The facts in this story prove yet again that, in science at least, truth is often stranger than fiction.

I had heard previously of applying this new microbial science as a potential new forensic tool. (CSI needs something new-they use the same human DNA tests every episode.) In this application, they would utilize the trail of microbes we leave behind as tool for identifying criminals. Think living, microbial fingerprints. Here’s an article about microbe fingerprints. (Bonus, the article is written for kids. Kids need science for their futures, and science needs kids for its future.)

I would not be surprised if the link grows stronger between underexposure to bacteria during childhood (too many antibiotics and not enough dirt) and the occurrence of allergies and asthma.

Here are a few excerpts from the NYT article:

“We have over 10 times more microbes than human cells in our bodies,” said George Weinstock of Washington University in St. Louis.

…

The new surveys are helping scientists understand the many ecosystems our bodies offer microbes. In the mouth alone, Dr. Relman estimates, there are between 500 and 1,000 species. “It hasn’t reached a plateau yet: the more people you look at, the more species you get,” he said. The mouth in turn is divided up into smaller ecosystems, like the tongue, the gums, the teeth. Each tooth-and even each side of each tooth-has a different combination of species.

…

Lungs have traditionally been considered to be sterile because microbiologists have never been able to rear microbes from them. A team of scientists at Imperial College London recently went hunting for DNA instead. Analyzing lung samples from healthy volunteers, they discovered 128 species of bacteria. Every square centimeter of our lungs is home to 2,000 microbes.

…

Out of the 500 to 1,000 species of microbes identified in people’s mouths, for example, only about 100 to 200 live in any one person’s mouth at any given moment. Only 13 percent of the species on two people’s hands are the same. Only 17 percent of the species living on one person’s left hand also live on the right one.

…

In addition to helping us digest, the microbiome helps us in many other ways. The microbes in our nose, for example, make antibiotics that can kill the dangerous pathogens we sniff. Our bodies wait for signals from microbes in order to fully develop. When scientists rear mice without any germ in their bodies, the mice end up with stunted intestines.

…

Caesarean sections have also been linked to an increase in asthma and allergies in children. So have the increased use of antibiotics in the United States and other developed countries. Children who live on farms – where they can get a healthy dose of microbes from the soil – are less prone to getting autoimmune disorders than children who grow up in cities.

via How Microbes Defend and Define Us from NYTimes.com

In a study published in May in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, they reported that, to no one’s surprise, the men who sat the most had the greatest risk of heart problems. Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars as passengers or as drivers had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less. What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised. Quite a few of them said they did so regularly and led active lifestyles. The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting.

via Phys Ed: The Men Who Stare at Screens – Well Blog – NYTimes.com

I’m an active person. I enjoy running, cycling, and hiking. But maybe those mobile activities just aren’t enough to keep me safe from the 8+ hours I spend 5 days a week sitting at my desk in the office. I’m not alone–the desk job seems to be the default job in the U.S. in the 21st century.

So, how do we continue to reap the rewards of our technologically advanced, service-based economy, without slowly killing ourselves in the process?

Dr. James Levine, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic, has one possible solution: the treadmill desk.

In 2005, Dr. Levine led a study showing that lean people burn about 350 more calories a day than those who are overweight, by doing ordinary things like fidgeting, pacing or walking to the copier.

To incorporate extra movement into the routines of sedentary workers (himself included), Dr. Levine constructed a treadmill desk by sliding a bedside hospital tray over a $400 treadmill.

Without breaking a sweat, the so-called work-walker can burn an estimated 100 to 130 calories an hour at speeds slower than two miles an hour, Mayo research shows.

via I Put In 5 Miles at the Office – NYTimes.com

Work-walker? I want to be a work-walker. Not only would it be good for my heart and muscles, but it will keep me more-awake after lunch and add variety to my posture position. Sitting hunched over a keyboard for so many hours is terrible for my back and shoulders. Reports also say that walking helps avoid A.D.D.-like distraction.

Now, would I $400o for a Walkstation? No way. Besides the fact that the name sounds like a Sony gas station, that’s way too much for a desk.

Instead, I’m going to pick up a treadmill of Craigslist and attach a desk myself. I already paid for a mechanical engineering degree, anyway. Hell, an engineering degree is practically a license to be a cheap-o and build my own stuff from scratch.

Typing while walking on a treadmill–much safer than texting while walking across a street!

Well, when you skydive from 22.7 miles above the earth, it turns out you have time for 6 minutes of life flashing before your eyes.

I’ve got a lot of living left to do; I’m not sure there are six minutes of highlights from my life worthy for that montage.

Six minutes is more like a short film, or an infomercial, than it is any fleeting vision of memories past.

