA is aware and says this:

FUTURE

The future for Apophis on Friday, April 13 of 2029 includes an approach to Earth no closer than 29,470 km (18,300 miles, or 5.6 Earth radii from the center, or 4.6 Earth-radii from the surface) over the mid-Atlantic, appearing to the naked eye as a moderately bright point of light moving rapidly across the sky. Depending on its mechanical nature, it could experience shape or spin-state alteration due to tidal forces caused by Earth’s gravity field.

This is within the distance of Earth’s geosynchronous satellites. However, because Apophis will pass interior to the positions of these satellites at closest approach, in a plane inclined at 40 degrees to the Earth’s equator and passing outside the equatorial geosynchronous zone when crossing the equatorial plane, it does not threaten the satellites in that heavily populated region.

Using criteria developed in this research, new measurements possible in 2013 (if not 2011) will likely confirm that in 2036 Apophis will quietly pass more than 49 million km (30.5 million miles; 0.32 AU) from Earth on Easter Sunday of that year (April 13).

But, this is worth keeping an eye on.

Mathematics The ideas of fractals (dynamical systems) have been used to make astounding progress in number theory. Math lovers will enjoy this article:

Ramanujan’s statement concerned the deceptively simple concept of partitions—the different ways in which a whole number can be subdivided into smaller numbers. Ken Ono of Emory University and his collaborators have now figured out new ways of counting all possible partitions, and found that the results form fractals—namely, structures in which patterns or shapes repeat identically at multiple different scales. “The fractal theory we’ve discovered completely answers Ramanujan’s enigmatic statement,” Ono says. The problems his team cracked were seen as holy grails of number theory, and its solutions may have repercussions throughout mathematics.

One way to think of partitions is to consider how a set of any (indistinguishable) objects can be divided into subsets. For example, if you need to store five boxes in your basement, you can pile them all into a single stack; lay them individually on the floor as five subsets containing one box apiece; put them in one pile, or subset, of three plus one pile of two; and so on—you have a total of 7 options:

5, 1+1+1+1+1, 1+1+1+2, 1+1+3, 1+4, 1+2+2 or 2+3.

Mathematicians express this by saying p(5) = 7, where p is short for partition. For the number 6 there are 11 options: p(6) = 11. As the number n increases, p(n) soon starts to grow very fast, so that for example p(100) = 190,569,292 and p(1,000) is a 32-figure number. (The WolframAlpha knowledge engine calculates partitions for numbers as large as one million.)

The concept is so basic and fundamental that it is central to number theory and pops up in most other fields of math as well. Mathematicians have long known that the sequence of numbers made by the p(n)’s for all values of n is far from being random. Ramanujan and others after him found formulas to predict the value of any p(n) with good approximation, for example. And general “recursive” formulas have long existed to calculate p(n), but they don’t speed up calculations very much because to find p(n) you first need to know p(n – 1), p(n – 2) and so on. “That’s impractical even with the help of a computer today,” Ono says.

Surf to the article to see what was done; it is interesting.

8 February 2011 freezing edition

Workout notes Yoga; it was a very shabby effort on my part. Then Lynn took me home and I went to Bradley to lift:

Squats (Smith machine) 20 x 45, 10 x 135, 6 x 185,
Squats (free) 10 x 135, 10 x 155
Incline press: 10 x 115, 10 x 125, 7 x 135
curls: 15 x ? (barbell), 15 x 20, 15 x 20 dumbbells
pull downs: 3 sets of 10 x 120
rows: 10 x 190, 10 x 200, 10 x 200
Sit ups: 4 sets of 25 (incline from 1 to 4)
(note: the “high incline sit ups NEVER get easier!)
walk: 4 miles in 50:54 (12:50, 12:42, 12:45, 12:37)
hip hikes, back exercises
Exercise ball hamstring exercises (3 sets of 10)

On a positive note: my back is feeling better and the piriformis issue is clearing up and the shoulder is getting better. I am beginning to think of training again….but right now it is just a thought. Maybe by this summer I’ll actually be able to TRAIN? Maybe?

Posts
Darwin award?

see more funny videos

Mathematics and statistics:
Here is an article about the potential pitfalls of using statistical measures to detect bias. If you have had a stats class, the ideas are easy to summarize: suppose you had two groups of people who take a standardized test; the mean for group A is 980 and the mean for group B is 1000. Also suppose that the standard deviation is 100. Then suppose the cut-off for, say, an “elite score” on the test is 1300. Then out of 10000 people, 13 from group B will meet the standard but only 7 from group A; that is, a 20 point difference in the mean leads to an 85 percent increase in the number of those scoring “elite”.

Ideas true, academics tend to be liberals and scientists dramatically so. But that doesn’t mean that we need an affirmative action program for conservatives. Paul Krugman has some fun with this:

Ideologies have a real effect on overall life outlook, which has a direct impact on job choices. Military officers are much more conservative than the population at large; so? (And funny how you don’t see opinion pieces screaming “bias” and demanding an effort to redress the imbalance.)

It’s particularly troubling to apply some test of equal representation when you’re looking at academics who do research on the very subjects that define the political divide. Biologists, physicists, and chemists are all predominantly liberal; does this reflect discrimination, or the tendency of people who actually know science to reject a political tendency that denies climate change and is broadly hostile to the theory of evolution?

Now, I don’t mean to say that political bias in the academy is absent, although it’s not consistent: I can well imagine that it’s hard to be a conservative in some social sciences, but in economics, the obvious bias in things like acceptance of papers at major journals is towards, not against, a doctrinaire free-market view. But the point is that doing head counts is a terrible way to assess that bias.

Teaching Of course, I am a strong supporter of President Obama, but I am a bit worried that he is falling for bad idea in terms of education. Sure, I don’t like it that we sometimes have idiots who earn teaching certificates; we certainly do. And yes, in this crappy economy, any job is a good job. But if we continue to make teaching an unattractive job, we won’t attract the best talent. Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub can fill you in a bit more; I highly recommend reading his blog post.

Don’t “Wanna” Go Out…..