The Science Of Homelessness

Environmental & Science Education

STEM

Medicine
Health

Society

Edward Hessler

A short (1.5 pp) article from the journal Nature caught my eye in May.  It was about something I'd never considered: the biomedical effects on being old and homeless. This population ages "at hyper speed." This may not be news but the question is what is really known about it.

There is a Center for Vulnerable Populations (CVP) at the University of California San Francisco studying biological effects of homelessness.. Their aim of its director is to understand "how homelessness can accelerate ageing," in order to "identify ways to curb suffering and save government money," learn how to invest wisely and make a health difference. 

While it is well known that homeless people often suffer "physical and mental-health problems ... systematic research on the progression and causes of their ailments" is missing." Dr. Margot Kushel, the director of the CVP, started "a study on the life trajectories of older homeless adults in the Bay area in 2013. She started with 350 participants. Since then 42 have died. "Many people in her study were over the age of 50 when they first became homeless."

Other research is included in this report, e.g., the work of neurologist Serggio Lanata, who by now has launched a study which "will look for signs of debilitating brain conditions (early signs of Alzheimer's) ... in at least 20 homeless adults." Brain scans and other factors such as "lack of sleep, exposure to polluted air near highways, poorly controlled diabetes, high blood pressure and alcohol abuse" will also be collected and analyzed. Material in parenthesis added.)

The One Lesson from Greta Thunberg

Environmental & Science Eduction
STEM
Earth Science
Geology
Earth Systems
Nature of Science
Climate Change
Edward Hessler

What is "the one science lesson every American adult can learn from Greta Thunberg"?

Ethan Siegal, writing for Forbes, provides the important answer.

What Greta Thunberg has to teach us, that most people (perhaps even most scientists) fail to grasp, is that the scientific expertise you learn in the process of becoming a scientist is what enables you to make informed judgments about the merits of various scientific assertions. And, if you care about achieving the most desirable outcome, you must accept the best science the world has to offer — the scientific consensus on an issue, where one exists — or you don't deserve a seat at the table.

The essay is a short course on the nature of science and includes a digression on the meaning of consensus science from relativity to biological evolution to vaccination and fluoridation.  In the end, Siegal writes "the science (of global climate change) has been unambiguous since the late 1980s: the Earth is warming, humans are the cause, and the only way to combat this is through large-scale action taken by our world's governments."

Siegal expands on the answer so I strongly recommend you read it. The supporting material, graphs and illustrations, are very nicely used.

Siegal began his career as a theoretical physicist but turned to writing about science for a number of outlets. In addition he professes at colleges and universities. He is a regular contributor at Forbes (Starts with a Bang) where he serves a senior writer on science.

Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education
Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

Today's poem is a fine way to close September, so is Willie Nelson singing September Song.

The poem is by W. S. Merwin.

Kate Marvel on Jonathan Franzen

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Climate Change
Nature of Science
Edward Hessler


Kate Marvel came to climate science via a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. That background has served her well as a climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. She also writes a regular column, "Hot Planet," for Scientific American (SA).

Widely acclaimed novelist and essayist Jonathan Franzen wrote an essay under the occasional Cultural Comment section of The New Yorker on September 8, 2019. I've not read What if We Stopped Pretending but trust him to have provided the takeaway in the subtitle. The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can't prevent it.

Kate disagrees. Strongly. The title of her SA Hot Planet column pulls no punches, e.g., the title: Shut Up, Franzen. And like Franzen, she provides her takeaway in the subtitle: Climate change is real, and things will get worse. But because we understand the driver of potential doom, it's a choice, not a foregone conclusion. 

Marvel notes that we've "had the potential for total annihilation since 1945, and the capacity for localized mayhem for as long as societies have existed." She goes on to describe the basic physics of not doing anything, "the easy choice of a slow destruction through inaction....." In other words doom IS a possibility. There are no guarantees. Marvel tells us about the science to which we must listen whether we like it or not. Evidence not belief.

In the end what is required is "concerted action" and whether this is possible is not known. Human nature? Politics? Economics? Other? Dr. Marvel closes on the side of human possibility, written the way a writer would write. What an incredible planet.

