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Spaced Out

October 22, 2008 1:10 PM

It will be 40 years next summer since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, but there's still a space race on. 

The major players, and their motives, of course, have changed since the Cold-War days: it's now China, Japan, India and other Asian countries trying to show off their technology.  If the Indians can send a spacecraft into lunar orbit, the implication is that they can also sell you a pretty decent laptop. 

Do you care?  Yeah, if your job's on the line.  Which is why I wasn't terribly surprised by an e-mail this morning from the Obama campaign:

"With India’s launch of its first unmanned lunar spacecraft following closely on the heels of China’s first spacewalk, we are reminded just how urgently the United States must revitalize its space program if we are to remain the undisputed leader in space, science, and technology.

"My comprehensive plan to revitalize the space program and close the gap between the Space Shuttle’s retirement and its next-generation replacement includes $2 billion more for NASA -– but more money alone is not enough.  We must not only retain our space workforce so that we don’t let other countries surpass our technical capabilities; we must train new scientists and engineers for the next generation.  My comprehensive space policy focuses on reaching new frontiers through human space exploration, tapping the ingenuity of our commercial space entrepreneurs, fostering a broad research agenda to break new ground on the world’s leading scientific discoveries, and engaging students through educational programs that excite them about space and science." 

In the interest of equal time, you can find the McCain-Palin position HERE.

Where are the candidates really?  Take a look at what Rand Simberg wrote in Popular Mechanics back in April (you can skip the now-dated parts about Sen. Clinton).

With a troubled economy, of course, Obama has not made space a priority; earlier in the year he proposed paying for his education program (see the very last page) by delaying the Constellation Program (the space shuttle's replacement) for five years.  But a good number of people working on Constellation live in electorally-valuable Florida.

(Computer-generated artist's conception of Ares I launch from NASA/MSFC.)

October 22, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

Can You Hear Me Now?

October 17, 2008 6:13 PM

Let me tell you about the day I decided civilization was finished.

I was in a men's room at an airport.  A man came in, yakking loudly on a cell phone.  He did his business, flushed, and left -- and not for a second did he stop talking.

It didn't escape our notice here that it's now 25 years since the first commercial cell phone service began.  We did a World News piece; the webcast version is HERE.

Volumes have been written about how the mobile phone has changed us.  We're all reachable, whether we like it or not.  We can talk to people with remarkable ease, but we're also surrounded by the din of other people having private conversations in public places.  A friend of mine would laugh at the conversations that broke out around us on planes when the flight ended: "Now would you please make three copies and send two to Steve, with a cover note...."  How many calls do we now make because we can, not because we need or want to?

A U.N. report says we're close four billion wireless phones worldwide -- more than half the planet's population.  In the U.S. alone, as of June, there were 262.7 million wireless subscribers -- 84 percent of all Americans. In a year, we use 2.23 trillion minutes of air time. 

And, of course, it's become a touch quaint to refer to cell phones as "phones" -- since it's hard to find one that doesn't include a camera, browser, texting, GPS, ability to download music or video, etc. 

Motorola, whose DynaTAC series was perhaps the first successful "handset" -- though at two-and-a-half pounds it doesn't seem very handy anymore -- has posted its own version of the cell phone's history HERE.  Watch the video from 1984.  It will remind you that time flies.

The CTIA, the industry association (CTIA used to stand for Cellular Telephone Industries Association), lists some changes that have come along since the first commercial cell-phone service in 1983:

• "Plenty of Time to Chat: In the first six months of 2008 (Jan. 1 – June 30) U.S. consumers talked on average a total of 187 billion minutes each month. That is more than 6 billion minutes each day, and amounts to nearly 13 hours (766 minutes) per customer each month.
• "Text is the New Talk: More than 384 billion text messages were reported by carriers this year between Jan. 1 – June 30, versus 295 billion voice calls. That is 22 billion more text messages than for all of 2007. Text messaging is doubling every year.
• "Subscriptions Soaring: The wireless industry saw almost 20 million new subscribers in just the last 12 month period (July 2007 – June 2008). There are 2,869 times more subscribers today than in January 1985." 

And by the way, to transmit all that stuff, the CTIA says that in June there were 220,472 cell towers in America.

(Image of 1983 phone courtesy Motorola.)

October 17, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (24) | TrackBack (0)

Tough Cars for Tough Times

October 15, 2008 3:29 PM

Take a look at the BMW 5 Series sedan.  It's a well-built upscale car -- but that's not the issue for the moment. 

Does the front of the car resemble a face to you?  It does to many people.  What do you think of it?  Please feel free to weigh in below.

