The Sun and the Moon

In honor of Father’s Day, here’s a manipulated shot of the moon passing in front of the Sun (Credit: NASA/SDO/LRO/GSFC):

Ok, I don’t know how this connects to Father’s Day, but it’s a nice picture. Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there.

Possession

This is one of those stories that come out of medicine every once in a while that show how little we understand our bodies:

Susannah Cahalan was a young New York Post reporter when she started to forget assignments. She became fixated on the idea that her home was infested with bedbugs. Paranoid and irrational, she laughed and cried inappropriately, moods rocketing from euphoria to intense sadness.

She thought it must be stress, or the flu. One doctor told her she had mono. Her parents suspected she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Then she, too, had a seizure.

The women’s slow unraveling could have been the beginning of a psychotic break, followed by a lifetime of hospitalization and medication.

Instead, they were found to have a newly described disease called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, caused when the body’s immune system goes haywire and attacks a protein in the brain. The protein, the NMDA receptor, helps neurons communicate; it is the same receptor that’s blocked by PCP or ketamine — both drugs that can make a normal person act like someone with schizophrenia.

A long time ago this might have been ascribed to possession, ten years ago it might have been thought to be schizophrenia or some other mental illness. The article speculates that some people who are being treated for schizophrenia might instead have this disease. This is the kind of paradigm shift that happens in medicine at times, the cause and treatment of ulcers is one that I think of. They’re going to start testing with an initial episode of a psychotic episode, it would be great if they found a large percent of these are caused by this disease (they don’t expect this to be true, though).

Black Hole

Another lazy day. Here’s a picture of jets of particles pushed away from a black hole at millions of miles per hour (Credit: NASA):

At some point someone will invent space surfing. Imagine riding a wave of particles going a million mph (hmm, I wonder how well you can judge your speed in space?).

Newton and the mean

Ok this is really an excuse to put Isaac Newton in a post, but still this is kind of fun:

Newton did something unusual, and even, as Alan Shapiro notes, “almost [we would say entirely] unprecedented in the 17th century”: he averaged all of the differences….None of this reached print….Newton certainly avoided hinting in print that his law of arithmetical progression was adduced by anything other than the most skillful and precise of measurements.

….Newton’s “mean”—the average—was the weapon with which he slew the invevitable dragons of sensual errors. It was a most paradoxical weapon for the times, because it amounted to a method by which error seems to be reduced by committing it repeatedly. No such method appears elsewhere at the time, and it would certainly have seemed odd, to say the least, to most practitioners of the period.

….We have no contemporary record of the reasoning by which he justified this unusual method….Yet Newton used averages early on; he used them frequently and, it seems, consistently….Why did Molyneux and Flamsteed, a decade or two later, do so as well?….Is there some evidence as to what underpinned the average, decades before statistical notions became widespread?

Apparently the answer to that last question is no. The authors produce a bit of evidence that Newton thought of the average as akin to measuring a center of gravity, but that’s about it. It appears that Newton never explained himself, but just quietly went ahead with his use of  averages several decades before anyone else. It was the secret behind his famously accurate observations.

I’m not sure this is true, as Wikipedia says that Tycho Brahe did the same thing. I can’t find any primary source that says that Brahe did (in a Google search), so I don’t know if he did. Anyway …. Isaac Newton.

 

 

 

The Sun shines

NASA has great videos of the Sun that show how it changes over a period of three years. The main one is here. To give you an idea of what it looks like, here’s a time-lapse picture (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/S. Wiessinger):

and here’s the actual video (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center):

You can find a bunch of variations of the video here and you find these interesting bits in the video:

00:30;24 Partial eclipse by the moon

00:31;16 Roll maneuver

01:11;02 August 9, 2011 X6.9 Flare, currently the largest of this solar cycle

01:28;07 Comet Lovejoy, December 15, 2011

01:42;29 Roll Maneuver

01:51;07 Transit of Venus, June 5, 2012

02:28;13 Partial eclipse by the moon

Pioneer 11

I’m a couple days late, but this is the 40th anniversary of the launch of Pioneer 11. This was a low budget project in preparation of the Voyagers, but it still gathered important information and some nice pictures. Such as this one of Jupiter (Credit: NASA Ames):

and this one of Saturn (Credit: NASA Ames):