But I am a scientist, which means I believe in miracles. I live on one. We are improbable life on a perfect planet. No other place in the Universe has nooks or perfect mountaintops or small and beautiful gardens. A flower in a garden is an exquisite thing, rooted in soil formed from old rocks broken by weather. It breathes in sunlight and carbon dioxide and conjures its food as if by magic. For the flower to exist, a confluence of extraordinary things must happen. It needs land and air and light and water, all in the right proportion, and all at the right time. Pick it, isolate it, and watch it wither. Flowers, like people, cannot grow alone.

 

How Medications Dissolve

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Art and Environment
Miscellaneous
Edward Hessler

Watching pills dissolve in water is more fun than watching paint dry.

Most of us who have ever taken a medical pill have probably wondered what happens. So here is a short film taken under the macro lens from MACRORoom showing the process in water.

How Science Advances

Science & Environmental Education

STEM

History of Science

Nature of Science

Edward Hessler

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."--Max Planck, Theoretical Physicist, Nobel Prize, 1918

The most paraphrased variant is "Science advances one funeral at a time." 

In a recently published paper in the American Economic Review titled "Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?" Pierre Azoulay, Christian Fons-Rosen, and Joshua S. Graff Ziven investigate this claim. 

For their study, Azoulay and his co-workers who are professors of management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), investigated the effect of the premature death of a star scientist on the literature. This is the abstract:

"We examine how the premature death of eminent life scientists alters the vitality of their fields. While the flow of articles by collaborators into affected fields decreases after the death of a star scientist, the flow of articles by non-collaborators increases markedly. This surge in contributions from outsiders draws upon a different scientific corpus and is disproportionately likely to be highly cited. While outsiders appear reluctant to challenge leadership within a field when the star is alive, the loss of a luminary provides an opportunity for fields to evolve in new directions that advance the frontier of knowledge."  

The study lends some support to the infamous quip attributed to Planck. Science does appear to advance funeral by funeral. However, there is a residue of ambiguity, too. The authors write, "While we can document that eminent scientists restrict the entry of new ideas and scholars into a field, gatekeeping activities could have beneficial properties when the field is in its inception; it might allow cumulative progress through shared assumptions and methodologies, and the ability to control the intellectual evolution of a scientific domain...."  

Pierre Azoulay is a professor of management at MIT.

Christian Fons-Rosen is an economist at the University of California-Merced.

Joshua S. Graff Ziven holds dual professorships at the University of Californa--San Diego.

A full copy of the paper (32 pages) which includes a long and thorough discussion of the study design and analysis may be found at the American Economic Review website.

"You Have Stolen My Dreams"

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Climate Change
Edward Hessler

This is a powerful, moving, passionate statement, one informed by the science of climate change.

Here is part of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg's statement at the United Nations just a few hours ago (9.23.2019).

Update: This is a report from NPR which includes the full statement.

Just How Fast Are The Oceans Warming?

Environmental & Science Education

STEM

Climate Change

Nature of Science

Edward Hessler

A while back, the journal Science published a short perspective on an aspect of global warming that receives much less press than other aspects. It was on how fast the oceans are warming. That paper is  behind a membership paywall although a summary is available. One of the authors was John Abraham, a professor of engineering at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul. 

The short summary is that "observational records of ocean heat content show that ocean warming is accelerating." And once again, the observational data support global warming models, i.e., the "models reliably project changes in" increased ocean heat content (OHC). The effects of OHC are alarming and include "increases in rainfall intensity, rising sea levels, the destruction of coral reefs, declining ocean oxygen levels, and declines in ice sheets" (glaciers and polar ice caps). This is more evidence that Earth is in fact warming.

One of the important features of this paper is that it is based on "multiple lines of evidence from four independent groups (different studies, different approaches) thus now suggest a stronger observed OHC warming." Ron Meador who writes on the environment for MinnPost talked with Professor Abraham about this paper and he puts into perspective the significance of the studies: "prior estimates were about 40 percent too low."