Now, take a look at the Toyota Prius.  It's the darling of environmental consciousness -- but that's not the issue for now either.  What do you see when you look at its "face"?

The car companies would be really interested to know your answers because, to put it blandly, there are billions of dollars on the line.  So Karl Grammer, an anthropologist at the University of Vienna, got together with Truls Thorstensen, a design consultant there; they and several colleagues asked 40 people (half men, half women) to rate the "faces" of 38 different cars.

"All subjects marked eyes (headlights), a mouth (air intake/grille), and a nose in more than 50 percent of the cars," writes Grammer on the university website (full text HERE).

The researchers are publishing their results in the December edition of the journal Human Nature, and the abstract is HERE, but the key point is in Grammer's summary: 

"The better the subjects liked a car, the more it bore shape characteristics corresponding to high values of what the authors termed 'power', indicating that both men and women like mature, dominant, masculine, arrogant, angry-looking cars."

Dominant?  Arrogant?  Angry?  It doesn't take an academic journal to tell us that a lot of cars run on testosterone, even if all they do is sit in traffic.

A few years ago I did a story about a charming, eccentric French-born anthropologist-turned-consultant named Clotaire Rapaille, who argued that in a stressful world (the guy on your tail honking at you?), people retreat to the "reptilian instincts" that drive us all. 

We met at a Chrysler dealership.  Pointing out at the highway, Rapaille said, in a lilting French accent, "People feel it's a jungle out there.  It's 'Mad Max.'  It's very dangerous.  And the message they want to give is, 'Don't mess with me.'"

Rapaille advised Chrysler in the development of the PT Cruiser, a car with a 1930s design, made very much on purpose to look like Al Capone's getaway car.  You expected toughs in fedoras to climb out of it with machine guns.  And as for the car's grille, Rapaille said, "It does look as though it has a sly smile, does it not?"

The PT Cruiser has served Chrysler well in otherwise-dismal times.  And in the Vienna experiment, test subjects much preferred the hooded "eyes" of the BMW to the happy little grin of the Prius. 

But when times get really tough, do you have $45,000 (minimum) to spend on the BMW?  Or do you wish you had the hybrid that gets 45 miles a gallon?

(Pictures courtesy BMW and Toyota.)

October 15, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (20) | TrackBack (0)

The Man Who Missed the Nobel Prize

October 10, 2008 4:57 PM

Douglas Prasher played a key role in the work that won the Nobel Chemistry prize this week.  Prasher did not share in the $1.4 million winnings.

Instead, we're told he drives a courtesy van at Bill Penny Toyota in Huntsville, Alabama.

The prize was awarded to three men: Osamu Shimomura, then at Princeton; Martin Chalfie of Columbia; and Roger Tsien of the University of California at San Diego.  Their accomplishment: developing Green Fluorescent Protein, or GFP, a key tool scientists now use to observe biological processes in living things.

Where did they get GFP?  From Prasher.

Prasher, according to people in the field, "was the first person to realize the potential of GFP as a tracer molecule. In 1987 he got the idea that sparked the GFP revolution. He thought that GFP from a jellyfish could be used to report when a protein was being made in a cell."  The fish in the picture above glow brightly (and harmlessly, we're told) because of GFP, which has made it possible for scientists to see how diseases spread or respond to treatment.

In the 1980s, working at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, he cloned the protein--but then ran out of grant money.  When Chalfie and Tsien called him some years later, he willingly shared his work.  His story is nicely told by Steve Doyle of the Huntsville Times. Prasher moved there to work for a NASA contractor, but has not been able to find work since in biochemistry.

"Of course, I want to get back into science; that's a no-brainer," Prasher tells Doyle.  "But in this town, I don't think it's going to work."

How did he end up driving a courtesy van at a car dealer?  He needed to pay his bills, he says.  His $10-an-hour pay doesn't quite do it, but he has family reasons for staying in Huntsville. 

Bob Grant, Associate Editor of The Scientist, asks, "Is there anyone out there who might have a research position open for him?" 

Prasher, through it all, insists he is not angry at the Nobel winners. "I'm really happy for them."

October 10, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (24) | TrackBack (0)

'Western Man has Stopped Evolving'?

October 08, 2008 12:24 PM

J. Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London, has set off a bit of a brush fire by suggesting that human beings in technologically-advanced societies have stopped evolving, no longer faced with the challenges to their survival that made survival of the fittest so important to Darwin.