But Felix Baumgartner, the Austian lunatic who will attempt this record-breaking skydive, is an adventurous guy, so six minutes shouldn’t be a problem for him.

Excerpt:

Baumgartner, who became the first person to cross the English Channel in freefall in 2003, will be lofted to a height of 36,575 metres in a helium balloon. After floating up for roughly three hours, he will open the door of a 1-tonne pressurised capsule, grab the handrails on either side of the exit, and step off, potentially breaking records for the highest parachute jump, as well as the fastest and longest freefall.

He will face extreme peril. He should reach supersonic speeds 35 seconds after he jumps, and the resulting shock wave “is a big concern”, the project’s technical director, Art Thompson, said at a press briefing on Friday. “In early aircraft development, they thought it was a wall they couldn’t pass without breaking apart. In our case, the vehicle is flesh and blood, and he’ll be exposed to some extreme forces.”

Still, project medical director Jonathan Clark noted there has been one known instance of a pilot surviving the destruction of a plane at three times the speed of sound. “We know it’s not just theoretically possible, it’s possible,” he said.

After falling for about six minutes, Baumgartner should open his parachute at roughly 1520 metres.

The jump height is above a threshold at 19,000 metres called the Armstrong line, where the atmospheric pressure is so low that fluids start to boil. “If he opens up his face mask or the suit, all the gases in your body go out of suspension, so you literally turn into a giant fizzy, oozing fluid from your eyes and mouth, like something out of a horror film,” Thompson explained. “It’s just seconds until death.”

via ‘Space diver’ to attempt first supersonic freefall – space – 22 January 2010 – New Scientist.

Apparently DARPA is funding research to develop a synthetic “black ice” that can be deployed to keep the enemy from following them, you know, across narrow bridges. Think of it as a very high-tech banana peel from Mario Kart.

From DARPA:

The unrestricted mobility of enemy forces in the crowded urban battlespace severely reduces the effectiveness of military and peacekeeping operations. This, coupled with difficulties in the identification of adversaries amongst the local populace, creates a dangerous environment that risks coalition and civilian casualties. In response to this challenge, DSO is developing the Polymer Ice Program, which aims to replicate the properties of “black ice” for use in a broad range of hot, arid environments as found in the Middle East. The polymer-based artificial ice material will achieve effective mobility control by the precise and reversible reduction of ground traction. A nontoxic reversal agent will also be developed for both man and machine to achieve instantaneous traction restoration on contact. Polymer Ice will ideally provide asymmetric mobility capabilities to our warfighters while adversary mobility is simultaneously severely restricted.

via Defense Sciences Office – Polymer Ice.

From the BBC:

In a document published on the agency’s website, officials point out that “to get from point A to point B, one must have sufficient traction with the ground”.

Darpa believes a polymer-based compound could replicate the properties of black ice – a thin, translucent slippery coating, typically found on roads in winter – to reduce traction.

The agency’s wish list for the “Mobility Control System” includes the polymer ice or raw materials to produce it very quickly, a spray-on reversal agent and a means to clean the ice up.

“Such a system will provide unprecedented situational control and sustained operational tempo,” said Darpa.

“It would degrade the ability of our adversaries to shoot and chase us.”

via US military looks to ‘black ice’.

Well, novel if you don’t count the fact that evolution invented this technique first.

A company called Carbozyme is finishing lab tests to mimic the method used by our bodies for transporting CO2 by applying it to the challenge of capturing and sequestering CO2 from coal power plants.

As cells pump CO2 produced during respiration into the blood, the enzyme carbonic anhydrase converts the gas into bicarbonate for easier transport to the lungs. There the same enzyme works in reverse, turning the molecules back into the CO2 gas you exhale. This action could play the critical role of selectively capturing CO2 from mixed gas emissions for later sequestration.

The company Carbozyme is finishing up lab tests of a system that consists of millions of microscale, porous tubes coated with a synthetic version of the enzyme. As a mixture of smokestack gases passes through the tubes, the enzyme pulls CO₂ from the mix and turns it into bicarbonate and back, isolating CO₂ so it could be pumped underground and stored in layers of basalt rock. Based on lab tests and models, the system should use about a third less energy than other methods while avoiding the hazardous chemicals typically used to grab CO₂.

via Human Blood May Hold the Secret to Clean Coal | Popular Science.

So cool. Don’t give up on this challenge just yet.

For example, take a simple-sounding question like, “How much energy is required to produce a ton of iron?”

This is a relatively straightforward analysis if the scope of energy usage includes only the iron plant. You count the fuel and electricity going in; you count the iron coming out. Divide the former by the latter and badda-bing. Done.

