Thursday morning was the Biofluorescence morning, with lectures by the three most recent Nobelists who received their prize for the discovery and first uses of the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) and its derivatives that glow in other colors. It's hard to think of an animal that is as non-model in the lab as jellyfish and a discovery as important and useful for modern biological research.

Unlike PZ who was a diligent liveblogger in the conference hall, I watched all three lectures from the press room, livestreamed on my laptop, while multitasking and generally enjoying the perks of being "Press" (continuous supplies of coffee, juices and fresh fruit, in addition to multitudes of power cords and good wifi). I am happy to report that all three talks were very good, exciting and thought-provoking. Ashutosh covered all three talks in great detail in his post.

Firts to go was Prof. Dr. Osamu Shimomura - watch the video. Then came Prof. Dr. Martin Chalfie - watch the video and read PZ's post. Finally, it was the turn for Prof. Dr. Roger Y. Tsien - watch the video and see PZ's post

These were the most biological talks, thus I could understand them in full. On the other hand, the next talk by Richard Schrock was so technical that I did not understand a word (and gave up listening after a couple of minutes). As someone noted on Twitter: "Schrock gives the same talk to the broad audience in Lindau that he also presented at the EuCOMC to organometallic specialists". I bet even some of the chemistry students in the audience had trouble understanding the talk, let alone the non-chemists there, e.g., the press, bloggers, dignitaries, guests, politicos, local aristocracy, etc. I could see that he is a really nice guy, and that he is a super-star of chemistry, and that his discoveries are really, truly innovative and useful, but I was hoping he would adopt his talk to his audience a little bit.

The last talk of the meeting was the only real disappointment for me. It was a talk with a provocative title (and Abstract) of Molecular Darwinism by Prof. Dr. Werner Arber. This time I think PZ was too nice to the guy (beer, sausages and strudel will do that you, soften you, here in Bavaria).

So, what was the talk about? It was an undergraduate-level introduction to evolution. And that would be fine if it was a good undergraduate-level introduction to evolution. But...

Simplifying things is a good thing. Oversimplifying makes it wrong.

What Arber was doing was "inventing" terms. Or, to be precise, he was reinventing and mixing up terms. He was using existing terminology in biological science and applying it to wrong concepts. Confusion ensues. For example:

"Acquired" has a meaning in biology - but not the one he is using. The word "acquired" is used when discussing acquired characteristics, in Lamarckian sense. But he was using it to describe a process that has a perfectly good name already: "horizontal transfer".

"Molecular evolution" is also a term that has a specific meaning - use of the molecular clock to measure philogenetic relationships and distances between species. Not all evolution is molecular evolution. Phenotypes evolve, too.

Second, evolution does not equal natural selection. Natural selection is one of the important processes of evolution, but not the only one (random drift, neutral evolution, sexual selection...are all very important and wide-spread). If Larry was there, his head would explode in the face of such raw display of selectionism and adaptationism.

Third, "evolution genes" have nothing to do with "genes for evolution". There is a large and vibrant literature on Evolution of Evolvability, but it does not appear Arber is familiar with it.

And no, your work that you got your Nobel for is NOT the central piece in the evolutionary theory no matter how hard you are trying to make the case for it, sorry. Restriction enzymes are the awesomest and even I used them as much as I never really did any molecular biology. They are an indispensable tool for the entire discipline. But they are not an important factor in evolution itself - just the part of the machinery.

And finally, please do not ever use the word "Darwinism". It is only used by Creationists (and journalists who don't know any better) to imply that we are all some kind of idol-worshippers, memorizing the Origin as if it was a bible. What I am trying to say is that a careful use of words is essential for communicating science. Careless use of one term to denote something else that already has a different name is confusing, misleading and irresponsible.

That one poor lecture, of course, did not put a blemish on the rest of the meeting, all the amazing talks, panels and social events.I just re-read a very interesting post of mine about the whole "Nobel conundrum" - the pros and cons and effects of Nobel Prizes, and I muse on various aspects of it. This meeting made me rethink some of those same questions again.

At many meetings, scientific superstars of that stature fly in, give a talk, have the dinner with the organizers, and fly out. This meeting is different - it is specifically designed to get superstars to mix and mingle with young researchers. While the talks are uber-traditional lectures in format - not even followed by Q & A sessions! - there were plenty of organized sessions for young people to spend time talking to the laureates, ask questions, discuss things (those meetings were closed to the press, to give them complete feeling of freedom). While the youngsters may have come in wide-eyed and idol-worshipping, they must have left with a different feeling: that Nobelists are humans, too.