"In ancient times half our children would have died by the age of 20. Now, in the Western world, 98 per cent of them are surviving to 21," he said in a lecture in London. He elaborates on it in a piece he wrote for London's Telegraph; find it HERE.  He argues that we have benefited from modern medicine, agriculture, indoor plumbing, etc., making the notion of adapt-or-die less important than it used to be. 

He offers another theory, on which he hangs more of his argument: in addition to the comforts of modern times, more men are having children at younger ages, reducing the chance of random genetic mutations.  "Today's men start late, but stop early. In Cameroon, almost half the fathers are over 50, in Pakistan about a fifth, and in France only about one in twenty," he writes.  "Young dads mean that the rate of mutation is going down rather than up, and less, not more, of evolution's raw material is being made."

Jones, something of a media figure in Britain, has brought up this theme before, and certainly has his share of detractors -- take a look at a CRITIQUE by John Wilkins of the University of Queensland in Australia: "Once and for all: evolution has not stopped. Not now nor ever."

There are a lot of complex, sometimes self-contradictory arguments here, and the whole thing brings a lot of attention to its instigator in Britain.  But here in the U.S., at least, it's a bit less onerous than thinking about the economy. 

October 8, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (131) | TrackBack (0)

A Closeup View of Hell

October 06, 2008 3:38 PM

Every new picture from Mercury reminds one why Earth is a good place to live.  NASA's robotic MESSENGER spacecraft made a close flyby early Monday morning (around 4:40 a.m. EDT), coming within about 125 miles of Mercury's cratered surface.

It's not a nice place, 36 million miles from the Sun.  For lack of an insulating atmosphere, the daytime temperature can rise above 800 deg. F., and at night, with heat dissipating into space, it can approach -300.  The days are long -- as long as 58 days on Earth.  Since Mercury is only about three-eighths as far from the Sun as we are, it whizzes around the Sun in 88 Earth-days, so a day there is nearly as long as a year.  (There's more HERE.) 

MESSENGER, launched in 2004, made a flyby in January, and won't settle into orbit around the planet until March 2011.  It's been sent on a long, looping path around the inner solar system; a longer flight uses a lot less fuel, and needs a smaller, cheaper rocket to launch it. Full details on the mission HERE.

NASA points out that if you lived on Mercury -- not that you'd want to -- you'd be treated to some odd sights. "Due to Mercury's rotation and highly elliptical orbit, the Sun appears to rise briefly, set, and rise again before it travels westward across the sky. At sunset, the Sun appears to set, rise again briefly, and then set again."

Some of MESSENGER's most striking images so far are HERE, and if they spot any nice lagoons or stands of aspen trees, we'll let you know.

October 6, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)

The Final Resting Place of a Submarine

October 03, 2008 4:09 PM

"Overdue and Presumed Lost."  In World War II those were the most feared -- and perhaps also most ambiguous -- words the families of a submarine crew could hear.

On July 30, 1942, the USS Grunion was in the Aleutian Islands of southwestern Alaska.  It was a new submarine on its very first war patrol.  It reported "heavy antisubmarine activity," was sent orders to head for the port of  Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and was never heard from again.  On August 16 it was listed as overdue and presumed lost.  70 crew members died. 

And that would have been, as in too many other cases, the final, desperately sad end to the story, if not for the determination of some of the crew's children -- in particular, the sons of the Grunion's commanding officer.

Lt. Commander Mannert Abele left behind three boys, Bruce, Brad and John, and they decided to search for the Grunion.  Unlike most other families, they had the means to mount a search on their own; John Abele was co-founder of Boston Scientific, a well-known maker of medical devices.

The brothers did extensive research, talked to Japanese naval historians, and organized search expeditions.  In 2006, using side-scan sonar, they located a wreck a mile down, off the island of Kiska, Alaska.  Now the Pacific Command of the U.S. Navy has put out word confirming it is the Grunion.

"We hope this announcement will help to give closure to the families of the 70 crewmen of Grunion,” said Rear Adm. Douglas McAneny, Commander, Submarine Forces Pacific Fleet, in a statement.

But, of course, closure can be elusive.  Brad Abele has passed away since the find was made.  The Grunion was probably sunk by fire from a Japanese ship, but the Navy says it cannot confirm what happened.  The wreck, like many others, will remain on the ocean floor.

The Naval Historical Center put out a statement that said in part, “no amount of analysis or speculation will change or alter the fact that families lost fathers, husbands, uncles and brothers...the Navy and the nation will always be grateful for their service and their sacrifice.”

(Photo above, of the USS Grunion in 1942, courtesy U.S. Navy.)

October 3, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (43) | TrackBack (0)