The Big Bang Song

The Big Bang Theory is, hands down, my favorite comedy on air right now. I just love those crazy physicists! I also know all the words to the theme song, or I thought I did. Here's the full version by the Barenaked Ladies. Enjoy and just try not to sing along!

Curiosity to Mars

NASA's Mars Science Laborary (MSL) spacecraft launched today aboard the Atlas V rocket. The mission is slated to arrive at the red planet next August 2012. It includes the new Curiosity rover, the world's biggest extraterrestrial explorer. The landing of this large rover will be different than that of Pathfinder, Spirit, and Opportunity which relied on airbags to cushion their landing. The rover will be lowered to the surface using cables suspended from at rocket powered "sky crane" and then use landing rockets to get it gently to the surface. Curiosity is the size of a car (10 feet long and 9 feet wide) and is just too big and heavy to get to the surface using airbags. The rover will spend at least two years exploring the Gale Crater, a site rich in minerals and a likely place to find evidence of past life. Curiosity carries a drill, a stone-zapping laser, 10 scientific instruments, and cameras all designed to see whether Mars may have once been hospitable for microbial life. It should be interesting to see what it finds!

Here's a video of the launch:

And an animation from JPL about the rover's landing and function:


Explore the Mars Science Laboratory Mission Page over at the NASA website.

The New York Times: "NASA Launches Sofisticated Rover on Journey to Mars"
The Telegraph: "Curiosity the Nasa space rover ready for launch for Mars"
Time: "NASA Launches 'Curiosity' Rover to Mars"


UPDATE: August 6, 2012

Curiosity has landed!



Here is the first color image from the Curiosity rover:

Mt. Sharp, the main science target, with Curiosity's shadow in the foreground.

Putting on the Holiday Pounds

It seems that lately I’ve been focused on articles about people getting fat or with their obsession with losing weight. Considering that today is Thanksgiving, that wonderful American holiday where it is socially acceptable to eat yourself into oblivion, I figure the topic is appropriate. Of course, I could just be using this as a proxy for going to the gym – you know, reading about other people getting fat instead of stepping on my scale. Apparently stepping on and off a soapbox is not aerobically effective. Maybe I should have written about the article called “Chocolate and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease: A Systematic Review” instead to justify my chocolate habit. Ah well.

Today’s post is actually on two studies, both about gaining weight during the holidays. The fact that Americans are overweight and obese isn’t exactly a secret. Obesity has increased in this country by over 50 percent over the past couple of decades. It affects all ages, socioeconomic classes, and ethnicities. Obesity is serious business both as a health risk as well as impacting healthcare costs. Therefore, both having an understanding of the times when people are more likely to gain weight and the development of effective strategies for prevention are important. For most adults, there is a slight increase in weight gain over time. We’re talking about 1.5 pounds (0.2 to 0.8 kg) per year. However, certain times of the year can affect body weight through changes in food intake, mood, and physical activity. Sound familiar? It’s like part of the definition of the holiday season. Self-report based studies show that Americans will gain about 5 pounds during this time of year. Is that accurate? Maybe. I chose these two studies in particular because they are on the same topic, are data based rather than self-report based, and because they look at two different segments of the population. The first is on average adults and the second on college students. Both studies looked at the “holiday season” which is considered to start with Thanksgiving (the third Thursday of November) through New Years Day.

The first article is from the New England Journal of Medicine. A total of 195 subjects of good health from ages 19 to 82 were recruited, about half of which were women. These people were seen on four occasions at intervals of six to eight weeks – late September/early October, just before Thanksgiving, after New Years Day, and about mid-year. During each visit height, weight, and vitals (like temperature and blood pressure) were measured and a questionnaire filled out that evaluated factors such as stress, dietary and activity patterns, and depression. The study found that in contrast to the common perception of weight gain during the holiday season, a vast majority of their subjects’ weight changed very little, only about a pound (0.48 kg). When asked, the participants believed that they had gained up to four times as much weight as they actually did. The study subjects that gained the most weight, over 5 pounds (2.3 kg) were those who were more likely to be overweight or obese. The holiday seems to be extra problematic for this group.  The down side? The weight that people put on during the holiday season was maintained during the postholiday season. Add the weight gained over the holiday season (which isn’t lost) to the weight gained over the rest of the year and you have a potentially problematic long term weight gain situation.