Abraham brings very special skills and talents to this work. His graduate work was in fluid mechanics, the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (air and liquids) and the forces on them.  I especially recommend the section of this paper in which Abraham explains how flawed data were collected, not the least of which is that these measurements were made for another purpose as you will note.

Meador who writes the Earth Journal column for MinnPost reports on the paper's findings as well as described Abraham's research on improving the accuracy of the data, including the use of Argo sensors--a remarkable piece of engineering design that now includes a global array of 3800 free drifting floats that measures the temperature and salinity of the upper 2000 m of the ocean--in more detail and I urge you to read his essay. Currently, there are not enough Argo sensors to completely cover and represent temperature variations in the world's oceans.  

Abraham calls attention to the important contribution of the lead author of the paper, Lijing Cheng, published in Science who developed a trustworthy way to cover the gaps--reducing the errors between Argo instruments.

This is an important report.

Once again I recommend Ron Meador's writing. He knows the beat well and also reports on it very well.

Guided Tour Inside the Wreck of HMS Terror

Environmental & Science Education

STEM

Archaeology

History

Edward Hessler

Parks Canada has produced a film of an underwater exploration of HMS Terror, one of the ships in the ill-fated Franklin expedition that departed England in 1845. The second ship, the largest, was the HMS Erebus. The purpose of the expedition was to complete the final section of the Northwest Passage. All 129 members of the two boats were lost and never heard from.

In 2014, the wreck of HMS Erebus was found in 11 meters (~36') of water and in 2016, the wreck of the HMS Terror was found in 24 meters (~79') of water. The Wiki entry on the Franklin expedition summarizes the background of the expedition, including preparations (command, ships, provisions and crew, crew manifest, and Australian connections), losses, early searches, overland searches, contemporary search expeditions, modern expeditions (1981 - 2016), and scientific conclusions.

John Franklin, who led the expedition is known as "The Man Who Ate His Boots," for eating boiled lichens and shoe leather. He was one of a group of explorers known as "Barrow's Boys," after John Barrow, Second Secretary to the Admiralty (1804 - 1844), launched the most ambitious exploration program the world has ever seen. His teams of elite naval officers went on missions to fill the blanks that littered the atlases of the day. Those thirty years are beautifully told in Barrow's Boys: A Stirring Story of Daring, Fortitude, and Outright Lunacy by Fergus Fleming. The subtitle is not hype.

Parks Canada Guided Tour Inside HMS Terror was filmed "Over seven days, under exceptional weather conditions, the interior spaces of the wreck of HMS Terror were scientifically and systematically explored for the first time. Parks Canada’s Underwater Archaeology Team conducted seven ROV dives and explored 20 cabins/compartments on the ship, in search of uncovering a better understanding of the fate of the Franklin expedition. The team obtained clear images of over 90 per cent of the lower deck of the ship, which includes the living quarters of the crew."

The film is a remarkable achievement.

Climate Change: Testimony and the Climate Strike

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Climate Change
Edward Hessler

The Global Climate Strike is happening now. Today is the first day.

MPR reported on the strike in Minnesota this morning.  Protests are being held in more than a dozen cities: Baudette, Bemidji, Center City, Duluth, Grand Marais, Moose Lake, Morris, Northfield Rochester, St. Joseph, St. Paul, Virginia, Willmar, and Winona

Two days ago climate activist Greta Thunberg presented congressional testimony. Here is EVERYTHING she said.

The message: listen to the science and act on it.

Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education
Poetry
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler


There is a long tradition of poetry responding to visual art (and vice versa). In 2014 Rattle, a poetry magazine, thought it would be fun to post a challenge. Poems in this category are known as Ekphrastic poetry. This is known as Ekphrastic poetry.

And you get two poems, one chosen by the artist and one chosen by the editor including their comments.

How The Distribution of Global Warming Has Changed Over Time.

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Climate Change
History of Science
Nature of Science
Edward Hessler


When you assume...well when you do this you often make a big mistake. Sometimes it is a result of intellectual laziness, something I seem to have some talent for.