But what about the energy consumed to mine the iron ore out of the ground? And to transport the ore to the iron plant? And to transport the iron from the plant to its destination? And to mine the coal out of the ground? And to convert the coal to coke? And to manufacture the bulldozers and trucks that mine the coal and ore? And to manufacture the steel that goes into the equipment? Now we’re back to iron, again. We’re not close to done and we’ve already tied ourselves in a knot.

In practical terms, it’s impossible to include all the factors in an energy analysis like this. At some point, the analyst has to draw an arbitrary line and say, “Good enough.” Hopefully, this line is drawn in a place where the ignored factors constitute an insignificant percentage of the total result.

A recent report from the National Research Council tries to expand the scope of the analysis of energy costs. It takes into consideration the health impacts of energy use, which are rarely specified in quantitative terms.

By design, this report does not include the costs of energy use in terms of climate change, but that is a beast of a study on its own. Analyzing climate change costs requires forecasting the future, while this report is based on historical data.

The report also ignores the national security costs of energy use. I understand why this is hard to measure, but it should definitely not be ignored. What is the cost of wars over control of the terrorist-riddled oil-producing nations that we are dependent upon for importing petroleum, both in dollar terms and in lives lost?

Food price increases are not considered, either. What is the cost, particularly to the poorest in the world, of using food crops to produce ethanol? An economist could, if necessary, produce a figure tying these figures together. “Malnutrition deaths per gallon”, perhaps.

Nonetheless, this is a valuable report that will hopefully illuminate for many the hidden costs of our energy use. Understanding these costs allows us to make better-informed decisions, considering all the benefits and pitfalls before creating unforeseen negative side effects.

Don’t forget the importance of scope. It’s always a bigger picture than you can imagine.

Excerpt:

“Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use,” a new report from the National Research Council, a branch of the National Academies, tries to put a dollar figure on what economists call externalities.

The study, however, comes with a major caveat: it did not look at the impact of energy on climate change and ecosystems, or at rising food prices and the risks to national security.

Still, the report, which was requested by Congress in 2005, estimated that the hidden cost of energy on human health was $120 billion in 2005, the last year for which full data was available.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest contributors to these extra costs were coal-fired power plants, which generate half of the nation’s power but which also accounted for $62 billion in hidden damages associated with the emissions of pollutants like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, and particulate matter like soot or fine dust.

The report also found that in 2005 the vehicle sector produced $56 billion in health and other non-climate-change damages, with $36 billion from light-duty vehicles and $20 billion from heavy-duty vehicles.

via Report Shows Hidden Costs of Energy – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com.

In essence, cheaper CCS will produce a greater volume of carbon credits, thereby dropping the price of the credits supply-and-demand-style.

Hopefully this reevaluation of the costs of capping carbon emissions will give a helping hand to cap and trade regulations that have yet to reach the Senate floor.

Excerpt:

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — There’s good news for supporters of the Waxman-Markey climate bill from Professor Stefan Reichelstein. Although passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June 2009, the bill is expected to spur a contentious debate in the Senate starting this fall. Opponents argue that the bill’s proposed “cap-and-trade” system will take a high financial toll on energy consumers and companies alike, and devastate the economy at a time the country can least afford it.

Reichelstein and doctoral student Ozge Islegen believe they have evidence to the contrary. Reichelstein and Islegen have examined the financial impact of regulating coal-fired power plants that produce carbon dioxide emissions under a cap-and-trade system and found the financial burden to be much less than previously projected.

via Reducing CO2 Emissions Could Be Significantly Less Costly Than Predicted.

Excerpt:

If all this talk of moon bombing has you curious about space exploration, you’re in luck: National Geographic recently produced this astonishingly elegant map of every space exploration in the last 50 years. Every. Single. One. (If you’re annoyed by that zoomable map, you can view a large version here or here.)

The trick lies in the graphing system itself: What looks like arbitrary squiggles from afar is actually a record of the path traced by various missions. In turn, these become a handy chart of the places we’ve visited most frequently–our moon leads at 73 missions, followed by Venus at 43 and Mars at 40.

via 50 Years, 200 Missions: Flybys, Gravity Assists, Asteroid Touchdowns Mapped Out | Design & Innovation | Fast Company.

Climate bankruptcy would not be so benign. How much is saving the lives of billions of people worth?

Another study has been released which estimates the cost of long-term climate change mitigation is not that high, with figures in this case of only 1 to 3 percent of GDP.

“The net cost to U.S. households and the economy looks to be pretty small,” said Frank Ackerman, a professor at Tufts University and a senior economist with the Stockholm Environmental Institute, in a recent interview with Green Inc.

He suggested that the 1 percent to 3 percent estimate was akin to one year of foregone economic growth in the United States.