The second study looked at college students, a convenient and willing demographic (free money and food are a good driver for participation) as well as a group with a high risk for obesity development. This demographic traditionally has bad or changing nutritional and physical habits (just read the Beware the Freshman 15? post from last month). The researchers looked at 82 male and female students ranging in age from 18-40 years (mean of 23 years), freshman to graduate students.  As with the first study, they collected height, weight data, and DXA data (Duel Energy X-ray Absorptiometry which assesses percent body fat, fat mass, and fat free mass) at 3 time points: A week prior to Thanksgiving, just after Thanksgiving, and after New Years Day. As with the previous study, this one showed no significant increase in the body weight of its participants. However, they did find total fat mass and percent body fat to increase for the entire holiday season. Weight gain was specifically related to Thanksgiving with an increase of about 1 pound (0.5 kg). The good news, and different from the other study, was that a change in body weight and fat free mass was found which indicates that at least some of the weight increase may be due to increasing muscle mass. Additionally, when the subjects returned for follow-up they had returned to their pre-holiday weight values, although not necessarily the previous body fat percentage. Perhaps because they were attempting to return to a “preset weight.” It would be interesting if they had attempted to correlate this preset weight idea to a New Years' resolution, but perhaps that is another paper.

The overall idea of both paper? You’re probably gonna gain weight this holiday season, but perhaps not as much as you think. It’s also probably a good idea to work on losing it afterwards. So eat big now but remember to eat well and exercise later.

Gobble, gobble. Oink, oink.

Article 1:
Yanovski, Jack A. et al. (2000) A prospective study of holiday weight gain. New England Journal of Medicine: 342(12), 861-867. (PMID: 10727591)

Article 2:
Hull, Holly R., Casey N. Hester, and David A. Fields (2006) The effect of the holiday season on body weight and composition in college students. Nutrition & Metabolism:   3, 44-47 (DOI: 10.1186/1743-7075-3-44)

Become a Noun

I've featured videos by Adam Cole (cadamole) a few times on this blog, and expect to see him more as I consider his songs kinda genius. Here's a video he did recently through NPR and Krulwich Wonders.

Adam Cole: When I say "Henry Shrapnel, Jules Leotard, Robert Bunsen," you think — what?
Robert Krulwich: That they're inventors?
Adam: No. Better than that. Each one has become immortal. They're nouns!
Robert Krulwich: Is that a good thing, becoming a noun? ...
Adam: Are you kidding? It's a wonderful thing. A thing to sing about.
Robert Krulwich: You're going to sing?
Adam: If I may ...



Read the rest of the interveiw HERE.

Name the Array Contest

Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects that emit radio waves. This type of astronomy uses large radio antennas or radio telescopes that can be used either singularly or as multiple linked telescopes utilizing radio inferometry and aperture synthesis techniques. It is incredibly useful because radio waves penetrate dust, which can obstruct visible light, and see objects which would otherwise be invisible to us. Astronomers can observe such things as the Microwave Background Radiation (the remnant signal of the birth of the universe in the Big Bang), the generation of galaxies, black holes, and much more.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NRAO was founded in 1956 and provides radio telescope facilities open to all astronomers regardless of institutional or national affiliation. One of the most famous and widely used of their facilities is the Very Large Array (VLA) located on the Plains of San Agustin, about 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico, USA. You may recognize it if you have seen the movie Contact. The VLA consists of 27, 230-ton, 25-meter diameter dish antennas that together comprise a single radio telescope system. Over the past few years, the original 1970's vintage electronics that run the telescopes has been replaced with state-of-the-art equipment, expanding the VLA into the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA) by 2012. This new equipment increases the telescope's technical capabilities by factors of as much as 8,000!