Another take-home lesson from every laureate was that one needs to be a complete human. Not just a scientist. Not just a self-slave-driver in the lab. But also to have other interests and hobbies, and perhaps be involved in some kind of activism.

Finally, it was noted many times this week that these people made their discoveries while in very small labs, struggling with funding, working on highly unusual things. They did not come out of large expensive research labs (though many of them run such places now) doing regular science. Perhaps there is something structurally different about a small lab that gives a young student freedom to follow one's hunches that is made difficult by the complexity and hierarchy in a large, well-funded place.

Nobel prizes did not get awarded for science that had to be done incrementaly over many years. Most discoveries were made during brief bursts of activity - 2-3 years perhaps. A young researcher had to be at a right place, at a right time, to see what everyone's seen before but, for a change, actually notice it, and to come to it with a prepared mind. Luck and creativity and thinking outside the box produce the prizes, not many years of slogging in the lab. But most of the science that has to be done includes slogging in the lab. It's just there should be joy in doing it without an expectation that a Prize may come your way one day.

The events done, we went out to relax, have some famous Bavarian beer (again) - a couple of pictures under the fold:

This is transcendently ridiculous.

For the many international CV readers, today is the US’s Independence Day celebration, which is in large part an excuse to bar-b-que meat products, blow up fireworks, and drink beer. If you’re tuning in from abroad, you are probable sober enough to read Daniel’s upcoming post on gravitational waves. For the rest of the drunken US crew, you can probably handle the Muppets.

PS. While we’re talking beer, I must recommend the current Full Sail Limited Edition L.T.D. (Recipe No. 3), sold in bottles with the pale blue label. Seriously. Try some.

(h/t: Again with the CakeWrecks)

A brief interview with one of the young researchers attending the Lindau Nobel conference - Matthew Siebert of the University of California, Davis, USA:

Not only will you want to see what happens when you drop fifty pounds of silly putty off a building, but you'll actually learn some science! Splat:

A common bias among the smart is to overestimate how smart everyone else is.  This was certainly my experience in moving from top rank universities as a student to a mid rank university as a teacher.  A better intuition for common abilities can be found by browsing the US National Assesment of Adult Literacy sample questions.

For example, in 1992 out of a random sample of US adults, 7% could not do item SCOR300, which is to find the expiration date on a driver’s license.  26% could not do item AB60303, which is to check the “Please Call” box on a phone message slip when they’ve been told:

James Davidson phones and asks to speak with Ann Jones, who is at a meeting. He needs to know if the contracts he sent are satisfactory and requests that she call before 2:00 p.m. His number is 259-3860. Fill in the message slip below.

Only 52% could do item AB30901, which is to look at a table on page 118 of the 1980 World Almanac and answer:

According to the chart, did U.S. exports of oil (petroleum) increase or decrease between 1976 and 1978?

Only 16% could do item N010301, which is to answer “What is the purpose of the Se Habla Espanol expo?” after reading a short newspaper article called “Se Habla Espanol Hits Chicago; September 25,26,27 are three days that will change your marketing.” The article includes this quote:

It’s Mr. Martinez’s job—his mission in life—to make sure companies learn how they can serve and sell to America’s Hispanics. He has been marketing to the community for many years, working with the best in the business, including Coca-Cola and the advertising firm of Castor GS&B. Now his staff is organizing the largest annual Hispanic market trade show in the business—Se Habla Español.

Acceptable answers include statement such as:

To enable people to better serve and sell to the Hispanic community; to improve marketing strategies to the Hispanic community; and to enable people to establish contacts to serve the Hispanic community.

Only 11% could do Item N100701, which asks:

Using the information in the table, write a brief paragraph summarizing the extent to which parents and teachers agreed or disagreed on the statements about issues pertaining to parental involvement at their school.

I think an acceptable answer is to note that parents tend to have lower opinions than teachers of school performance.

Hat tip to Linda Gottfredson.

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv blog this week:

A Solar Cycle Lost in 1793--1800: Early Sunspot Observations Resolve the Old Mystery

Unjamming a Granular Hopper by Vibration

Icequakes as Precursors of Ice Avalanches

Chemical Power for Microscopic Robots in Capillaries

Intrusion Detection System Using Advanced Honeypots

(Non)existence of Pleated Folds: How Paper Folds Between Creases

For families who live apart, the notion that ‘quality time’ comes from time spent together as a family is rather exclusionary. Not only that, but Pia Christensen from the University of Copenhagen believes that underlying this notion is an assumption that family time is ‘good’ for children. After listening to the views of English children living in the north of England about time with their families, Christensen found that these ten- to eleven-year-olds did not actually want more time with their families.

