Internet Scofflaw

In a landmark achievement, doctors have used stem cells as part of a process to create an artificial bronchus (the organ connecting the trachea to a lung). This is one of the first cases of an actual treatment using stem cells; most applications are still years away. Incidentally, the treatment used adult stem cells, so no ethical concerns attach to the process.

Although with a zillion caveats, a low-cost strategy for fusion power has tested well in the laboratory:

The experiment, funded by the U.S. Navy, was aimed at verifying some interesting results that the late physicist Robert Bussard coaxed out of a high-voltage inertial electrostatic contraption known as WB-6. (The “WB” stands for Wiffle Ball, which describes the shape of the device and its magnetic field.)

An EMC2 team headed by Los Alamos researcher Richard Nebel (who’s on leave from his federal lab job) picked up the baton from Bussard and tried to duplicate the results. The team has turned in its final report, and it’s been double-checked by a peer-review panel, Nebel told me today. Although he couldn’t go into the details, he said the verdict was positive. . .

By and large, the EMC2 results fit Bussard’s theoretical predictions, Nebel said. That could mean Polywell fusion would actually lead to a power-generating reaction. But based on the 10-month, shoestring-budget experiment, the team can’t rule out the possibility that a different phenomenon is causing the observed effects. . .

If Polywell pans out, nuclear fusion could be done more cheaply and more safely than it could ever be done in a tokamak or a laser blaster. The process might be able to produce power without throwing off loads of radioactive byproducts. It might even use helium-3 mined from the moon. “We don’t want to oversell this,” Nebel said, “but this is pretty interesting stuff, and if it works, it’s huge.”

(Via Instapundit.)

Scientists report an advance for the iPS technique:

Whitehead Institute researchers have greatly simplified the creation of so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, cutting the number of viruses used in the reprogramming process from four to one. Scientists hope that these embryonic stem-cell-like cells could eventually be used to treat such ailments as Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.

The earliest reprogramming efforts relied on four separate viruses to transfer genes into the cells’ DNA. . .  However, this method poses significant risks for potential use in humans. The viruses used in reprogramming are associated with cancer because they may insert DNA anywhere in a cell’s genome, thereby potentially triggering the expression of cancer-causing genes, or oncogenes. For iPS cells to be employed to treat human diseases, researchers must find safe alternatives to reprogramming with such viruses. This latest technique represents a significant advance in the quest to eliminate the potentially harmful viruses.

(Via FuturePundit, via Instapundit.)

The iPS technique is preferred because it does not involve killing embryos, and is also cheaper and easier.  Researchers have long suspected they would be able to get the viruses out of the picture, so this development isn’t surprising.

There is one thing I don’t understand.  Three months ago, Science published a paper showing how to create iPS cells with zero viruses.  So how is one virus progress?  It must be a technical detail that’s not coming out in the press release.

I liked it better when the term “recession” had an actual meaning. It used to be that a recession was when real GDP declines two quarters in a row. By that definition, we were not in a recession as of the end of 3rd quarter (the most recent quarter for which data are available). For the last six quarters, real GDP growth has been:

2007 2007 2007 2008 2008 2008
 Q2   Q3   Q4   Q1   Q2   Q3
 4.8  4.8 -0.2  0.9  2.8 -0.5

If real GDP growth falls in the 4th quarter, as seems likely, we will have been in a recession (according to the old definition) since the 3rd quarter of 2008.

Now, however, we are in a recession whenever a self-appointment group of economists, the NBER, tell us we are.  According to them, we have been in recession since December 2007.  This is very strange, since we had two quarters of growth following December 2007, one of them being decently healthy, and both being larger than the decline in the 4th quarter of 2007.

If the NBER wants to redefine the word, that’s fine, but there’s no reason the rest of us have to go along.  I’m certainly not arguing that the economy is in good shape right now, but I do lament the loss of a well-defined term from our lexicon.