And now this new facility needs a new name!

The NRAO is currently seeking ideas for a new name for the VLA and they want you to submit your ideas. You can enter a free-form name, or a word or phrase to come as a prefix before "Very Large Array," or both. Submissions will be accepted until 23:59 EST on December 1, 2011. The new name will be announced at NRAO's Town Hall at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Austin, Texas on Tuesday, January 10, 2012.

Visit the Name the Array webpage to learn more and submit your ideas!

(image by Richard Ryer and from panoramio.com, selected for Google Earth ID: 633587)

What's Your Map Projection?

Consult your inner geographer. What's your favorite map projection?

(via xkcd)

Lab Technician

Do you want to get your white coat dirty?

Scrat in Real Life

Have you seen the Ice Age movies? If you are like me then Scrat, the neurotic saber-toothed squirrel, is your favorite character. That poor squirrel just can't hold on to his acorn. According to a new paper published in Nature, Scrat may be closer to a real prehistoric creature than the animators realized, anatomically speaking at least.

Meet Cronopio dentiacutus. A fossil from the La Buitrera locality, Río Negro Province, Argentina was identified as a medium-sized dryolestoid, with an extremely enlongated snout and a pair of curved saber-fangs.  Dryolestoids are an extinct mammalian group belonging to the lineage that leads to modern marsupials and placentals. They thrived in South America through the Mesozoic and into the Cenozoic. This specimen was of the early Late Cretaceous (60 million years from previously known), and based on it's dental and cranial features, is unlike previously identified specimens from the Mesozoic.

Artist depiction of Cronopio dentiacutus

Unfortunately for this Scrat-like critter, there were no acorns in the Cretaceous.

The paper:
Rougier, Guillermo W., Sabastiam Apesteguia, and Leandro C. Gaetano (2011) Highly specialized mammalian skulls from the Late Cretaceous of South America. Nature: 479, 98-102. (DOI: 10.1038/nature10591)

ScienceShot Article: Meet the Saber-Toothed Squirrel

The Human Biome

Wired recently posted an Atlas of the Human Ecosystem. It is a great infographic that includes some fantastic information. I'm posting their introduction, but follow the link at the end to see the full images.

"If some twisted genius vaporized all 10 trillion cells in your body — along with the hair, the fingernails, and other tissue they create — it would not leave empty space behind. A body-shaped cloud made of bacteria, viruses, and other former stowaways would hover briefly in the air. The cloud would outline your skin, delineate your lungs, trace your digestive tract. You might be gone for good, but your shadow biosphere would remain.

We got our first glimpse of these tiny tenants — now known collectively as the microbiome — in the late 17th century, when a Dutch lens grinder named Anton van Leeuwenhoek noticed a layer of white scum between his teeth. He mixed some of the gunk with pure rainwater and then placed it under one of his handmade microscopes. 'I found, to my great surprise,' he wrote, 'that it contained many small animalcules, the motions of which were very pleasing to behold.'

With the advent of fast DNA sequencing, today’s microbiologists can delve deep into this weird inner universe, and they’re just as amazed as Van Leeuwenhoek was. It’s not just the sheer quantity of microbial cells (100 trillion or so for one person alone) but also their diversity: Each of us is home to thousands of species of microbes, and no two people have quite the same mix.

We’re just beginning to learn the effects our microbiome has on us, but it’s clear that they can be profound. Certain species help digest food and synthesize vitamins; others guide the immune system. Medical researchers have linked obesity, heart disease, and anxiety to properties of the microbiome. In many cases, it’s not the individual species that seem to matter but the richness of the ecosystem. Just as the health of a forest depends upon diversity, our own health appears to benefit from the presence of a wide range of uninvited guests, many of which coevolved with us.

See below for a guided tour of your own personal ecosystem. From the top of your head to the depth of your gut, there’s a jungle in — and on — you."

Visit The Wired Atlas of the Human Ecosystem

I Will Derive!

Math geeks unite!