That’s an excerpt from the book Beyond 9 to 5, Sarah Norgate, 2006, Columbia University Press, New York.

A brief interview with one of the young researchers attending the Lindau Nobel conference - Bente Flier of the University of Constance, Germany:

It's a beautiful place:

Last night I saw a classic conservation of momentum problem in person. It was about midnight, and I was on a service road beside west Houston's Beltway 8 (avoiding the tolls) when I slowed down to stop at a red light. In my rear view mirror I saw the red and blue flash of emergency lights approaching, so with the room I had left I crept over a bit to the right to let them by. Whoosh! A car blew by my left side at high speed, swerving in front of me and speeding into the intersection heedless of the light. My neurons barely had time to start cooking up some surprise when a black pickup truck coming from the cross street entered the intersection from the right and neatly intersected the path of the speeding car with a tremendous and violent bang.

Conservation of momentum happened. The collision was not entirely inelastic nor was it entirely elastic. The truck struck the car very solidly on its right side behind the center of mass of the car, sending the car into a spin more or less along its original trajectory. The collision reduced the speed of the truck but didn't change its trajectory much either, and the truck skidded to a halt. (A bonus friction problem!)

"Holy crap! This is a serious accident, I should pull over and try to help!", I'd have thought to myself, if I had had time to form the mental impression into words. I didn't have time, because within a second or two probably four or five police cars blazed past as well, surrounding the stopped and thoroughly totaled car.

"Holy crap! This wasn't an accident, it's a crime in progress! I might have to be ready to react to real danger," I'd have thought to myself, if I had had time to form the mental impression into words. I didn't have time, because the police jumped out with guns drawn and raced toward the car. I was in the process of pulling my car into the service station just to my right when the arrest happened, and though I didn't see it clearly it looked like the driver was pulled from his car without appearing to be injured, arrested, and put into the back of one of the police cars.

Within a minute or two another dozen squad cars were on the scene, along with an ambulance and two firetrucks. The driver of the pickup truck seemed to be uninjured as well, and the ambulances and firetrucks seemed to be a precautionary measure. The police processed the scene and photographed everything, cleaned up the road with the help of the fire department, and later took a statement from me. They seemed pretty nonchalant about it, which I expect is because a witness isn't really needed when there's a bunch of dashboard cameras, two new-looking red light cameras on the intersection itself, and the driver of the truck as a more direct witness, aside from whatever other evidence they might have had for whatever caused the suspect to run in the first place.

It's not really all that directly related to the practice of physics, but then again it's not so often you see a classic Physics 101 problem instantiated in front of you in such dramatic fashion. In any event, I'm back in College Station now, tomorrow will have a quick July 4 holiday post, and then back to our regular schedule with a Sunday Function the next day. Enjoy your weekend, and remember that fireworks are physics too!

After a long baby-induced delay, we are finally ready to announce the winners of the How to Teach Physics to Your Dog Caption Contest and Poetry Contest. I've obtained a few more copies of the bound galleys from the publisher, so we'll be giving two awards in each contest category: one for each photo, one for Cuttlefish poetry, and one for non-Cuttlefish poetry.

And the winners are:

The most interesting thing I learned at the Symposium last weekend was this two year old paper on a survey about enhancement.  Its main result was that the more people considered a feature to be a key part of their identity, the less they wanted to improve it.   Few folks want to improve their empathy, self-confidence, or self-control, while more folks want to enhance their rote memory, math ability, and wakefulness.   I suspect something similar holds for beliefs: the more important a belief is to our identity, the less eager we are to improve that belief via evidence or analysis.  Beware identifying with beliefs!

The paper’s main table:

Hat tip to Anders Sandberg.

Earlier this week, the most obvious scientific news in recent memory was reported: there's Uranium on the Moon.

This has been, pretty much, a slam-dunk since Apollo 11. Why? Because we've brought moonrocks back to Earth, and we've analyzed them thoroughly. What did we find? That they're made of the same stuff that Earth-rocks are made of!

I mean, not that that isn't interesting. None of the other rocky bodies in our Solar System have the same composition as Earth, which helped lead us to the understanding that the Moon was made out of the same stuff that made Earth. In fact, one of the coolest biological things (to an astrophysicist) that was done recently was the crushing of moonrocks into a sandy dust, followed by planting seeds in them and watering them. The result?

