Beautiful Eurydice shows how it's done

With the Tavern's interest in matters maritime, it may not surprise you to know that we once owned a tide clock.

Things have come a long way since the intricate machines constructed for the purpose in the 19th century, which represent an impressive degree of initiative and ingenuity as well as having a certain steampunk charm.

Ours resembled a normal clock, except that the numbers had been replaced by a jaunty selection of flags (which may, for all I know, may spell out an exceedingly rude message in naval code; I never checked) marking off the tide levels in its 12.4 hour circuit.

Setting this useful gadget turned out to be a complicated and arcane ritual which had to be performed at high tide when the moon was full, as close to midnight as possible. Even then the clock lost 15 minutes a month and had to be reset at regular intervals, necessitating much checking of tide tables to find a suitable opportunity.

The speckled sea-louse, however, is spared all this fuss, since it has its own internal tide clock. According to recent research, Eurydice pulchra, even when removed from tidal waters and deprived of the circadian mechanism that reacts to light, continues to swim in time to anticipated tide changes.

The creature's name presumably derives from the way it burrows deep into the sand at low tide and emerges when the tide comes in, all, it appears, guided by a built-in ability to predict the ebb and flow.

I can't help feeling that, given the vast number of tide-related call-outs the RNLI have reported this summer, it would be a very good thing if scientists found some way of implanting this awareness in human beings.

Meanwhile, you can never have enough Gluck.

The L'Aquila Seven - science in the dock

Another landmark today - the 600th post at the Tavern - but no celebrations this time; instead, a news report that will strike fear into the hearts of geologists and forecasters everywhere.

Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L'Aquila.

The judge also ordered the defendants to pay court costs and damages.

Despite the uncertainty that surrounds the science of earthquake prediction, the prosecution successfully argued that the scientists provided "inexact, incomplete and contradictory" information, failing to warn people that the initial minor tremors could be followed by a major seismic event.

At the heart of the case is a question frequently discussed by bloggers; the conflict between scientific assessment of risk and the popular perception. The scientist is concerned with the relative likelihood of given outcomes; the public wants a simple yes or no answer.

And in this case, the public wants someone to blame. One of those bringing the prosecution, a journalist, lost his father and two teenage children in the earthquake.

On the night of 5 April, several large shocks kept his children awake. They were anxious, but he told them to go back to bed, that there was no need to worry, the scientists had said so.

Other witnesses tell the same story; because the scientists had said that a major event was unlikely to follow the initial tremors - there was, according to the head of the Serious Risks Commission, "no reason to believe that a series of low-level tremors was a precursor to a larger event" - residents did not initially realise the danger they were in when the 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit.

The devastating impact of the 309 deaths that resulted has effectively prevented anyone asking whether the scientists should be blamed because those people who remained in their homes chose to rely on what experts had said before the event rather than exercising their own judgement.

We've seen much the same thing at work with the Met Office, where some inept press releases combined with media simplification contrived to translate long-range forecasts expressed in terms of relative probability into definite predictions which turned out to be spectacularly wrong.

The implications of this verdict are chilling. Seismologists, vulcanologists and meteorologists do not deal in hard facts when it comes to future events and to expect them to do so, with the threat of imprisonment if they are wrong, has been compared to the Church's treatment of Galileo.

The case that set six high-ranking scientists and a government official in opposition to an army of bereaved and grieving relatives (organised into the tellingly-named 309 Martyrs Association), with an estimated 50 million euros of damages at stake*, is likely to cast a very long shadow indeed.


*The start of this trial was the subject of a post here in September 2011. Demetrius made a good point in the comments about local buildings not meeting the required safety standard because of widespread corruption in high places - which might argue that some powerful people were looking for someone else to blame for the casualties caused when those buildings collapsed.

Seismometers and crystal balls

Up until now, I've always thought that seismologists had an enviable job; plenty of fascinating rock formations and strata, lots of foreign travel and the offchance that some day you might make a discovery of real benefit to mankind.

The study has none of the pyrotechnics of vulcanology, of course, but there's less chance of ending up fried or kippered or even lightly singed in the course of your work. You may, however, face an unexpected hazard;

This week, six seismologists go on trial for the manslaughter of 309 people, who died as a result of the 2009 earthquake in l'Aquila, Italy.

