Belated Halloween Post II: The Return of Narf!

Once again I am posting my Halloween costume after Halloween. Same reason as last year. Both years have been fun. However, this year spoke to the fact that I may, or may not, be a lab mouse involved in an intricate scheme to take over the world.That is me on the left (The Brain, most of the people downtown thought Pinky was the short smart one... dunderheads), and YES the tail is shaped like a lightning bolt. Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween. For my part, I must make plans for tomorrow night. "Why? what are you doing tomorrow night?" you might ask. The same thing I do every night... Try to GRADUATE!!!

OneGeology

I didn't think I would be blogging about GSA, but I saw a presentation that I thought was quite good. Ian Jackson, whom I first met last year when I visited the BGS, gave a couple of talks on a relatively new project called OneGeology (it's been going for 1.5 - 2 years now, maybe more).

The goal of OneGeology is to make geologic maps from around the world freely accessible to anyone who wants them. I am fully in favor of open access to all data, as this is the best way for science to function. The driving point of Ian's talk was the vast discrepency between fully industrialized data who can zip about 'holodeck' representations of datasets and developing nations which might not even have a steady supply of electricity.

The need to understand geologic processes is a global concern. In some cases, it may even be more important to developing nations to have the access to high quality data sets than it is to industrialized nations. This project continues a theme I was picking up in several of the sessions I have attended thus far. There is a growing need for earth scientists to reach out to the general public and engender an appreciation for the role that the earth plays in our everyday lives.

I am certain that this goal is appreciated by anyone who might stumble onto this blog. However, of all the talks that touched on this need, Ian Jackson's talks were one of the few that actually proposed a means to achieve this objective.

Mirror Mirror on the wall, what's the most bad-ass planet of them all?

COROT-7b.

Attached is a copy of the press release on this utterly bizarre planet. My advisor sent me a copy of this last night, along with his impression of this planet (which was, and I quote: "WTF"). All you need to know is there is indeed a place in the universe where it RAINS rubies and sapphires.... FROM THE SKY!

Cloudy with a chance of pebble showers: Simulation suggests rocky exoplanet has bizarre atmosphere

(PhysOrg.com) -- So accustomed are we to the sunshine, rain, fog and snow of our home planet that we find it next to impossible to imagine a different atmosphere and other forms of precipitation.

There is a word for planets like this. That word is awesome.
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Edit: Discovery Channel, the channel that is ostensibly about science, premiered its new show, "Ghost Lab", tonight as well. Out of curiosity, I tuned in to see how bad it would be. The best piece of evidence presented thus far is a door... opening... off camera. How did they know it was closed to begin with? Anecdotal evidence*. The close runner up, detecting an increased electromagnetic field, when you hold a flashlight next to the EMF detector...

[facepalm]

So for those keeping score: Today, real science provided us with evidence of an exoplanet that rains sapphires. Pseudoscience provided us with a door... Science provides us tangible awesomeness. Pseudoscience provides us intangible lameness.

*This video is based on the work of Prof. Daniel Simons on Sustained Inattentional Blindness. It basically shows how worthless anecdotal evidence really is. Here's the paper on this.

Crickets, Sitcoms, and the Scientific Method

The snowy tree cricket's chirp does, in fact, vary with ambient temperature.

~T = C+40

where
~T is the approximate temperature in Fahrenheit
C is number of chirps in a 13 second interval

(Although, the number of chirps I counted would mean Sheldon's apartment is about 50 degrees. Which doesn't really bother me, because the writers got the basic science correct. Even if they flubbed it on the sound effect).

The mistake Sheldon made was in an inadequate test for his hypothesis. To properly discount the possibility of the common field cricket, Sheldon needed additional data. Namely, he needed to (at the very least) change the ambient air temperature of the room and observe whether the number of chirps per second changed by an appropriate margin before he made any determination. If the chirps changed, it could likely be a snowy tree cricket. If the chirps remain constant, it is not a snowy tree cricket. If the chirps changed, but not according to the known relationship, it is inconclusive.

It seems, from my perspective, that the writers compared/contrasted how the public perceives science to function and how it actually functions. The public perception was portrayed by Sheldon's haphazard application of a factoid of science. The actual process of science was portrayed by Howard challenging Sheldon to provide sufficient data to make such a claim. The public perception of science seems to be centered on science as a body of facts, rather than science as a crucible for reality. All too often, scientists are portrayed as dictating what is reality. When in actuality, scientists are only constantly coming up with tests to disprove (or add further support) some notion of what reality is.

