Take Two Placebos and Call Me in the Morning

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Chris Zach

You’ve probably heard the results of many studies where pharmaceutical company’s hopes and dreams and tens-of-millions-of-dollars-investments are extinguished before they wake by the placebo effect.

Well, Sugapil is here to fill the void created by those stillborn dream drugs. With sugar pills.

It’s such a relief to see honesty in marketing.

From Sugapil.com:

Harness the power of your mind.

Sugapil©-like placebo has been shown to work effectively in hundreds of randomised control trials.

Most recently Sugapil©-like placebo was shown to help 60.1% of patients suffering from painful knee arthritis(1).

via Sugapil – harness the power of your mind.

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Thanks, NPR: The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Chris Zach

Thanks to NPR for bringing some mainstream attention to the lack of dynamic range in pop music today.

Have you ever heard a pianissimo on the radio? Nope. How can a song build to a rewarding musical climax without crescendo?

A Visual History of Loudness

As we come to the end of the decade, we turn to one of the more dramatic changes we’ve heard in music over those 10 years: It seems to have gotten louder.We’re talking about compression here, the dynamic compression that’s used a lot in popular music. There’s actually another kind of compression going on today — one that allows us to carry hundreds of songs in our iPods. More on that in a minute.

But first, host Robert Siegel talked to Bob Ludwig, a record mastering engineer. For more than 40 years, he’s been the final ear in the audio chain for albums running from Jimi Hendrix to Radiohead, from Tony Bennett to Kronos Quartet.

Bob pointed to a YouTube video titled The Loudness War. The video uses Paul McCartney’s 1989 song “Figure of Eight” as an example, comparing its original recording with what a modern engineer might do with it.

“It really no longer sounds like a snare drum with a very sharp attack,” Ludwig says. “It sounds more like somebody padding on a piece of leather or something like that,” Ludwig says. He’s referring to the practice of using compressors to squash the music, making the quiet parts louder and the loud parts a little quieter, so it jumps out of your radio or iPod.

Ludwig says the “Loudness War” came to a head last year with the release of Metallica’s album Death Magnetic.

“It came out simultaneously to the fans as [a version on] Guitar Hero and the final CD,” Ludwig says. “And the Guitar Hero doesn’t have all the digital domain compression that the CD had. So the fans were able to hear what it could have been before this compression.”

According to Ludwig, 10,000 or more fans signed an online petition to get the band to remix the record.

“That record is so loud that there is an outfit in Europe called ITU [International Telecommunication Union] that now has standardization measurements for long-term loudness,” he says. “And that Metallica record is one of the loudest records ever produced.”

via The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse : NPR.

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Xmas Light Geek Hero

Posted on December 14, 2009 by Chris Zach

With my engineering roots, I can’t resist occasionally lobbing some props to fellow engineers (or Imagineers) who produce undeniable displays of creativity, even when I share none of the motivation that inspired their innovative adventures.

Take Christmas lights. As a teenager, I had no intrinsic motivation to hang the family Christmas lights. In my mind, hanging the lights had competition only with before-school snow-blowing as the most torturous task associated with miserable Midwest winters. Lights tangle. Ladders are a hassle and liability. And, inevitably, no amount of pre-hanging electrical testing will prevent one strand from inexplicably dying as soon as the decorating is complete.

But Ric Turner sees the winter differently. And he certainly has a better touch with electricity and lights. Take his recent project, turning his house and yard into an interactive Guitar Hero game sprinkled with over 21,000 lights.

Ric, you are engineering geek (guitar) hero of the week. I’m impressed by your imagineerativity. (Aren’t you impressed by my language innovation?)

By the way, I can safely compliment Ric only because I live too far from home to be conscripted into light-hanging service.

Read this explanation from Ric of how he created the lighting system.

And watch the video here:

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Study Results: NPR Listeners Still Love Indie

Posted on December 9, 2009 by Chris Zach

The “study” I refer to is All Songs Considered’s annual ballot of listeners’ picks for best music of the year. As usual, there isn’t much diversity on this list in terms of musical styles, but at least it’s not an echo of the Billboard list. Thank goodness for that.

And the presence of Andrew Bird at #5 on the list tosses stinging salt in my influenza wounds – I had tickets to see Bird when he came to DC recently, but in the end had to sell my tickets because I was sick with H1N1. Ouch.

I can’t fault the selections in terms of quality. I am thoroughly enjoying the music while typing this post. In the end, however, this playlist represents just one dimension of the multi-faceted musical world in which I choose to exist.

So, go ahead, download some of these albums. But find yourself some music from other countries and genres, too.

Artists' photos

Regina Spektor (left), Grizzly Bear (top middle), Dirty Projectors (bottom middle), M. Ward (top right), Andrew Bird (bottom right)

Excerpt:

We could tell early on that 2009 was going to be an outstanding year for music. Bands such as Animal Collective, Andrew Bird, Bon Iver and Antony and the Johnsons all released new music, and that was just in January. By the time we posted our online ballot to vote for the year’s best music, we had a dizzying array of albums and artists from which to choose.

Thousands of votes poured in and, just as it is every year, the race was very close. In our mid-year ballot, Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion was the most popular album. But by the end of this year, Grizzly Bear had edged its way to the top, with Animal Collective, Phoenix, Neko Case and Andrew Bird rounding out the top five.

Story: All Songs Considered Listeners Pick The Best Music Of 2009

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Goonies Science

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Chris Zach

Didn’t I see something like this in Goonies? Oh wait, that was slick shoes. Well, I think the concepts are related.

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.

Mean banana

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’.

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What do CCS and blood have in common?

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Chris Zach

Whenever I start to feel like the challenge of preventing climate change might just be insurmountable — this happens often as I read reports at work on the scale of carbon reduction needed — it’s a welcome news to hear that some hair-brained scientist/engineer has broken assumed technical barriers by employing a completely novel method.

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.

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