Marigolds! You can grow certain hardy plants in the soil on the Moon; just add air and water!

So, my question is this: what about other worlds? Say, this one:

We land stuff there. We land highly advanced, mostly autonomous robots there. Mars has some atmosphere; is that enough to grow things? Anything? Mars may be able to support water for short periods of time. If not, we could always bring a pressurized terrarium, and use the Martian soil:

It would be such a curious thing to do, to simply test, firsthand, whether Mars can sustain life or not. Furthermore, it seems easy to do, like this could be a small, standalone thing to piggy-back on the next Mars mission. Can you think of a reason why we shouldn't and/or couldn't do this?

One of the curses of my new job is having to commute from Cambridge into London two or three (or four or five …) days a week. Commuting must be good for something. One of the things I find it good for is primate behaviour research. I have found, for example, than commuters do not read books.

This started with an observation last November - lots of people on the tube were starting books. Lots of them, reading the first few pages of books. None of them reading the end. Surely just coincidence?

Think again.

I started collecting statistics. I observed all the people on the trains that I saw reading books, and wrote down how far someone was through a book. I could not tell whether they were on page 276 out of 327, but I could estimate what proportion of the book they had read - 30%, 70% etc. Only real books count - manuals and computer books don’t, as people do not read them linearly. Magazines etc. don’t count, mainly because it is impossible to tell whether someone is on page 7 out of 13, or page 9. But a meaty bit of Tom Clancy or Dostoevsky or molecular biology or something, I got quite good at estimating how far on the readers had got. Of course, I had to note all the books being read in a carriage, to get a valid sample. This
lead to much craning and staring, and in any other country in the world I would probably have been shot. In England, of course, no-one comments.

Anyway, here are some numbers,…

So writes William Bains, in a Trinkaus-like study called “Why commuters do not read.”

The success of the Twitter feed from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is leading to a new generation of scientific comunications

Ever stared at a giant telescope and wondered what it's looking at?

You're not alone. So has Stuart Lowe, which is a little odd since he helps to run a radio telescope at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics in Manchester, UK.

But Lowe has an answer. Why not generate a Twitter feed associated with a telescope that announces in real time what it is looking at. He says it may even be possible to create a mashup that displays the telescope's target in apps such as Google Sky or Microsoft's World Wide Telescope. He calls the service AstroTwitter.

Cool idea. And not just because it means you'll never wonder what a telescope is looking at again. Astronomers could use the service to check if their observations have been made, as requested. And they could also examine the stats to determine the most and least observed parts of the sky.

Lowe says he got the idea from NASA's highly successful Twitter feeds from the Mars Phoenix Lander last year. Various other spacecraft have since developed their own fees. Telescopes seem a natural successor, although there is no word yet on a launch date for AstroTwitter.

But why stop there? Imagine Twitter feeds that tell us what synchrotrons are studying, or give status updates about the end of the world from CERN or reveal what lasers such as the National Ignition Facility is zapping to smithereens. The listless is endless.

What's more, Twitter feeds could engage the public like no other form of communication.

Where do I sign up?

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0907.0193: AstroTwitter

The Halema'uma'u Crater at Kilauea on June 29, 2009, prior to a rockfall on June 30th that has blocked the vent. Image courtesy of HVO.

There is a bit of a buzz today about significant rockfalls that occurred in Halema'uma'u Crater at Kilauea on June 30th. Some articles have suggested that the rockfall has "snuffed out" glowing vent in the Crater. Well, this is partially true. HVO is reporting that the glow that has been seen at Halema`uma`uma has been, in fact, gone since the rockfall. Here is the report of the event:

A sequence of rockfalls, some quite large, within the Halema'uma'u vent at the summit of Kīlauea Volcano began at 1:38 p.m. H.s.t on June 30, 2009.
The initial rockfall produced a seismic signal equivalent to a magnitude-2.4 earthquake and was felt at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) and the adjacent Jaggar Museum. A nearby scientist heard the beginning of this rockfall followed by a loud
explosion. The normally white gas plume turned a thick brown for several minutes; later collection confirmed an increase in tephra entrained in the plume with at least one later dusting.

So, it seems that the vent has become clogged with debris from this rockfall, some of which may have interacted with the magma in the vent (thick brown ash plume). The rockfall itself may have been triggered by draining of the magma in the vent, but it was big enough to generate a M2.4 earthquake. Later observations since the rockfall seem to confirm the idea that the vent is blocked with debris:

Aerial observations yesterday morning, and views from the ground with a thermal camera last night, confirmed that the throat of the vent in Halema`uma`u crater had been choked with debris from Tuesday's collapses. By late yesterday afternoon, sporadic gas jetting sounds from the vent were heard by geologists on the rim of Halema`uma`u Crater. Overnight, the Webcam on the rim of Halema`uma`u Crater recorded a few points of incandescence, waxing and waning in brightness, deep within the vent.