One upon a time, earthquakes were regarded as the work of gods or demons - or the slumbering dragons of Norse and far eastern mythology. As we came to understand the processes involved in tectonic plate movement, the reasons for earthquake hotspots became clear.

Recent advances in technology and data gathering have led to the theory of 'eathquake swarms' along fault lines and the prospect of predicting where the next one is likely to strike, although exact prediction is still the stuff of science fiction.

Not, however, according to the Italian lawyers: The prosecution holds that the scientists should have advised the population of l'Aquila of the impending earthquake risk.

The seismologists are being held responsible for the fact that, following their reassurances that minor tremors did not necessarily mean a major one was imminent, the local population did not immediately realise the danger they were in when the 6.3 earthquake struck.

Current research incorporates the wildly diverse areas of animal behaviour, radon gas release, groundwater levels and electrical field activity, to name but a few, and still no means of accurate prediction has been found; issuing alerts would mean many false alarms for every valid warning.

Given the number of earthquakes that happen every day around the globe, with consequences that vary wildly depending on a number of currently unpredictable factors, it seems unduly harsh not merely to reproach scientists with failing to understand fully the many complex processes involved but to sue them for their inability to predict the future.

Of course, there is always the possibility that this is all a legal convention* - maybe someone must be charged with the blame if the processes of insurance payouts are to be observed, but it seems to me that, if anyone should be standing in the dock over this, it is surely God, Poseidon or a restless dragon.


*Or maybe not. According to the recently updated BBC report, this is both a criminal and a civil case:
The defendants face up to 15 years in jail. Lawyers for civil plaintiffs - who include the local council - are seeking damages of 50m euros (£45m).

'We have nothing to fear but the sky falling on our heads!'

Hot on the heels of the announcement of orbital debris reaching a 'tipping point' comes the news that a 6.5-tonne satellite is on its way down and will be liberally spreading debris over a wide area sometime in the next few weeks.

Despite official announcements that the chances of being underneath a piece of it are very small indeed, the Times is getting entertainingly worked up about the potential hazard:

'Britain in path of falling satellite', screams the headline, implying that a direct hit is inevitable; better start looking for tin hats, digging shelters or, better still, think about leaving the country.

Actually that might not be much help; a better decription of the impending situation would be 'Antarctica and anywhere further than 57 degrees North NOT in path of falling satellite' - less catchy, I admit, but it does sum up the predictions in a rather more balanced way.

In fact, unless you happen to be in Alaska, Canada (north of Churchill), Greenland, Iceland, Scandanavia or Siberia - or, closer to home, anwhere north of Braemar - you could be on the receiving end of a sprinkling of NASA shrapnel. Given the price of gold these days and the amount of the stuff that goes into making a satellite, this could be cause for rejoicing rather than otherwise*.

The current eccentricity of its orbit makes it impossible to predict where the 500-mile-long target area will be at this stage but NASA will be posting regular updates for the obsessively worried (would-be Chicken Lickens can get status reports here).

The satellite in question - the snappily-named UARS (Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite) - was actually expected to function for only three years but pluckily carried on for another eleven, gathering data on the depletion of the ozone layer and clearly implicating the release of man-made CFCs.

Perhaps a better name for it would be The Golden Snitch.

*We should point out that the satellite remains federal property and, should you put a bit of it on e-bay, Uncle Sam's enforcers will be popping round pretty sharp-ish.

We don't need no thought control

I consider myself to be an individual and I'm sure you do too. In fact, if you are reading this, there is a high probability that you are a blogger too, and thus something of an independent spirit.

If so, then, like me, you will doubtless be worried by the findings emerging from Nijmegen, where scientists have been trying to identify the part of the brain that determines the conformity of its owner's behaviour and, having tracked down this elusive region - it's in your posterior medial frontal cortex, in case you were wondering - looking for ways to influence it.

It turns out that a burst of Transcranial Electromagnetic Stimulation (TMS) inhibiting the activity of neurons in this area made their subjects less likely to alter their decisions in response to group pressure.