Economists have proven that privatizing fishing stocks can avert the tragedy of the commons.  No surprise here, but it’s still good to see it proven.

A new study, published in the journal Pediatrics:

RESULTS. Exposure to sexual content on television predicted teen pregnancy, with adjustment for all covariates. Teens who were exposed to high levels of television sexual content (90th percentile) were twice as likely to experience a pregnancy in the subsequent 3 years, compared with those with lower levels of exposure (10th percentile).

CONCLUSIONS. This is the first study to demonstrate a prospective link between exposure to sexual content on television and the experience of a pregnancy before the age of 20. Limiting adolescent exposure to the sexual content on television and balancing portrayals of sex in the media with information about possible negative consequences might reduce the risk of teen pregnancy. Parents may be able to mitigate the influence of this sexual content by viewing with their children and discussing these depictions of sex.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Economist has a fascinating article on a new theory of cancer: what causes it and why it recurs.

The Guardian reports that those who pride themselves on green lifestyles are also the most likely to engage in carbon-emitting long haul flights:

People who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers, who claim that many ideas about sustainable living are a myth.

According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad. The carbon emissions from such flights can swamp the green savings made at home, the researchers claim.

Stewart Barr, of Exeter University, who led the research, said: “Green living is largely something of a myth. There is this middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image. But another part of the desired image is to fly off skiing twice a year. And the carbon savings they make by not driving their kids to school will be obliterated by the pollution from their flights.”

Some people even said they deserved such flights as a reward for their green efforts, he added.

Only a very small number of citizens matched their eco-friendly behaviour at home by refusing to fly abroad, Barr told a climate change conference at Exeter University yesterday.

The research team questioned 200 people on their environmental attitudes and split them into three groups, based on a commitment to green living.

They found the longest and the most frequent flights were taken by those who were most aware of environmental issues, including the threat posed by climate change. . .

Barr said “green” lifestyles at home and frequent flying were linked to income, with wealthier people more likely to be engaged in both activities.

Of course, these people’s behavior is perfectly sensible from an economic perspective.  Their green efforts, like their flights abroad, give them utility, and the green efforts are probably very cost effective in that regard.  Also, they are helping the environment when compared with the most likely alternative, which would be flights abroad and no green efforts.  Delete the sanctimony and I have no problem with them at all.

(Via Instapundit.)

A few months ago, researchers discovered that they could create stem cells from adult cells, thereby saving time and effort and avoiding ethical issues.  Now, that discovery has been one-upped.  A new technique skips the middle-man: it converts an adult cell into a different sort of adult cell, without creating any stem cell at all.

Much is being made in some circles of the latest issue of Physics and Society (a newsletter of the American Physical Society) with this concession in its editorial:

There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion.

and the inclusion of an article critical of anthropogenic theories of global warming. I wouldn’t make very much of it, the editorial seems carefully worded and the article is prefaced with this:

The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.

Based on my conversations with climate scientists, I think there’s much better reason to question future projections of global warming than there is to question analyses of what’s happened already.

UPDATE: This clarification, currently on the APS home page (no permalink), seems to prove my point:

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.”

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that “Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum.” This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.

Whew! (Via Instapundit.)

Seriously, although the doomsday scenario always seemed extremely farfetched, it wasn’t clear to me how anyone could say for certain. But, it turns out that, as CERN puts it: “Nature has already generated on Earth as many collisions as about a million LHC experiments – and the planet still exists.”

FoldIt, the protein-folding game by new CMU professor Adrien Treuille and colleagues of his at UW, gets linked by Instapundit. A longer story on FoldIt is at Science Daily.

The FBI has issued a warning over bogus WiFi networks:

How do hackers grab your personal data out of thin air? Agent Peterson said one of the most common types of attack is this: a bogus but legitimate-looking Wi-Fi network with a strong signal is strategically set up in a known hot spot…and the hacker waits for nearby laptops to connect to it. At that point, your computer—and all your sensitive information, including user ID, passwords, credit card numbers, etc.—basically belongs to the hacker. The intruder can mine your computer for valuable data, direct you to phony webpages that look like ones you frequent, and record your every keystroke.