The article:

A group of eight leading climate economists has a message for United States senators now considering a bill to cap emissions: don’t think of long-term mitigation costs as a massive expenditure, but rather a form of reasonably-priced “planetary climate insurance.”

via The Economics of Climate Stabilization – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com.

How about we slip some science education reform into the health care reform bill before passing that baby through Congress?

From MediaMatters:

The Truth Is Out There

As health insurance reform makes its way through congress, it’s easy to observe the partisan fighting in Washington and believe the country is deeply divided over a “public option.”

Luckily, that is not the case. Americans love choices. They want the opportunity to choose to purchase a public health insurance plan.

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that 65% favored a public option, with only 26% opposed to it.

To put that number in perspective: a 2007 Associated Press/Ipsos poll found that 34% of Americans believe in UFOs.

It speaks volumes about the status of the health care debate among the public when it is more mainstream to believe aliens are flying around in spaceships than to oppose the public option.

The people of this country have spoken. It’s time Washington listened.

via More Americans Believe In UFOs Than Oppose A Public Option | Media Matters Action Network.

Why is the Chamber so opposed to our nation taking action to prevent further climate change? According to at least 3 major reports, a green economy will create a net number of new jobs, anywhere from 3 to 30 million, depending on your source.

All these new green businesses are just the kind of company that should find friends in a chamber of commerce. But something tells me the clean tech industry and the Chamber don’t see eye to eye today.

Excerpt:

A new report released today says that if we shift our economy — to a greener, low-carbon economy — we will have more jobs, not fewer.

Earlier this week, Tony Blair (former prime minister of the UK) and the Climate Group reported that if we worked to avoid climate change we’d create 10 million new jobs by 2020 — worldwide. Another recent study by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council says that such a shift could increase employment in the EU by 2.7 million jobs by 2030.

One more report, released today by the Global Climate Network (an alliance of nine influential think tanks) comes to similar conclusions.

via Green Economy = More Jobs : CleanTechnica.

I have included below the text from a PDF document attached to an online course, BCH 5045 – Graduate Survey of Biochemistry, at the University of Florida. I assume it was written by the course’s instructor, Dr. Charles Guy.

http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/teach/guyweb/bch5045/Vampires%20and%20Biochemistry.pdf

Vampires and Biochemistry

Perhaps you are a fan of Twilight the movie or the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, or True Blood the television drama series created and produced by Alan Ball, based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris. Vampires with their frightening appearance and unusual powers and weaknesses can cause one to pause and question how this is possible. Can this mythicalogical being brought to life in Dracula, the 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, featuring as its primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula, have any basis in reality? Is there any connection to what we know about biological systems that could explain vampirism? I doubt that you would be surprised if I said yes, since this is a biochemistry course website.

Although I am no expert on the vampire mythology or the speculative scientific explanations, there are a few possibilities that others have proposed. Perhaps the most robust explanation is that the vampirism is based on the viral disease rabies (Gomez, 1982; 1992; 1998). The vampire folklore originated in Central Europe in the latter half of the 18th century where injuries caused by rabid dogs and wolves was common (Theodorides 1986). At this time, Eastern Europe was rife with claims of vampire sightings. The 3-dimensional structure of the rabies virus nucleoprotein-RNA complex is shown to the right, and what an incredibly amazing structure it has.

Perhaps the most defining characteristic of a vampire is the biting of its human victim. This affirms the fact that a vampire is a living being, and as such he or she becomes inclined to bite those around them and not only to feed on a victim’s blood, but potentially spread the disease that has already infected them (Theodorides 1998). This is strikingly similar to what can occur when rabies has been transmitted to a person. Disease symptoms include cerebral dysfunction, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, paranoia and a terror progressing to delirium. Large quantities of saliva and tears are produced, and difficulty swallowing stemming from throat and jaw paralysis causes panic when the person cannot drink or quench his or her thirst. Who hasn’t heard of rabid animals indiscriminately attacking and biting someone?

Dr. David H. Dolphin in a lecture at an AAAS meeting is attributed to have proposed an alternative explanation for the vampire myth that werewolves and vampires may have been based on people suffering from a rare class of genetic diseases known as porphyrias. He suggested that characteristics commonly associated with vampirism such as protruding teeth, avoidance of sunlight, drinking blood, and disfigurement could have been the symptoms of people with a porphyria. Porphyrias are a group of rare genetic diseases that primarily manifest their effects in blood as a result of a defect in the production and synthesis of the heme prosthetic group in hemoglobin (Cox 1995). Symptoms of the disorder porphyria cutanea tarda include disfigurement by light-induced blisters that can cause scarring and skin discoloration. In severe cases, excessive hair growth on the face and hands, gum degeneration, and neurological disorders can occur. Those suffering from a porphyria must avoid the sun and some compounds that can exacerbate the symptoms, including certain metabolites that accumulate in, you guessed it, garlic. Repeated blood transfusions can be required to treat the disease.