One small gripe with the episode. Once they caught the cricket, the game was over. The two types of cricket don't look anything like each other. Jiminy the Snowy Tree Cricket:And Toby the Field Cricket:I really enjoy this show overall, and I think it is (generally) a good spokesman for science. I am glad that Sheldon was called on his poor methods (and ended up losing the bet). Hopefully, this subtle display about the scientific method, and the importance of peer review, is appreciated by the public consciousness.

Jere Lipps For The Win (and Introductory Geological Concepts 2)

I just received one of those mass emails from SEPM. Turns out that SEPM is honoring Jere Lipps with the 2010 Moore Medal. This is a well deserved honor. Here is the announcement:

SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology announces that Dr. Jere Lipps (University of California, Berkeley, CA) has been awarded the 2010 Moore Medal for excellence in the study and application of paleontology.

Dr. Lipp's contributions to paleontology range across many fields, including micropaleontology, molluscan paleocommunities, general paleobiology (including organism responses to climate change), and temporal assessments ("temporal smearing") of extinction events owing to incompleteness of the fossil record (termed the "Signor-Lipps Effect"). He also has served the paleontological community as President of the Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research, President of the Paleontological Society and Chair of the Association of North American Paleontological Societies, among others.

An added bonus to this is I get to reiterate how awesome the Signor-Lipps effect is and once more suggest people read about it. It is, probably, the preeminent study in regards to extinctions. So here is the link to the paper, and here are some links previous posts (wow, these look like my first posts) gushing about the effect.

A brief synopsis of the Signor-Lipps effect goes a little something like this. When an organism dies, varying factors influence whether or not the organism will be preserved as a fossil. The potential that an organism will be, in whole or in part, fossilized can be referred to as 'preservation potential'. The preservation potential varies between species. For example, a clam lives its life buried in sediment. If it dies while still buried, it has a very good chance of becoming a fossil. A bird that lives in trees and flies around in the sky, will need to die and get transported to a location that is likely to be preserved. So the bird in this example has a lower preservation potential than a clam. Now expand this concept to discuss populations, rather than an individual. We see that rare species with relatively low preservation potentials aren't going to be fossilized as often as abundant species with high preservation potentials.

Now if we apply this concept to the study of extinction events (this is where the Signor-Lipps effect comes into play), we would expect to see certain species disappearing from the fossil record before other species. Regardless of the cause of the extinction. So rare species with low preservation potentials should disappear lower, in the stratigraphic record, than abundant species with high preservation potentials. This will give the appearance of a gradual extinction (where species diversity is declining over a period of time) even if the extinction event is catastrophic (where all the species disappear at once). The implication of this is that gradual extinctions are indistinguishable from catastrophic extinctions in the stratigraphic record. Here is a visual representation of this idea (from Williams, 1994):The larger the symbol the more rarely a species is preserved. The black box on the right is a representation of a stratigraphic column showing where each specimen was found. The lines leading to a symbol on the left give an approximate range of a species' duration. Rare species disappear from the rock record first, abundant species should disappear from the fossil record last. At this point, due to variable preservation potential within the fossil record, it is not possible for us to distinguish between a fast or slow extinction event. Jere Lipps was one of the first people to say it, so he deserves our congratulations.

Cited:

Signor, P. W., and Lipps, J. H., 1982, Sampling bias, gradual extinction patterns, and catastrophes in the fossil record, Geological Implications of Impacts of Large Asteroids and Comets on the Earth: Special Paper - Geological Society of America, p. 291-296.

Williams,M.E., 1994, Catastrophic Versus Noncatastrophic Extinction of the Dinosaurs: Testing, Falsifiability, and the Burden of Proof: Journal of Paleonotology v.68 p.183-190.

Fun with Optical Illusions

Bad Astronomy has a link to an awesome illusion. I recommend it... unless you are prone to visual epilepsy or possibly those who easily become motion sick. Not much else to say about it.... why are you still reading this? Go to the illusion.

Edit: I just showed it to a friend in the grad office, he said it was like a mild version of the illusions he had while he needed to use pain medication. After a day of it, he decided the pain was more tolerable. I can see why, the effect lasts less than a minute (and is thus fun), but if it went on a whole day it'd get old real quick.

A Honest Argument

Finally, there is an argument out there, against the public option, that doesn't rely on inflating crowd numbers, making up 'death panels', or failing to read a bill before shouting at the president during a joint session.

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Unfortunately, honesty is not in the insurance company executives best interest.