'Dr Klucharev believes this part of the brain is responsible for generating an "error" signal when individuals deviate from the group opinion, triggering a cascade that leads them to conform with the group view; "Individuals differ in the strength of the error signal – which is why some people are more conformist than others".'

Klucharev envisages techniques that can increase immunity to the negative aspects of peer presssure - criminal behaviour, for example or aggressive marketing - but it's a worryingly short step from there to the idea of manipulating neuron activity in the opposite direction to increase conformity.

Far-fetched? The stuff of science fiction? I sincerely hope so, because the thought of such techniques in the wrong hands is a frightening prospect indeed.

While on the subject, I have been wondering whether bloggers - or at least those who offer comment on social and political phenomena - are, in fact, a self-selected group whose 'error signals' are so weak as to be imperceptible. After all, the ability to place yourself outside events and offer an independent view suggests a strong maverick streak.

Or are we all actually closet conformists seeking the approval of an online community of similar thinkers?

What do you think?

Celestial Harmonies at the Large Hadron Collider

A novel take on the music of the spheres can be found at CERN this week. Some ingenious boffin - well, actually, a Dr Lily Asquith, which doesn't sound boffin-ish at all - is about to start converting data from the Large Hadron Collider into sound, in the hope of hearing the 'God Particle', the elusive Higgs Boson.

It gets better - Dr Asquith explains to the New Scientist's CultureLab, "I was sitting in on a rehearsal with some musician friends in an improvisational electronic/brass band called WORM under a railway arch in Brixton. I was talking about particle physics to my long-suffering friend Eddie Real, a percussionist.

I was actually doing impersonations of different particles and trying to get him to develop them on his electronic drum kit. Another band member, Ed, got very excited and asked if it would be possible to do this properly- - extract sounds directly from the data. "

The LHC people have helpfully provided samples of initial simulations, which sound uncannily like the sort of avant-garde orchestral pieces that leave you wondering what time the tune's going to start and why you paid good money for this.

It's too early to tell what the results will be, but wouldn't it be wonderful if, when the Higgs Boson finally puts in an appearance, it actually sounds something like this.... ?

A Space Oddity

Tomorrow morning, 3rd June 2010, six aspiring cosmonauts will say goodbye to their loved ones and the sunshine of Earth and embark on a 520-day mission to Mars.

Or rather, 520 days in a sealed spaceship in a warehouse on the edge of Moscow's metropolis - seems we're not ready as a species to risk fragile personnel in the alien vastness of interplanetary space. In an experiment to explore the psychological deep impact of a journey to Mars, the crew will experience conditions as close to a real trip as possible.

Communications between the crew and mission control will be subject to 20-minute delay to simulate the time it would take for signals to reach Earth and air and water will be recycled. Meanwhile, cameras will monitor them 24 hours a day with staff ready to intervene should an inmate reach his own event horizon.

Sound familiar? 2005 saw the genesis of what Channel 4 described as 'the most elaborate hoax perpetrated in television history' when they convinced would-be reality show contestants that they were training for and completing a mission to an orbiting space station.

With the help of three fake contestants and two pilots - all actors - the deception was kept up for the duration, helped, perhaps, by the fact that the contestants had been subject to minute psychological profiling; according to Wikipedia, 'The intention was to obtain a group who were highly gullible, conformist, and ignorant about the show's subject matter.'

In an interesting twist, it was suggested by cynics that the whole thing had been an elaborate double bluff practised on the viewers and that the contestants were all actors - a theory based, in part, on the fact that they failed to spot the hoax despite several telling details, including the the presence of full Earth gravity throughout.

Of course, the selection process weeded out any who expressed an interest in science fiction. One imagines our intrepid cosmonauts are rather better informed; even so, it would be interesting to know how many of the classic sci-fi films* have made it into their video library - and whether, for example, they will be allowed a ship's cat.

*Some of which may have found their way into this post...

Live long and prosper - at a price

The future is here - at least if the Sunday Times is to be believed. Fans of quality science fiction came in for a treat today with reports that we are on the way to not one but three scenarios we have previously seen played out only on our bookshelves.

