Science, Technology & Health: November 2005 Archives

Once again science confirms what everyone already knows: caffeine makes you smarter.

The caffeine found in coffee, tea, soft drinks and chocolate stimulates areas of the brain governing short-term memory and attention, Austrian researchers said on Wednesday.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging scans performed on the brains of 15 subjects who had just consumed caffeine equal to that found in two cups of coffee showed increased activity in the frontal lobe where the working memory is located and in the anterior cingulum that controls attention.

"We are able to see that caffeine exerts increases in neuronal activity in distinct parts of the brain going along with changes in behavior," said Austrian researcher Dr. Florian Koppelstatter of the Medical University Innsbruck.

Plus, if you stop taking it you get headaches and mood swings.

This is the kind of brilliant idea that should make its inventor a millionaire: a high-frequency buzzing device that drives away teenagers but is inaudible to most adults.

The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he said, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away. ...

A trip to Spar here in Barry confirmed the strange truth of the phenomenon. The Mosquito is positioned just outside the door. Although this reporter could not hear anything, being too old, several young people attested to the fact that yes, there was a noise, and yes, it was extremely annoying.

"It's loud and squeaky and it just goes through you," said Jodie Evans, 15, who was shopping at the store even though she was supposed to be in school. "It gets inside you."

I must be getting old to love this idea so much.

(HT: Slashdot.)

I can't think of anything more grisly than babies who survive an abortion only to be murdered upon delivery. From Britain:

A GOVERNMENT agency is launching an inquiry into doctors’ reports that up to 50 babies a year are born alive after botched National Health Service abortions.

The investigation, by the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH), comes amid growing unease among clinicians over a legal ambiguity that could see them being charged with infanticide.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which regulates methods of abortion, has also mounted its own investigation.

Its guidelines say that babies aborted after more than 21 weeks and six days of gestation should have their hearts stopped by an injection of potassium chloride before being delivered. In practice, few doctors are willing or able to perform the delicate procedure.

For the abortion of younger foetuses, labour is induced by drugs in the expectation that the infant will not survive the birth process. Guidelines say that doctors should ensure that the drugs they use prevent such babies being alive at birth.

In practice, according to Stuart Campbell, former professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at St George’s hospital, London, a number do survive.

“They can be born breathing and crying at 19 weeks’ gestation,” he said. “I am not anti-abortion, but as far as I am concerned this is sub-standard medicine.”

As far as I'm concerned, it's murder. As I've said before, improving medical technology will eventually make the evil of abortion undeniable.

The number of terminations carried out in the 18th week of pregnancy or later has risen from 5,166 in 1994 to 7,432 last year. Prenatal diagnosis for conditions such as Down’s syndrome is increasing and foetuses with the condition are routinely aborted, even though many might be capable of leading fulfilling lives. In the past decade, doctors’ skill in saving the lives of premature babies has improved radically: at least 70%-80% of babies in their 23rd or 24th week of gestation now survive long-term. ...

Doctors are increasingly uneasy about aborting babies who could be born alive. “If viability is the basis on which they set the 24-week limit for abortion, then the simplest answer is to change the law and reduce the upper limit to 18 weeks,” said Campbell, who last year published a book showing images of foetuses’ facial expressions and “walking” movements taken with a form of 3-D ultrasound.

Read the article, it even has some statements from "fetuses" who survived abortion and magically transformed into adult humans.

New research indicates that the Ortho Evra birth-control patch can significantly increase the risk of stroke for young women. Johnson and Johnson has placed a new warning on the packaging and is supposedly considering a recall. If you or your wife are using the patch, you'll probably want to talk to your doctor (or your lawyer, since there are certain to be lawsuits filed and awards handed out).

Thursday's warning comes four months after reports that patch users die and suffer blood clots at a rate three times higher than women taking the pill.

Citing federal death and injury reports, The Associated Press found that about a dozen women, most in their late teens and early 20s, died in 2004 from blood clots believed to be related to the birth-control patch, and dozens more survived strokes and other clot-related problems.

20-year-old women shouldn't be having strokes, and a 300% increase is huge. As much as I dislike the FDA, there often doesn't appear to be much incentive for drug companies to be honest in their dealings with the public.

In addition, an internal Ortho McNeil memo shows that the company refused, in 2003, to fund a study comparing its Ortho Evra patch to its Ortho-Cyclen pill because of concerns there was "too high a chance that study may not produce a positive result for Evra" and there was a "risk that Ortho Evra may be the same or worse than Ortho-Cyclen."

Last week, in response to questions about the Ortho McNeil memo, company spokesman Michael Beckerich said in a written statement that "decisions to fund studies are based upon scientific merit."