Porphyria cutanea tarda results from a dominant mutation in the gene encoding the enzyme urophopyrinogen decarboxylase (Taylor 1998). This enzyme catalyzes the fifth step in the porphyrin biosynthetic pathway that produces precursors for the synthesis of heme-containing molecules. Mutant skin cells accumulate uroporphyrinogen, the enzyme’s immediate precursor. Uroporphyrinogen when illuminated by light will become highly reactive and begin transferring electrons to molecular oxygen. The resulting production and accumulation of reactive oxygen species will cause extensive damage to skin cells and can kill them.

Hampl and Hampl (1997) have suggested that a deficiency of niacin and tryptophan could produce symptoms compatible with being the basis for the vampire myth. Pellagra is a vitamin deficiency disease characterized by lack of niacin (vitamin B3) caused by decreased intake of niacin, tryptophan, or possibly leucine. The protein amino acid tryptophan is a precursor of niacin biosynthesis and niacin is a building block of the nicotinamide coenzymes essential for a host of biochemical processes. People suffering from pellagra are hypersensitive to sunlight. The skin of a pellargrin exposed to sunlight becomes red, scaly and marked by hyperkeratosis. Inflammation and edema can occur and lead to depigmented, shiny skin and/or brown scaly areas. Niacin deficiency will also cause brain degeneration and dementia with symptoms that include insomnia, anxiety, unjustified aggression, and depression. Pica can accompany pellagra. Pica is a craving for substances not usually regarded as food such as ice, clay or other crunchy substances. This odd symptom can be a cause of iron deficiency, or a symptom of an iron deficiency in the person who has become anemic. A pellagrin who happens to become extremely anemic because of gastrointestinal bleeding could give the impression of being ‘the living dead’ (Hampl and Hampl 1997).

So there you have it. There could be a connection between the folklore of vampirism, and clinical symptoms of known diseases, or just as likely perhaps not. We will never know for sure, but this little story briefly illustrates how biochemistry can relate to myths and classical literature and suggest interesting possibilities.

Albertini A.A., Wernimont A.K., Muziol T., Ravelli R.B., Clapier C.R., Schoehn G., Weissenhorn W., Ruigrok R.W. (2006) Crystal structure of the rabies virus nucleoprotein-RNA complex. Science 313, 360-363.

COX A.M. 1995. Porphyria and vampirism: another myth in the making. Postgrad. Med. J. 71: 643–644.

Gomez-Alonso J. 1982.Rabia y vampirismo: hiptjtesis sobre una interpretacion medica del vampirismo. Jano (Barcelona) 514: 30-33.

Gomez-Alonso J. Rabia y Vampirismo en la Europa de los Siglos XVIII y XIX. Tesis Doctoral. Madrid: Facultad de Medicina

Gomez-Alonso, J. 1998. Rabies A possible explanation for the vampire legend. Neurology 51: 856-859

Hampl J.S. and Hampl W.S. 1997. Pellagra and the origin of a myth: evidence from European literature and folklore. J. Royal Soc. Med. 90: 636-639.

Taylor, C.B. 1998. Vampire Plants? Plant Cell. 10: 1071-1073.

Theodorides J. 1986. Histoire de la Rage, Cave Canem, Paris: Masson, 78-9

Theodorides J. 1998. Origin of the myth of vampirism. J. Royal Soc. Med. 91: 114.

In fact, there is some concern that the deluge of antibacterial products sold today may have more negative side-effects than positive. For one, the products may lead to the evolution of bacteria resistant to antibacterial formulations. The use of such products may also increase the frequency of allergies in children because the kids are not exposed adequately to naturally occurring bacteria.

Excerpt:

There are some things it is better just not to think about. Like the 10,000 bacteria you inhale with each breath in the average office building. Or the 10 million bacteria in each glass of tap water. Microbiologists have now added something else to the list of things too gross to contemplate: the deluge of bacteria that hit your face and flow deep into your lungs in the morning shower.

via Bathing, but Not Alone – NYTimes.com.

Excerpt:

The clear message Chu took home from China was that its leaders are dead serious about climate change and clean energy. They won’t accept an emissions cap before we do — understandably, since our per capita emissions are still four times higher — but they’re preparing for a carbon-constrained economy. They already have cars that are more fuel-efficient than ours, and they’re developing more-advanced transmission lines. They’re still building a new coal-fired plant almost every week, but two years ago, they were building two of them every week. They’re making a huge push into wind and solar and should be the world’s largest producer of renewables by 2010. “Every Chinese leader I met was absolutely determined to do something about their carbon emissions,” Chu said. “Some U.S. policymakers still don’t think this is a problem.” (Read “One Voice in a Billion: Changing the Climate in China.”)