“Another thing to remember,” said Agent Peterson, “is that the connection between your laptop and the attacker’s laptop runs both ways: while he’s taking info from you, you may be unknowingly downloading viruses, worms, and other malware from him.”

(Via Hot Air.)

It’s worth warning people about the dangers of bogus networks, particularly if this is form of attack is really going on a lot, but Agent Peterson seems confused about the nature of the threat. This is simply a form of the classic man-in-the-middle attack, which computer scientists have been aware of for a long time. The attack arises whenever the adversary can compromise a node along your communication path, such as a wireless router. So it has nothing to do with WiFi, per se. Also, the business about your computer “basically belonging to the hacker” is complete nonsense. A man-in-the-middle attack can only compromise the information you send over the network — not everything on your computer.

In principle, the man-in-the-middle attack is a solved problem. Rather than warning people to beware of public WiFi, the FBI should be cautioning people to take appropriate precautions in all their network activity. Those precautions are necessary everywhere, not just on WiFi.

A month ago I mentioned an Economist article about how spacecraft are not behaving quite as expected. A physicist friend of mine e-mails:

The sling-shot anomaly you asked about is taken seriously enough to have been published in Phys Rev Letters last month. Of course it COULD indicate undreamed of physics. But it’s more likely to be a subtle systematic error.

The same first author (Anderson) is also on the 1998 paper on the Pioneer anomaly which seemed to indicate that Pioneer 10 and 11 were accelerating towards the sun a little more than they should. That’s been a thorn in the side of general relativity for some time now. That effect has now been PARTLY explained by a rather prosaic effect: the heat from the plutonium power source warms the spacecraft which radiate thermal radiation. But, because of their composition, it turns out that they radiate more in front of them than behind. So radiation pressure slows them down…. how annoying… but not exciting.

As a condition to posting his email, my friend asks me to point out that he is not an expert. Noted. He knows much more than I do, though.

Determining whether or not a face is attractive no longer requires human computation. Researchers at Tel Aviv University have implemented an automated system to judge whether a face is attractive or not. (Via Instapundit.) The system is based on the idea that the most beautiful face is one whose features are close to the average.

The psychological research doesn’t sound new; I first heard the observation that beautiful equals average about 20 years ago. On the other hand, the vision problems implicit in the project sound hard. (For example, the article doesn’t say this, but surely they must locate the cheekbones in order to judge whether a face is attractive.)

In a way, though, this work is a pity. Now that a computer can tell whether a face is attractive, we’ll have to give up any hope that people will start using CAPTCHAs based on pretty faces. Oh well.

The March 8 issue of the Economist has an interesting article about how spacecraft apparently are not following their expected trajectories:

In 1990 mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California . . . noticed something odd happen to a Jupiter-bound craft, called Galileo. As it was flung around the Earth in what is known as a slingshot manoeuvre . . . , Galileo picked up more velocity than expected. Not much. Four millimetres a second, to be precise. But well within the range that can reliably be detected. . .

Once might be happenstance. But this strange extra acceleration was seen subsequently with two other craft. . . So a team from JPL has got together to analyse all of the slingshot manoeuvres that have been carried out over the years, to see if they really do involve a small but systematic extra boost. The answer is that they do.

Altogether, John Anderson and his colleagues analysed six slingshots involving five different spacecraft. Their paper on the matter is about to be published in Physical Review Letters. Crucially for the idea that there really is a systematic flaw in the laws of physics as they are understood today, their data can be described by a simple formula. It is therefore possible to predict what should happen on future occasions.

Anderson and his colleagues plan to test their theory when they receive data from Rosetta, which executed a slingshot maneuver in November. I hope I hear about the results.

If I had any readers, I’d ask the physicists if they knew anything about this.