And here’s a completely different picture, the mountains of Alaska (Credit: NASA/Goddard/Christy Hansen):

Crime and punishment

This article has some intriguing information and ideas about crime and punishment. There are too many to mention (so, go read it), but here’s one bit:

The obvious (but hard-to-administer) common-sense alternative is to make the rules less numerous, the monitoring tighter, and the sanctions swift, certain, and reasonably mild, and to clearly tell each probationer and parolee exactly what the rules are and what exactly will happen, every time and right away, when a rule is broken. Mildness—or proportionality, if you like—is essential to making the threat credible, and severity turns out to be unnecessary. Experimental evidence from the HOPE program in Hawaii showed that two days in jail is as good a deterrent to drug use as six weeks, as long as the two days actually happen, and happen every time. We don’t know yet whether a day in jail, or a couple of hours in a holding cell, or a weekend of home confinement, or a week of a 9 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew, would do the trick, but we ought to learn.

The evidence seems to be that this type of justice system will decrease crime, reduce the number of people in prisons, and help the people who commit the crimes. The problem is that it needs money upfront and shows results later. Also, the new money would come from localities while the savings would go to the state. It’s the type of thing a federal government is needed for: it’s easier to borrow money, is insulated a bit from local politics, and can organize large-scale experiments. Of course, in our current environment, this isn’t likely to happen, but wouldn’t it be interesting if someone with influence (President Obama for example) pushed for it?

Echo

This is an interesting picture (Credit: NASA, ESA):

This is an echo of a light burst from a star in the Milky Way. I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a light echo and this one has a diameter of about 6 light years.

Star Clouds

Taken from the Astronomy picture of the day, here is N11 (Credit: NASA,  ESA,  J. Lake (Pomfret School)):

The sun and warming

Hmm, there’s another study (or go here or here) showing that global warming is real and caused by humans (go to one of the latter two sites to see the graph where it looks obvious):

Here’s what happened. After the end of the ice age, the planet got warmer. Then, 5,000 years ago, it started to get cooler — but really slowly. In all, it cooled 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, up until the last century or so. Then it flipped again — global average temperature shot up.

“Temperatures now have gone from that cold period to the warm period in just 100 years,” Marcott says.

I’m guessing this will not only not help convince anyone but will probably be attacked.

Anyway, here’s a picture of the Sun (Credit: NASA/SDO):

Baby cured of AIDs

It seems a baby who had AIDs has been cured:

A doctor gave this baby faster and stronger treatment than is usual, starting a three-drug infusion within 30 hours of birth. That was before tests confirmed the infant was infected and not just at risk from a mother whose HIV wasn’t diagnosed until she was in labor.

“I just felt like this baby was at higher-than-normal risk, and deserved our best shot,” Dr. Hannah Gay, a pediatric HIV specialist at the University of Mississippi, said in an interview.

That fast action apparently knocked out HIV in the baby’s blood before it could form hideouts in the body. Those so-called reservoirs of dormant cells usually rapidly reinfect anyone who stops medication, said Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. She led the investigation that deemed the child “functionally cured,” meaning in long-term remission even if all traces of the virus haven’t been completely eradicated.

If this can be replicated, it would be an amazing breakthrough:

About 300,000 children were born with HIV in 2011, mostly in poor countries where only about 60 percent of infected pregnant women get treatment that can keep them from passing the virus to their babies. In the U.S., such births are very rare because HIV testing and treatment long have been part of prenatal care.

This case also shows that either there is something wrong with these parents or with healthcare in the US or both:

In the Mississippi case, the mother had had no prenatal care when she came to a rural emergency room in advanced labor. A rapid test detected HIV. In such cases, doctors typically give the newborn low-dose medication in hopes of preventing HIV from taking root. But the small hospital didn’t have the proper liquid kind, and sent the infant to Gay’s medical center. She gave the baby higher treatment-level doses.

