The Bewilderness

Unobtainium is not an element

Additions to the periodic table are announced periodically. And we have element 117. This new super-heavyweight is not yet named. And usually they are here for a fleeting time before vanishing in the winds of the collider. More info here. So long as they don't call it unobtainium....

The dangers of splashback

Even the most mundane and natural of activities requires study. Every individual will have their own holding pattern and skilled action in aiming at the receptacle. It isn't a sport but eye/hand corrdination are shared. Taking your eyes off the balls could result in disaster, especially in a public place. 

Let us hope that the insights from this latest study will help everyone in this deceptively simple but risky manoevre.

Terra Novae

The number of planets within the habitable zone that could potentially support life is far higher than previously supposed. This begs the question: what are the chances of complex life arising on each of these spheres and consciousness developing as a product of natural selection. It is very hard to quantify but within that riddle lies some of the answers to Fermi's paradox.

BBC nears climate change saturation

Drifting across the BBC website, looking for references to "independent" think tanks, I read the curious title: European forests bear 'carbon saturation point'. This title implied that European forests would no longer be able to absorb carbon. A curiosity which, at first glance, refuted the known processes by which plants feed themselves. A closer examination of the article revealed that this was a cursory summary of a science article released in Nature Climate Change. The authors warned that the European carbon sink may prove less absorbent than anticipated due to changes in human land-use increasing deforestation, an increase in wildfires and a change in tree demography with older stands predominating with a reduced ability to soak up carbon.

This may or may not be true, but some of the projections appear highly speculative. This is another article extrapolating what could be, and we all know how those tend to be disproved as the years pass. There was little or no criticism of the article included. And Mark Kinver concluded with a reference to teh proposed solution: a pan-European legally binding treaty on forest management which would force property owners to deal with forests as the state saw fit in the name of climate change. 

This does tick the boxes: climate change problem, BBC article, proposed European solution forcing everyone to obey some fiat law from on high without any real scientific evidence. Just one article: hardly a consensus - which is the cited requirement for policy, except when it doesn't suit the requirements.

Unsustainable tech

The World Economic Forum's list of 'sustainable technologies' for the forthcoming year. Some seem farfetched like Online Electric Vehicles, due to the large infrastructural investment required. More hopeful is the possibility of efficient and profitable nuclear power, using new designs to remove the long-tail liabilities that have always required nationalisation. With shale, I don't see this being useful for another twenty years. 

None of it will sustain itself in 2013.

The diversity of worms

Shale may now prefix oil and gas but long before this, it gave us the strongest evidence of the Precambrian explosion. This was the Burgess Shale in Canada with its evidence of soft-celled invertebrates giving us a fortunate of life in those early oceans. 

This gift is still giving: with a rather extraodianary hemichordate: a cousin of ours; a worm of some distinction. If Blackadder had been a palaeontologist, he would have been taken aback by the worm that looks like a thingy nestling in those warm waters. To view a modern equivalent, click on the link.

When I look down, is it a case of convergent evolution?

A scientific proof of Conan

We do not accept the unscientific notion of the tabula rasa in social theory. Unless you are social theorists and literary critics blinded by the cul-de-sac of French jargon erroneously described as philosophy. Yet, this does not lead to a blind acceptance of a theory that draws upon natural selection as the basis of its narrative. 

Professor Gerald Crabtree of Stanford University has stressed that natural selection in humanity was driven by a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Intelligence was enhanced by the need to avoid large predators and harmful mutations were weeded out as their owners were eaten. Civilisation arrives and we all become prone to harmful mutations diminishing our capacity for intelligence and emotion.

"I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues," he said.

Crabtree's confidence in the ability of some savage to understand our civilisation is quite breathtaking. Perhaps this can be viewed as the Robert Howard view. Certainly, the echoes of genetic superiority embodied in the barbarian pervade his stories of Conan, King Kull and Brak Man Morn. Literary devices aside, theories that rely upon fanciful and ahistorical anecdotes pay lipservice to the empirical complexities attendant upon all history and archaeology.

Dakota on Dakota

I am partially through watching an old video entitled the "Dinosaur Mummy". This concerns the unearthing of a Hadrosaur fossil in North Dakota with a remarkable record of skin and organs. The programme follows the science of the mummy, later named Dakota after the two states in which it was discovered and is now exhibited.

The first results of this discovery was published in 2009 in Proc. Roy. Soc. B. Certain protein traces were discovered and an exposition of the entire organism indicated that the Hadrosaur was much more muscular than the skeleton indicated. It was also faster than palaeontologists had allowed for. Another clue from the scales rests with the thick skin covering the entire body made up of overlapping scales. This big old bird would have been much more difficult to bite and could outrun potential carnivores. 

Dakota is now exhibited in the Dakotas.

Decimal pointers

If you were to write an article on the ten most important advances in science and technology, what would you include and what would you exclude? I take this David DiSalvo article that I flagged last year and return after an interval of some months. The indications that seemed slightly irrelevant then retain that effect now. Why would desalination or plasma arc waste disposal count as disruptive technology?

Putting the discordant set of examples: radical innovations sitting side by side with existing capabilities, what interests me is DiSalvo's exclusions. Battery advances are cited twice alongside neuroscience, regenerative medicine, electronic paper and scanning technology. 3D printing, a whole swathe of biotechnology and advances in materials science are all left out.

This is not a criticism; since it is almost impossible to accommodate any number of choices. Already some of the developments appear restricted to laboratories for the foreseeable future. But stem cells and electronic paper are now strong contenders for making a radical impact this side of 2015.  

Hurrah for curatorial neglect!

You never know what you may find in the odd nook and cranny. Pull out some forgotten drawer of a "an old wooden cabinet" in the British Geological Survey. What treasures lie within unrevealed? A child sits up: "Doubloons, gold sovereigns, diamonds!" Nothing so mundane!

Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, a palaeontologist found a collection of slides from 1846, never catalogued, that had been compiled by Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker and other members of his circle. This fabulous find has now been catalogued and studied for history and science. From the date, this will provide additional insight into Darwin's notes; perhaps anomalous references to specimens unseen can be reviewed with new clarity.

The slides are works of art in themselves. Instead of the small snapshots that we remember from school laboratories, these are up to half a foot in length, allowing the biologist to scroll across the specimen. Their journey is one of logistical legerdemain:

Royal Holloway, University of London said the fossils were 'lost' because Hooker failed to number them in the formal "specimen register" before setting out on an expedition to the Himalayas. In 1851, the "unregistered" fossils were moved to the Museum of Practical Geology in Piccadilly before being transferred to the South Kensington's Geological Museum in 1935 and then to the British Geological Survey's headquarters near Nottingham 50 years later, the university said. 

Let us hope there are mysteries awaiting in other cabinets of curios.