First we have an anti-aging treatment - John Wyndham: Trouble With Lichen - estimated to appear in the next decade following genetic research. Then there are the six intrepid cosmonauts spending 18 months on a simulated trip to Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson, Ben Bova and a dozen others - and, as if that were not enough, the Brave New World of IVF for all - perhaps the first step towards babies in bottles.

Of the three, it is the first that, despite the advantages it purports to hold out, would have the most devastating effect on society - after all, it's a fair bet humans will continue to conceive in the traditional way for the foreseeable future. In Wyndham's novel - a trenchant social satire - a scientist describes his growing sense of alarm when he realises that he has discovered an antidote to aging:

'But just imagine the result of a public announcement....simply the superficial result of knowing that the means to extend one's term of life exists. The thing would be off like a prairie fire. Think of the newspapers fawning on it.[...] The contriving, the intriguing, the bribery - perhaps fighting, even - that would come of people trying to get in first to grab even a few extra years,[...] The whole prospect was - and is - quite appalling.'

And now, according to Eleanor Mills, a team led by Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, is already developing drugs to mimic the effect of centenarians’ super genes; testing on humans could begin in 2012. He reckons that within five or 10 years people will take these pills at around 40 “and their lives will be longer”.'

So what will be the effect on the day he announces a drug that will prolong life? Well, if past experience is anything to go by, whichever pharmaceutical company is backing his research will immediately slap a price-tag on the product that will rule it our for all but the super-rich. After all, the situation already exists.

For many people with terminal cancer, there are drugs out there which can change life expectancy from weeks to years - at a price. If you - or occasionally the NHS - can fork out £50,000 pa, life goes on; if not, it doesn't. The drugs companies aren't in the business of charity; the bottom line is always profit.

After decades of research, they're going to want some return on their investment in the ultimate in marketable commodities. The Times thinks millions of people will take the drug, leading to the social upheaval foreseen by Wyndham's scientist - think about the effect on annuity values or insurance premiums - but we're far more likely to see a ruling elite firmly ensconced for decades while the workforce live and die as they always have done.

No Parachutes for Algernon

Can you build an anti-gravity machine for mice? It sounds like one of those questions you’d ask in the pub, but those clever scientists at JPL have done just that.

Not content with making frogs hover in mid-air – who said science was boring? – they’re using magnets to suspend mice above the floor of a specially designed cage to study the physical effects of weightlessness on mammals.

A superconducting magnet generates a field which levitates the water inside living tissue and the rest of the animal goes along for the ride, so to speak. Which is probably a good thing, really, particularly for the mouse.

Their first subject became agitated and disoriented – wouldn’t you? – so the next mice to try it were sedated. Just imagine what was going through their tiny, stoned rodent minds; ‘Hey man, I think I’m flying! No, really!’

The plan is to continue the experiment long enough to study the long-term effects of a zero-g environment. What we don't know is what will happen to their brains - experiments have shown that exposure to magnetic fields can affect brain activity and can duplicate effects sometimes described as profound religious experiences.

Who knows? This could be the beginning of a spiritually enlightened super-mouse.

Interplanetary Billiards

Wow! Look at the headline! Mars or Venus could collide with Earth! Total global annihilation!
Well, no, actually. Typical scientists – get your hopes up and then tell you it won’t happen for a billion years if at all.

Is ‘Tiny Chance of Planet Collision’ really front-page news? Or worthy of a spot on the Today programme? Or does the BBC’s science correspondent have a quota? – “Come on, Pallab; 500 words NOW or no pay-cheque this month!”

Maybe he just got bored, sitting alone in his little cubby-hole in Broadcasting House waiting for someone somewhere to announce a momentous scientific discovery.

It’s one of those questions of proportion; the chances of it happening are infinitesimally small, but should it ever actually happen, it would be the biggest news story ever. I suspect there is a formula the BBC applies in such circumstances.

The mathematics of this are beyond me (I could never get the hang of statistics) but assuming minute odds of occurrence multiplied by almost infinite newsworthiness, one presumably arrives at the conclusion that it is as significant a news event as, say, an MP putting a floating Duck house on expenses.