The child responded well through age 18 months, when the family temporarily quit returning and stopped treatment, researchers said. When they returned several months later, remarkably, Gay’s standard tests detected no virus in the child’s blood.

Spinning

Because I feel like I’m going down the drain, here’s a whirlpool galaxy (Credit: NASA/Hubble):

That olde tyme religion

Via here, this is fun (well, as usual, it would be if the sponsers of the bill were laughed out of the legislature):

A. The Oklahoma Legislature finds that an important purpose of science education is to inform students about scientific evidence and to help students develop critical thinking skills they need in order to become intelligent, productive, and scientifically informed citizens. The Legislature further finds that the teaching of some scientific concepts including but not limited to premises in the areas of biology, chemistry, meteorology, bioethics and physics can cause controversy, and that some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on some subjects such as, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

B. The State Board of Education, district boards of education, district superintendents and administrators, and public school principals and administrators shall endeavor to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues. Educational authorities in this state shall also endeavor to assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies. Toward this end, teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught. C. The State Board of Education, a district board of education, district superintendent or administrator, or public school principal or administrator shall not prohibit any teacher in a school district in this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught.

D. Students may be evaluated based upon their understanding of course materials, but no student in any public school or institution shall be penalized in any way because the student may subscribe to a particular position on scientific theories. Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to exempt students from learning, understanding and being tested on curriculum as prescribed by state and local education standards. E. The provisions of the Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act shall only protect the teaching of scientific information, and shall not be construed to promote any religious or nonreligious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs or nonbeliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion. The intent of the provisions of this act is to create an environment in which both the teacher and students can openly and objectively discuss the facts and observations of science, and the assumptions that underlie their interpretation.

I would guess that this will have little impact in most classrooms if it passes (it has passed out of committee), because it will be impossible for a student to back up any other position than the accepted scientific one (there’s a lot of evidence that evolution is true while there is none to support creationism, so any paper written that says creationism explains life on Earth should get a failing grade since it will have no real supporting evidence). In fact, it very well backfire in some classrooms–a student would be able to question whether evolution (or other ‘controversial’ theories) is true, but the teacher could then talk about the overwhelming evidence that it is true and the complete lack of evidence that creationism has. The problem is that there are probably some teachers that will use this to make it seem like the evidence for evolution is weak–as long as they teach the ideas needed for the tests, they would be allowed to say that they don’t believe in evolution and play up supposed weaknesses.

I love this bit at the end of the bill:

It being immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health and safety, an emergency is hereby declared to exist, by reason whereof this act shall take effect and be in full force from and after its passage and approval.

If students and teachers aren’t allowed to say things like evolution are wrong, there’s going to be war and plagues I guess.

Have a heart

NASA put this up as the Celestial Valentine. I’m not sure it really looks like a heart, but it is pretty (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian):

More gun data

Slate has a project where they are trying to gather together all the gun related deaths since Newtown. As they note, it’s pretty difficult to get this information so this is just an attempt to get an idea of the scale of the problem. I looked at some of the relations as I did before and I would guess that it is undercounting suicides, because I get a correlation of -.137 between the rate of gun deaths and the Brady campaign’s score for the states (I got a correlation of -.66 (although this was age adjusted) when I looked at the full set of data, but that broke down as -.05 when looking at assault and -.75 for suicide). Still, this is a good project–it’s always better to have more data.

Stars and some music

It’s Friday, so I’m lazy. Here’s a picture of the Andromeda galaxy showing off (Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/NHSC):

and some music from some band called Cake:

Inauguration from space

Here’s a picture of Washington DC taken from the international space station (Credit: NASA):

Can you see the crowd? It would be tough, especially since was taken the day before the inauguration.

Here’s a picture of the rings of Saturn (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute):

You can see two of the moons through the gaps in the rings, in fact the gaps in the rings are caused by the moons–obviously these moons really want to be in the picture.