In fact, GOP leaders have said that global warming is a hoax, that fears about carbon are “almost comical,” that the earth is actually cooling. When I asked Chu about the earth-is-cooling argument, he rolled his eyes and whipped out a chart showing that the 10 hottest years on record have all been in the past 12 years — and that 1998 was the hottest. He mocked the skeptics who focus on that post-1998 blip while ignoring a century-long trend of rising temperatures: “See? It’s gone down! The earth must be cooling!” But then he got serious, almost plaintive: “You know, it’s totally irresponsible. You’re not supposed to make up the facts.”

Welcome to Washington, where a Nobel Prize winner’s opinion is just another opinion, where facts are malleable and sometimes irrelevant. It’s tough to be Mr. Outside in a town where policy happens on the inside. Congress is blocking Chu’s plan to create eight “Bell lablets” to investigate his game changers, along with his efforts to scuttle hydrogen-car research he considers futile. He’s trying to make DOE’s bureaucracy more nimble, but it still pushed less than 1% of its stimulus funds out the door in five months. And while Chu ends speeches with Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote about “the fierce urgency of now” — one of Obama’s favorites — the clean-energy bill is on hold until health care is done. There’s still a broad perception in Washington that dealing with climate change will require sacrifices that Americans won’t tolerate.

The Chinese don’t seem to worry about that. At one point, Chu acknowledged that democracy makes change a lot tougher, although he hastened to add that he’s a big fan of democracy. “We just have to do a better job communicating the facts so the electorate can educate themselves,” he said. Soon he sounded like he was talking to himself again: “Let’s be positive. The facts really do matter to the American people.”

via Steven Chu, A Political Scientist — Printout — TIME.

It is important to also look at the concept of healthcare “rationing” from a global perspective.

Healthcare Rationing: What Price Is A Life?

Was Dick Cheney’s quadruple bypass surgery worth the money?

In the United States healthcare reform is policy wonk talk for changing up the way Americans ration health. Conservatives criticize change in the healthcare status quo as “rationing”. Liberals blithely promise reform will not include “rationing”. Both are fibbing.

Rationing healthcare is what health systems do. No scheme, no government, no insurer, no individual (save perhaps the über-rich) has unlimited money to buy all the healthcare everyone wants.

In America, we ration healthcare by place of employment. If you have a steady job with a large employer, you probably have decent health insurance. If you are self-employed, maybe not.

Vice President Dick Cheney suffered four heart attacks beginning at age 37. Thanks to American socialized medicine for elected officials, Cheney has been cared for at the very best taxpayer-subsidized hospitals. His is a life worth saving.

If Cheney were a poor, young, Latina private housekeeper, most likely he would not have had health insurance when he needed it. And, it is damn certain he would not have gotten any preventive checkups in, no doubt, a “secure, undisclosed location”.

If Mr. Cheney were born in the developing world, he might well have died in infancy. Dr. Donald R. Hopkins, Vice President, The Carter Center, writes, “Children born in most advanced industrialized countries…experience infant mortality rates of 10 per 1,000 live births…and can expect to live an average of more than 70 years. Children born in developing countries…face infant mortality rates of 150 or higher (with) a life expectancy of 50 years or less.”

The cure for measles, a highly contagious disease, has been in use for over 30 years. As a result, measles has been wiped out in the developing world. In poorer countries, measles still infects 30 million people annually, mostly kids.

Would you deny the Vice President, a former heavy smoker, his quadruple bypass surgery (estimated cost: $45,000.00) to pay for inoculating 180,000 children against measles (estimated cost: 25 cents per child)? That is reality of global healthcare rationing.

900,000 poor children are annually sentenced to death because measles inoculations are unavailable (rationed?). Would you spend a quarter to save a child’s life?

via Healthcare Rationing: What Price Is A Life? — Social Edge.

CNN is firing science correspondent Miles O'Brien

But seriously, the root of the problem is that science news does not sell like kidnapped babies news, celebrity news, or holy-crap-the-economy-is-melting news. Journalism is a for-profit business, not a for-the-good-of-the-people business.

I wonder if there is any (scientific) link between a country’s interest in science news and its performance in science and math education?

We often hear how poorly the US performs in science and math education. Is this soft education for youngsters responsible for producing science-illiterate adults? Or is the general distribution of news coverage quite similar across the world, regardless of the prowess of a country’s science education?

I would love to hear more on this, so comment if you have any ideas.