Now, before everyone gets all excited that the "vent is blocked" and waits for an explosion, remember that Kilauea has a long history of lava from the crater region draining to vents on the flanks, so magma in the vent that is being blocked could very well merely drain from the summit to the flanks of the volcano. Also, the event might have been triggered by the fact that magma is draining from the summit in the first place. There is still magma under the collapsed region as the gas jetting sounds and points of glowing might suggest, but how the magma will react to its newly closed vent is hard to tell. It wasn't erupting from the Halema'uma'u Crater before the rockfall and gases are still able to escape, so [SPECULATION] any fears of pressure from behind the blockage are likely unnecessary [/SPECTULATION]. However, saying the vent is "snuffed out" in any way is premature (it might have been the product of the HVO Press Release titled "Glow From The Halema`uma`u Overlook Vent Snuffed Out by Collapse"), but rather there is enough material in the vent to block any light from the hot magma.

{Hat tip to Eruptions readers Anne Carrington Cotton and David for links for this post.}

One of the big hopes of particle- and astro-physicists over the next few years is to experimentally pin down the nature of dark matter. In a perfect world, we’ll make the dark matter particle at the LHC, observe gamma rays produced when dark matter annihilates in the galaxy, and detect it directly in experiments here on Earth. The world isn’t always perfect, but sometimes it’s even better, so everyone is sitting on the edges of their seats waiting to hear what the experiments tell us.

For the direct-detection strategy here on Earth, we build giant detectors and wait for ambient dark-matter particles to interact with something in the detector. If the dark matter is a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP), that’s not so hard; the difficult part is distinguishing a purported signal from various backgrounds. To know what the signal should be, of course, we need to know how many dark matter particles are zipping through the laboratory. It should be a good number: roughly speaking, there would be about one weak-scale-sized dark matter particle per coffee-cup-volume in the universe, and in our galaxy these particles will typically be trucking along at around 300 kilometers per second.

Still, you’d like an accurate estimate of how much dark matter there is supposed to be in your detector. That’s what Riccardo Catena and Piero Ullio claim to have provided:

A novel determination of the local dark matter density
Authors: Riccardo Catena, Piero Ullio

Abstract: We present a novel study on the problem of constructing mass models for the Milky Way, concentrating on features regarding the dark matter halo component. We have considered a variegated sample of dynamical observables for the Galaxy, including several results which have appeared recently, and studied a 7- or 8-dimensional parameter space - defining the Galaxy model - by implementing a Bayesian approach to the parameter estimation based on a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. The main result of this analysis is a novel determination of the local dark matter halo density which, assuming spherical symmetry and either an Einasto or an NFW density profile is found to be around 0.39 GeV cm$^{-3}$ with a 1-$\sigma$ error bar of about 7%; more precisely we find a $\rho_{DM}(R_0) = 0.385 \pm 0.027 \rm GeV cm^{-3}$ for the Einasto profile and $\rho_{DM}(R_0) = 0.389 \pm 0.025 \rm GeV cm^{-3}$ for the NFW. This is in contrast to the standard assumption that $\rho_{DM}(R_0)$ is about 0.3 GeV cm$^{-3}$ with an uncertainty of a factor of 2 to 3. A very precise determination of the local halo density is very important for interpreting direct dark matter detection experiments. Indeed the results we produced, together with the recent accurate determination of the local circular velocity, should be very useful to considerably narrow astrophysical uncertainties on direct dark matter detection.

So they’re claiming the density is about .39 GeV per cubic centimeter (where one GeV is about the mass of the proton), whereas the standard figure is something closer to .30 GeV per cubic centimeter. More importantly, they claim to trust their estimate to a precision of about 7%, while the usual number is supposed to be uncertain by a factor of 2 or 3.

I’m not expert enough to judge whether they are right, but it would certainly be very impressive to pin down the density to such high precision. They do assume spherical symmetry, however, which I suspect is not a very good assumption. There are ongoing arguments about how lumpy the distribution of galactic dark matter really is, and I can easily imagine that lumpiness can distort the local density by much more than 7%. But work like this is going to be very important in interpreting the results, if (when?) we do directly detect the dark matter.