Drug companies should be required to release such information to the public, but once the truth is known the FDA shouldn't prevent people from taking risky drugs if they want to. In many cases, risky drugs can save more lives than over-protective government policy.

Wikipedia's entry on WGS 84 indicates that the most widely used global reference frame is only valid through 2010, but it doesn't say why.

The World Geodetic System defines a fixed global reference frame for the Earth, for use in geodesy and navigation. The latest revision is WGS 84 dating from 1984, which will be valid up to about 2010.

Does anyone know if this is correct, and if so, why?

Anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch". Even if it's free to you, someone is paying for it. Unfortunately most environmentalists have an increadibly weak grasp of economic principles, which is why we get stupid ideas like biofuels.

THE drive for "green energy" in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orang-utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices are likely to accelerate the destruction. ...

Rising demand for green energy has led to a surge in the international price of palm oil, with potentially damaging consequences. "The expansion of palm oil production is one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction in south-east Asia. It is one of the most environmentally damaging commodities on the planet," says Simon Counsell, director of the UK-based Rainforest Foundation. "Once again it appears we are trying to solve our environmental problems by dumping them in developing countries, where they have devastating effects on local people."

Duh. Biofuels will always cost more than they're worth. Why? Because once you harvest the biomass that has already grown naturally (such as rainforests) you have to plant something else, nurture it, and harvest it, all of which costs money and energy. In fact, it almost always costs more energy to grow and harvest biomass than you get back when you burn it. The only advantage of biomass fuels is that, like using hydrogen for fuel, they allow you to shift the waste product from the exhaust pipe to the fuel production location, which can be far away. Unfortunately, the people who live in that far away place will now have to deal with your polution, and the net result is generally more total pollution than you started with.

Similarly, think of the effect American environmentalists have had on the Middle East. Environmentalists won't allow our country to drill for oil because of the pollution, so we have to buy oil from the Middle East. Middle Eastern dictators, however, couldn't care less about the environment so they drill in the cheapest and dirtiest ways possible. The end result is that we in America pay more for oil than we have to, and we shift the modest pollution we'd cause by drilling here over to the Middle East where it's magnified a hundredfold -- not to mention the pollution caused by the supertankers that bring us the oil.

The majority of environmentalist policies cause more harm than good, and the people who are harmed the most are the poor and those who live under tyrannical dictatorships.

I don't understand the big to-do about drones flying over American cities. UAVs that can hover, track and perch will be America's first line of defense against radiological and chemical weapons. Even aside from terrorism concerns, police use helicopters to follow criminals all the time, and at exorbitant costs. These UAVs will be far cheaper than manned helicopters, more capable, and safer for pilots and civilians on the ground. They'll be quieter, use less fuel, and won't unionize. It's a winning combination for everyone.

For more information on some commercial fixed-wing UAVs that are also seeing plenty of military use, check out the AeroVironment's product line.

Following up my discovery of Google's SMS service, Bob Roth pointed me to another similar service (that he works for) called 4INFO that has even more features. Pretty handy for when you're standing in Fry's and trying to figure out if their prices are any good.

Here's a good bandwidth test that will evaluate your internet connection, courtesy of Stanford University.

Using cell phones to monitor traffic is an excellent example of how reducing privacy can lead to increases in efficiency and productivity.

Several state transportation agencies, including those in Maryland and Virginia, are beginning to test technology that allows them to monitor traffic by tracking cellphone signals and mapping them against road grids. The technology highlights how readily cellphones can become tracking devices for companies or government agencies - a development that troubles privacy advocates.

These new traffic systems can monitor several hundred thousand cellphones at once. The phones need only be turned on, not in use. And sophisticated software now makes it possible to discern whether a signal is coming from, say, a moving car or a pedestrian.

State officials say the systems will monitor large clusters of phones, not individual phones, and the benefits could be substantial. By providing a constantly updated picture of traffic flow across thousands of miles of highways, they argue, cellphone tracking can help transportation agencies spot congestion and divert drivers by issuing alerts by radio or on electronic road signs.

One estimate in the article is that such a system could reduce congestion by half in some circumstances, resulting in incredible gains for individuals and for the economy. The downside is that the government, or some private corporation, could track the movements of large aggregates of people in real time -- and perhaps even specific individuals. Any given person can simply turn off their cell phone to avoid being tracked, but that choice brings its own costs. In the end, no one will be able to have it all.

Wow this is sweet, Google has a free SMS query service that lets you get quick answers to common questions from your mobile phone. They even have a handy wallet-size tip sheet in case you forget how to use the service. Keen!