As the New York Times addresses in the recent article “Rivals’ Visions Differ on Unleashing Innovation”, the financial crisis is diverting attention in the upcoming election from the candidates’ science and innovation policies to their approaches for fixing the economy today. Since the media suffers from attention deficit disorder and can only devote coverage to one issue at a time, I’ll use my blog to reach the masses (mini-masses?) and share the importance of innovation to the US’s future.

First, I’ll simplify the process of national innovation to the highest degree possible. Check out this 1st-grade-math graphic I created:

Innovation Math

Let’s break this equation down.

For the US to remain an innovation leader, the country needs money to be spent on research and development combined with talented people to do the work and discover breakthroughs.

Show me the money

Where’s the money come from? It is a combination of government and corporate research investment. If you’d like to compare the Presidential candidates on their technology investment policies, read here. Both candidates support making the federal R&D tax credits permanent, which is important for encouraging corporate investment. But Obama supports significantly more government investment than McCain, and I think Obama has it right. One example: Obama supports the investment of $150 billion over 10 years in developing clean technology.

Many groundbreaking technological advances were achieved on the back of government investment in space, defense, and university basic research — fields like computing and the Internet, medicine and nanotechnology, and transportation technology like RADAR. (Note to avoid angry emails: I didn’t say the government invented the computer, just that its investment advanced the progress.) When there is no clear connection between the basic scientific research and a commercialization opportunity with positive R&D ROI, the government is needed to provide the initial investment. The government then receives its ROI when companies later commercialize the progress in research, create jobs, and pay taxes.

The argument for just how the government should manage this investment in innovation is complicated, so I won’t attempt to solve that problem in this post. However, you can hear some interesting perspectives in this podcast from the journal Nature regarding the upcoming election and national innovation policy. Here are couple takeaways to pique your interest:

• Idea to create a new National Innovation Foundation to holistically manage innovation strategy for the US
• Countries like Taiwan, Japan, China, UK, Germany, and Singapore have national innovation strategies, but the US does not
• Over the past 8 years, the number of computer science graduates in the US has declined by 50%

It’s the people, stupid

Now, let’s move on to the people side of the equation. This is why I really wanted to write this post.

All that money won’t do any good if it isn’t paying and funding the research of talented, educated workers. Undoubtedly, you’ve heard by now horrific statistics, like “China is producing 10 times more engineers than the USA.” While numbers like this might be a stretch — read this article from BusinessWeek about the apples and oranges comparison — there is no doubt that global competitiveness is higher than ever before.

We need to get serious about changing the status quo and take real action to influence youth culture and increase the attractiveness of careers in science and technology. If we want to strengthen national innovation, why don’t we first get innovative with science advocacy? According to the above podcast, there are hundreds of programs across K-12 education advocating science, but let’s face it:

Children and teens are not the most receptive to ideas of what is cool and important coming from the classroom.

Children and teens learn what is popular and desirable from their social relationships with their peers.

These programs aren’t effective enough yet because the marketing is wrong. Let’s look at this problem as a business case study and see if we can find some insight that educators are missing.

(I wrote previously about the importance of science education and strategies for making science interesting in this post. Here, I’ll take a different approach to a similar problem.)

You’re the CEO of a company — let’s call it SciTechSchool Co. — and your business model is this: for every student you encourage to be passionate about science and technology and graduate with a related degree, your company makes $100,000. Woah! What a business opportunity!

(I don’t know what the government’s marginal benefit is for each additional scientist or engineer, but it’s reasonable, if not conservative, to think these people might pay an additional $100k in taxes over their lifetimes.)

Hm… How do you show kids that science is interesting? Do you offer after-school programs to teach them more about science after they’ve had a full day at school already? No, that obviously won’t work.

Maybe, instead of trying to push science at school, you look for ways to slip science into kids’ everyday lives? How do you make science a part of youth social fabric? You make small alterations to what kids are already doing, and without them even recognizing it, they’ll be using science regularly.

Let’s use video games as an example, because we know they garner a lot of youth attention. Say Halo is the game of choice. Want to encourage electrical engineering? Players must fix the virtual wiring in their weapons and suit after being hit before they will work again. Chemical engineering? Players collect chemical components throughout the game and then mix them in precise amounts for regenerative medicine. Mechanical engineering? Players must design their own protective gear and truck armor, balancing strength and weight for the best performance. Computer engineering? Players must program booby traps to capture the enemy, like a knockout gas that is discharged when a sensor detects an intruder.

Video games often involve problem solving by design, all your company needs to do is alter these problems a bit towards science. And this is just one example, the same principle could be applied to other youth pastimes, as well. How about a simple programming language on a mobile phone or a bicycle built for modifications and upgrades?