Assault, suicide and guns

This is a very interesting article:

In 2010, the last year for which complete numbers are available, the number of gun deaths by suicide in the United States outnumbered homicides 19,392 to 11,078. If you add up all American gun deaths that year, including accidents, 3 out of 5 people who died from gunshot wounds took their own lives. Those figures are not an anomaly: With just a few exceptions, the majority of gun deaths in the United States have been self-inflicted every year since at least 1920. This is a startling fact, and one that forces us to realize that, no matter what we may believe about the Second Amendment, the debate over how to reduce the death toll from guns is, to a great extent, a debate about suicide prevention.

…

“To some people, it’s just totally counterintuitive, because it’s so obvious that if you want to kill yourself, you can always find something else to kill yourself with,” said Barber. “What they assume is that once you’re suicidal, you remain suicidal.” But a preponderance of evidence, including interviews with suicide survivors, indicates that most suicidal acts come during a surprisingly short period during which the person is suffering an acute crisis.

“When you ask people who’ve made attempts and survived,” Miller said, “even attempts that are life threatening and would have proved lethal [without emergency medical care], what they say is, ‘It was an impulsive act, and I’m glad that I’m alive.’”

The central insight for public health researchers is that a lot of lives could be saved simply by making sure that people don’t have access to an extremely lethal weapon during that high-risk period. One striking illustration of this principle can be seen in the experience of the Israeli Defense Forces, which saw a 40 percent drop in suicides after a new rule was introduced forbidding soldiers from taking their guns home with them over the weekend. Though some soldiers may have tried to kill themselves using some less lethal method instead, it appears that scores of lives were saved.

I then went searching for more information. I found that Harvard has compiled a list of studies on gun research and specifically its connection to suicide. I then found a couple places that had compiled some gun numbers (the first link also looks at the correlation with a bunch of other variables) and that led me to the CDC and its data compiler Wonder.

Once there I played around with the numbers and got a bunch of graphs (All courtesy of: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics).

First I looked at the relation between the level of gun rights in a state (as compiled by the Brady Campaign) and the total number of deaths in 2010 caused by guns (assaults, suicide, and accidental):

The correlation is -.66, which is pretty strong (the rates of death are age adjusted, but otherwise I did not try to adjust for possible confounders). It looks like more regulation reduces the number of gun deaths, but because of the article, I also looked at gun rights and suicides by gun:

Here the correlation is -.75, even stronger, so I wondered about the relation between gun regulations and murders (officially this is the number of assault deaths):

which has a correlation of only -.05. That’s pretty stunning to me. The Globe article noted that the probability of a suicide depends on the availability of a gun, so I went to look for the percent of residents who are gun owners. Using the data from here, I looked at its correlation with gun deaths and found:

a correlation of -.77 with gun regulations, a correlation of .83 with suicides by gun, a correlation of .72 with all gun deaths, and a correlation of -.03 with gun assault deaths.

Obviously this is very rough data (using grouped data like this will usually inflate the correlation, I made no attempt to control for other variables, I made no attempt to check the data (I assume the CDC data is ok), didn’t try to look at the type of gun used and made no attempt to see if the same pattern holds for counties or other region types), but I still think this can tell us that guns and suicide might be what we should look at.

Aside: here are some other correlations I found:

all deaths by gun from 1999-2004 and 2005-2010: .97 (and .9 between  1999-2004 and 2010)

assault deaths by gun and by other means: .78

suicides by gun and other: .13 (!)

total number of assault and suicide deaths: -.3 (!)

Clouds

I’m a bit out of it today, so here’s a picture of some clouds (Credit: NASA– this was taken over the Pacific at the beginning of January from the space station):

Fire, ice, and some stars

I really like this picture (Credit: NASA Earth Observatory):

It’s the picture of the volcano Tolbachik in the Kamchatka region of Russia. If you click on it you can see a lava flow (black) under the snow and even a current eruption (look for the orange bit).

I’ll also throw in a spiral galaxy, just because they look good (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DSS):