Case in point. I'd always assumed that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were world-wide even though the only pictures I have in my mind are of things such as the frozen Thames River, England, i.e., a single data point! Why check?

Sid Perkins, writing for the journal Science, comments on a new report from Nature Geoscience in which "almost 7000 sets of natural climate records," e.g., tree rings, ice cores, and others, "from 1 C.E. to 2000 C.E." (C.E. means Christian era; here 1 C. E. is 1 A.D were analyzed. In short events did not "unfold pretty much the same everywhere."

Perkins explains. "In the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, the coldest decades of the Little Ice Age fell during the 15th century. In northwestern Europe and the southeastern United States, the deepest cold occurred during the 17th century. For the rest of the world, the strongest chill didn’t occur until the mid–19th century, almost at the very end of this colder-than-normal interval.

"The researchers found the same pattern of asynchrony when they looked at lesser-known events like the Roman Warm Period, which toasted the first few centuries C.E.; the Dark Ages Cold Period, which cast a chill from 400 to 800; and the Medieval Warm Period, which defrosted Earth from around 800 to 1200. As in the Little Ice Age, the warmest and coolest decades within those intervals didn’t occur everywhere in the world at the same time."

Perkins notes two features about the current global warming: magnitude and geography (world wide.  Paleoclimatologist at the University of Minnesota, Scott St. George, who was not involved in the work, put it this way "'No matter where you go, you can't avoid the dramatic march toward warmer temperatures.'"

Nature's Photo Selections for August 2019

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

The Nature photography team has picked their favorite science shots for August 2019.

Making Science Possible: Technicians and Others

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Nature of Science
Art and Environment
Edward Hessler

Craft & Graft is a new, well new to me, exhibition at the Francis Crick Institute in London (1 March 2019 to 30 November 2019).  I wish I had discovered it earlier. It is about the work of the technicians, engineers and other specialists who make science possible at the Crick--from fruit-fly breeders and maintainers, to glass washers, to engineers, and microscopists.

The link takes you to a short video but below this video is as good an exhibition as I know on what these people do: who some of them are, their qualifications, career paths, and work. Find out about

--how the engineering team keeps the science running;
--the Crick's specialty fly facility;
--how the Glasswash team (750,000 washes per year) keep the Crick running
--how cell services nurtures billions of cells; and
--what the microscopy team does.

Francis Crick, with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.

Shaping Dog Brains

Environmental & Science Education

STEM

Brain

Biological Evolution

Edward Hessler

Dogs are different in appearance and size, sometimes surprisingly so. As is well-known, this is a result of domestication and artificial selection by humans from the time they split from wolves many thousands of years ago. As an example, dogs range in size from large, the Great Dane, Newfoundland, and English Mastiff to small, the Chihuahua, Bichon Frise, and Pomeranian. 

It is also well-known that dog breeds differ in temperament and behavior. There are herders (Border Collie), hunters (Springer Spaniel), companions (Japanese Chin). A recent study reported in the Journal of Neuroscience, led by Erin Hecht, a neuroscientist at Harvard University, and her colleagues "examined whether and how selective breeding by humans has altered the gross organization of the brain in dogs." The team did MRI studies of 62 male and female dogs of 33 breeds. "Notably," the authors report, "neuroanatomical variation is plainly visible across breeds." The team concluded that the "results establish that brain anatomy varies significantly in dogs, likely due to human-applied selection for behavior."​

The full paper is protected by a paywall but the abstract, the significance of the study, and how the research was distributed across team members may be read.

Eva Frederick, reporting for Science, writes that "Hecht and her team identified six networks of brain regions...and that "each of the six brain networks correlated with at least one behavioral trait." According to Frederick, Hecht notes "one drawback to her study, is that all dogs examined were pet dogs, not working dogs."

At caninebrains.org you may learn more about research to "understand the minds and brains of our best friends."  It describes a linked study at Harvard University and the University of Georgia-Athens. There are several ways to participate if you are interested.

And for more information about Professor Erin Hecht, her research group and their work this will link you to the Evolutionary Neuroscience Laboratory at Harvard which she leads.