I still want one of these Elite Wicked Lasers, but now I want the 125mW model.

Release the energy of a star in the palm of your hand as a coherent beam of light, leaving nothing but a scorching path of destruction in its wake! Eye protection is highly recommended. Only : $559.99

In a result that I find to be both groundbreaking and inevitable (based on my earlier musings about law and technology), a panel of Florida judges has ruled that the source code behind a device used to create criminal evidence must be disclosed to the defense team.

A three-judge panel in Sarasota County said that a defense expert must have access to the source code--the secret step-by-step software instructions--used by the Intoxilyzer 5000. It's a simple computer with 168KB of RAM (random access memory) that's manufactured by CMI of Owensboro, Ky.

"Unless the defense can see how the breathalyzer works," the judges wrote, the device amounts to "nothing more than a 'mystical machine' used to establish an accused's guilt."

This is completely rational since there's no other way to prove that the device hasn't been tampered with by police and that it's working as was intended when when it was certified for use as evidence. Similar reasoning requires that the internals of any hardware/software system should be made available to the defendant of any criminal case in which such a system plays an evidentiary role. For example, if a person is put on trial for embezzlement and an accounting balance sheet is used as evidence, the defendant should insist on access to the source code of the accounting software in question to ensure that it hasn't been modified to falsely incriminate him.

The right to examine source code used to generate evidence is necessary to remove reasonable doubt from criminal cases -- and the more technology involved in the case the more inherent doubt it creates. Such a right will make it harder to prosecute information-based crimes, and will also further endanger the (already doomed) protections enjoyed by intellectual property, but I don't see any alternative since any properly positioned defendant can otherwise so easily claim to have been framed by malicious software.

(HT: Eugene Volokh.)

Although I don't have any problem with billionaires tromping around the world in wide-body private jets, it does strike me as spectacularly disingenuous for any such billionaires who are environmentally conscious to excuse their excess by appealing to their "net impact" on the environment.

On the road, Sergey Brin and Larry Page have owned environmentally friendly hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius. In the air, they apparently prefer something roomier.

Google Inc.'s two billionaire founders, both 32 years old, will soon be cruising the skies in a Boeing 767 wide-body airliner. They bought the used plane earlier this year, Mr. Page says. ...

The purchase of a wide-body jet for personal use might seem at odds with the Google founders' support for environmental causes. The company gives employees $5,000 if they buy hybrid gas-electric cars, for example.

Mr. Page, in response, notes a recent investment that Mr. Brin made on behalf of the co-founders and Mr. Schmidt in a $550-million fund to help finance projects that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. "We've worked very hard to make sure our [net] impact on the environment is positive," Mr. Page says.

It's nice that billionaires can have their cake and eat it too, but does their wealth really give them the right to condemn the rest of us for purchasing the highest level of convenience, safety and cleanliness that our meager incomes can afford? Which is more extravagent and luxurious: buying a jumbo jet, or being able to offset that jet by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on pet projects?

In my experience, this sort of calculation is pretty common among celebrities and other leftist "limousine liberals" who want to "save the world" so long they can find a way to excuse themselves from obeying the facist, busy-body rules they make for the rest of us.

Here's an excellent page with information about how to adjust a chocolate chip cookie recipe to achieve different results, such as chewier, crispier, fluffier, cakier, and so forth. Very handy.

My recipe is pretty simple. Start with:

1 cup sugar
1.5 cups brown sugar
1.25 cups butter
2 eggs

Mix that all together and then add:

1 tsp baking soda
1.5 tsp vanilla
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of salt

And gradually stir in:

3.5 cups of flour
12 oz of chocolate chips

Bake at 400 degrees for 9-10 minutes. I make large cookies, and this recipe comes out chewy and flat. Mmmmm.

Richard Miniter has an excellent article debunking the common myth of "suitcase nukes". He goes to great lengths to explain why they don't exist, never existed, and are not a real terrorism threat. To steal his conclusion:

For now, suitcase-sized nuclear bombs remain in the realm of James Bond movies. Given the limitations of physics and engineering, no nation seems to have invested the time and money to make them. Both U.S. and the USSR built nuclear mines (as well as artillery shells), which were small but hardly portable--and all were dismantled by treaty by 2000. Alexander Lebed's claims and those of defector Stanislev Lunev were not based on direct observation. The one U.S. official who saw a small nuclear device said it was the size of three footlockers--hardly a suitcase. The desire to obliterate cities is portable--inside the heads of believers--while, thankfully, the nuclear devices to bring that about are not.

The essay also provides a fascinating glimpse into Russian and American nuclear security.