Let’s change the way we think about science education. If business won’t provide the toys, gear, games, and websites kids need to be science-minded naturally, then let’s create an agency to evaluate and designate “SciTech” products. Then, companies can advertise the benefit to parents, and we let them claim additional tax credits for the development of these products.

It’s due time we get innovative about keeping this country innovative.

The two topics are

my dad

and

science.

Being Father’s Day, I think it’s an appropriate time to give my father the credit he deserves for being a kick-ass dad.

When I think about what I’ve learned from my dad, one of the most important qualities is that of a scientific mind.

What do you mean, a scientific mind?

First, a little background:

My dad, Larry Zach, is a nature lover by, well… nature. His passion for observing, learning about, and being immersed in the outdoors seems to be innate, according to stories my grandma has told me about him wandering off outside alone while still in a diaper.

He would later (far post-diaper) go on to study fish and wildlife biology and teaching at university and become a middle and high school science teacher for 18 years. He is now a full-time wildlife artist.

More important than his titles and training, though, is the way his mind works, and subsequently, the way I’m wired as well.

So now we can continue with the scientific mind stuff. I think a scientific mind is one that views the world with wonder for its intricate, beautiful, and complicated workings, and with excitement for the challenge and satisfaction of understanding how it all works behind the scenes.

From as young an age as I can remember, my dad instilled in me this appreciation for nature and passion for comprehending its function. He took the time to explain how things worked and often asked me if I could figure it out myself first. He was a science teacher by nature, even outside of the classroom.

Now, I didn’t realize he was teaching me science, or to think scientifically about things, when I was a child. But I did know that I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that, if I thought hard about a question, I had a chance of discovering an answer all on my own. I enjoyed that scientific knowledge is democratic and even at a young age would expose itself for me to grasp.

To me, this scientific framework is invaluable, even in day-to-day life. Walking down the aisle of any health store or past any magazine rack is an exercise in scientific reasoning as claims for “melt away the fat!” or “erase wrinkles overnight!” shout out from the packaging. (I will write a full post soon dedicated to marketing BS, one of my greatest business frustrations.)

As soon as I read a claim, my mind is asking questions: “What evidence, and how much, does such a claim require to be proven true?” “Does the company provide any evidence?” “Does this claim fit within my understanding of how the system (the human body, in this example) works?”

Brian Greene wrote recently an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times titled “Put a Little Science in Your Life”. Here’s a short excerpt from that article:

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

Science is a way of life and a perspective on life for me because of my dad. I am one of those “little scientists” Greene mentions who was lucky enough to grow into a big scientist without losing my intrinsic scientific passion.

But, unfortunately, we do quite poorly as a nation in educating our children with the importance and excitement of science. We scare kids and teenagers away from science before we even take the time to show them why it’s important and how it’s fun. This educational “can’t see the forest for the trees” isn’t a problem unique to science, but it does seem to make science particularly frightening for many children.

I’ll continue working with Greene’s analogy to music education. If you were a 3rd grade teacher and your goal was to encourage as many children as possible to appreciate and participate in music, which teaching method do you think would bring you the best results? in other words, when these same kids graduate high school nine years later, will the ones from group A or group B be the most musically active?

A) Start on Day 1 teaching students the most basic music theory. After all, if they’re going to understand music, they need to start at the beginning with the most fundamental principles. What is the staff? Treble and bass clef? Notes and rests?

B) Start on Day 1 by dividing the class up into competing Rock Bands and playing the entertaining video game during class. Show kids through experiences that music need not be intimidating and that it should be fun to create. Teach kids rhythm and pitch while they don’t even realize they’re learning.

I think we can all imagine, having been kids once too, which method would get us more interested in music as something fun and entertaining instead of the scary material of flash cards. (I should mention that I’m not supporting this claim with research-based evidence, so this is only a hypothesis.)

The same principle apply to science education. The world of science is one that is fascinating in its complexity and awe-inspiring in its scale. We’d do our future generations a favor if we came at science education from the perspective of Indiana Jones, using adventures to portray scientific discovery, rather than our sleepy, classic methods memorizing lists from Astronomy to Zoology.

After all, our fundamental task as educators of the next generation of citizens (all of us — not just parents and teachers), isn’t to force kids to learn as much as they can handle, but to get them so excited about learning that they’ll want to do it by their own interests.

We can give children knowledge while they’re in school, and they’ll have about 12 years worth in their heads when they’re done.

Or we can teach children why knowledge is so exciting and empowering, and they’ll yearn for it the rest of their lives.

This is what I learned from my dad, and is a lesson I’ll pass on one day when I have my own “little scientists” running around the yard.

I love you, Dad. Thanks for everything!