Ynes Mexica

Environmental & Science Education
Biodiversity
History of Science
Nature
Edward Hessler

Thanks to today's Google Doodle I was introduced to a scientist new to me: Mexican-American botanist and explorer, Ynes Mexica (May 24 1870 to July 12 1938). 

According to Bryce J. Williams, TheNewsCrunch, “The life of Ynes Mexia is a prime example of how it’s never too late to find one’s calling,” wrote Latino Natural History. Her full name was Ynes Enriquetta Julietta Mexica. Mexíca didn’t even start collecting specimens until she was in her 50s, and she didn’t live very long after that point."

Mexica started college when she was 51 (University of California-Berkeley). Upon graduation she started an ambitious collecting career-- ~ 150,000 specimens, ~ 500 of which were new to botany. Harmeet Kaur, writing for CNN, notes that "The Sierra Club Bulletin credits her with discovering two genera, or groups of species."

Today, September 15, is the first day of National Hispanic Heritage Month.

On the Power of a Movement

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Climate Change
Edward Hessler


Greta Thunberg is sixteen years old. Each time I hear her speak about climate change I find her articulate, clear, thoughtful, and knowledgable. She has critics, some nasty, who disagree that she is any of these. Others that she is merely a child. Others that she doesn't express their preferred policy prescriptions. So what?! She is serious and asking us to take seriously climate change which her generation will feel in ways we can only imagine.

PBS News Hour's William Brangham interviewed Thunberg September 14, 2019. Consider this as you listen to their conversation: "Although more Americans than ever are worried about climate change, less than 40 percent expect to make “major sacrifices” to tackle the problem."

Friday Poem

Environmental & Science Education

Poetry

Art and Education

Edward Hessler

Today's poem is by Emily Dickinson. 

[You'll know her - by her foot -] aka #634 is about a common bird, that "quintessential early bird," as the Cornell eebsite notes, the American Robin. .

Nautilus recently published # 634 in an article about the poem by Adam Kosan. There you will find a discussion and a video of a conversation between Elisa New, a professor of literature at Harvard, and Scott Edwards, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard.

Art meeting science; science meeting art.

Dinosaur Fossils: Minerals or Surface Features?

Environmental & Science Education

STEM

Earth Science

Geology

Paleontology

Society

Edward Hessler

Jeremy P. Jacobs reported in E&E News, via Science, July 10 2019 on a lawsuit involving fossils, an angle I'd never considered.

Later this year the Montana Supreme Court will take up a case to decide whether dinosaur fossils are minerals. You may wonder how this became a legal question.

It has to do with rights, surface and mineral. If you own the land you own what is on its surface. Mineral rights, on the other hand, can be sold and managed separately. A property owner may own a piece of land but not necessarily rights to what's underground known as minerals whether they are gas, liquid or solids.

The case centers around a famous find, the so-called "Dueling Dinosaurs." One was a meat-eater; the other a plant eater. They appear to have been in combat and died together.  Few people have been allowed to see the fossils since their recovery. They have been offered on sale.

Land deals are deeply involved in this lawsuit. Renters purchased the surface rights but not the mineral rights. Soon after the surface owners found the two fossils and the owners of the mineral rights claimed the fossils. This led to a lawsuit and courts have made two decisions. A lower court sided with surface-rights owners while a higher court sided with the mineral-rights owner.  On top of this, the Montana State Legislature "enacted a law...that states 'fossils are not minerals and that fossils belong to the surface estate,'" but "the law...does not apply to existing disputes. 

So, why is this important? According to the report, if fossils are declared minerals "it would make searching for fossils extremely complicated, said David Polly, a former president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, based in Bethesda, Maryland, paleontologists would need to navigate both surface ownership--to get to the dig location of a parcel. Often, mineral rights are hard to find and frequently change hands between hands between large corporations. More alarmingly, he said, it could raise questions about the ownership of fossils currently in museums."

The original article, which I recommend you read, traces the court cases and the details of the decisions. Jacobs includes a few sentences from the circuit court opinion deciding in favor of he mineral rights owners, part of "a colorful opinion", as he puts it. I think you will agree.