Category: Science

New discoveries, the scientific method, and all matters relating to the scientific study of the physical world

The Northern Gateway pipeline

With the commencement of hearings, the political fight over the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline is now beginning in earnest. The proposed pipeline would carry bitumen from the oil sands to the Pacific coast for export. It would encourage the development of the oil sands and contribute to the fastest-growing category of emissions of greenhouse gas pollution in Canada. It would increase the total fraction of the world’s fossil fuels that will be burned, affecting how much climate change the world will experience. Having walked away from the Kyoto Protocol – and with no effective mechanism for curbing emissions in place – it is difficult to argue that Canada is doing its part to respond to this serious global problem.

In addition to the climate arguments, there is always some risk of a spill, either along the pipeline or with tankers off the B.C. coast. If what I read in John Vaillant‘s The Golden Spruce is at all accurate, the Hecate Strait is a particularly treacherous waterway. As anyone who has visited the coast of British Columbia knows, it’s also a beautiful and environmentally rich part of the world, both on land and in the sea. It would be a really awful place for another Deepwater Horizon-type disaster.

At present, the hearings on the pipeline are expected to last for 18 months. As we have seen from the Keystone XL pipeline, however, timetables are clearly subject to change as the debate progresses.

Biology and infinite complexity

One distinguishing feature of biology seems to be that it is always possible to examine a process in a greater level of detail, whether it is cellular respiration or blood clotting or evolution.

You can say something simple like “DNA contains genes, which are instructions for making proteins using ribosomes” but there are masses of additional complexity behind the process of protein synthesis, and there is far more that DNA does. For instance, the DNA molecule is both a store of information (base pairs) and a physical machine that does things like replication during mitosis.

A recent abstract from Science highlights some of this:

A Time and a Place for Hox Genes

Patterning of the mammalian body relies on the stepwise transcriptional activation of Hox genes. Noordermeer et al. (p. 222) show that this process involves a dynamic transition in the global architecture of Hox gene clusters, with each gene transitioning, one after the other, from a negative three-dimensional (3D) compartment to an active compartment. This bimodal configuration parallels the distribution of distinct chromatin marks, suggesting the existence of a link between the presence of chromatin domains and the formation of 3D chromosomal structures. This model for Hox gene activation would ensure the proper sequence in the transcriptional activation of Hox genes within each gene cluster.

Unless we eventually develop tools that map out every biological process down to the functioning of individual atoms (which we have basically done for processes like photosynthesis), there will always be more to learn about how living things operate.

The metric system and estimation

Perhaps the best thing about the metric system (more formally, the International System of Units) is the way in which it allows for the easy estimation of many practical problems, and takes advantage of the intuitive connections people can make.

For instance, one millilitre (mL) of volume occupies a space of 1 centimetre (cm) by 1 cm by 1 cm. It is easy to imagine a cube that is 1 cm to a side, so it is easy to imagine what 1 mL of liquid would look like. Similarly, knowing that 1 litre (L) of water (a very familiar quantity of matter) has a mass of 1 kilogram (kg) allows a person to pretty easily consider what the weight of something in kilograms might be. A volume of 1000 L of water weighs one metric tonne, and occupies a space of one cubic metre.

The metric connections extend to other elements of science and everyday life. The metric temperature scale is well suited to a planet where water is exceptionally important. While calories are not strictly a metric unit, they do tie usefully into the common theme of water, with one calorie being the amount of energy required to heat 1 cubic centimetre (equivalent to 1 gram, and to 1 mL) of water by 1˚C. Note that ‘calories’ as expressed in relation to food are usually kilocalories: the amount of energy required to heat 1 L of water by 1˚C.

All very useful!

An alternative Turing Test

During a recent discussion with Tristan, the subject of the Turing Test arose. For those who are unfamiliar, the test is intended as a way to determine if a machine has intelligence. You set it up so that it can converse with a human being – for instance, through a text-based instant message type conversation – and if the person thinks they are talking with another human, it can be taken as evidence that the machine is intelligent.

Setting aside the question of how good an intelligence test this really is (a computer could pretty easily trawl a database of human conversations to produce convincing conversation), it seems like there is another sort of test that would be demonstrative of a different kind of intelligence. Namely, it would be when a machine or a computer program first becomes aware of itself as being a machine or computer program.

It is possible that no machine made by humans will ever develop that level of self awareness. Perhaps it is impossible to replicate whatever trick our brains use to turn flesh into consciousness. If it did happen, however, it seems like it could help to illuminate what self-understanding means, and what sort of mechanisms it requires.

Getting the HPV vaccine

I decided to get vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) with Gardasil. HPV causes genital warts, as well as cervical, anal, penile, and throat cancer. The vaccine covers four of the many strains of the virus – types 6, 11, 16 and 18 – including those that cause most genital warts and cancer cases.

Gardasil is normally prescribed to girls who are young enough that they are presumed to have had no sexual contact with others. Adults are assumed to have been exposed to HPV already. That is probably true in most cases. Still, there is a benefit in getting protection from the four most problematic strains, or at least any of the four that you have not already been exposed to. On that basis, doctors seem quite happy to prescribe the vaccine to adult women and men.

I got the first shot yesterday. There will be another in two months and a third in six months.

The vaccine is expensive, which is the main reason why it is not given to everybody. Still, it seems like a good investment. If enough people get vaccinated, one of the most prevalent sexually transmitted infections could be virtually eliminated and many cancer cases and deaths could be prevented.

Supreme Court supportive of InSite

The Supreme Court of Canada’s unanimous decision to support Vancouver’s safe injection site is very encouraging, particularly in the present political context. Overall, the direction of Canada’s policy toward illegal drugs is depressing and frustrating. We are choosing the emulate the country with the worst drug policy in the developed world – the United States. We are pursuing a hopeless policy of prohibition, while trying to shut down options with a better chance of success, such as those that seek to reduce the harm associated with addiction.

Politicians often choose to cater to the irrational fears and biases of the general population. Judges are a bit freer to consider the ethics and evidence that bear upon a situation. That seems to be what the Supreme Court has done in this case:

During its eight years of operation, Insite has been proven to save lives with no discernible negative impact on the public safety and health objectives of Canada. The effect of denying the services of Insite to the population it serves and the correlative increase in the risk of death and disease to injection drug users is grossly disproportionate to any benefit that Canada might derive from presenting a uniform stance on the possession of narcotics.

Hopefully, this ruling will prompt a broader rethink of how Canada deals with drugs that are currently prohibited.

Related:

Gravity without air resistance

I am glad someone actually went out and did this:

Among other things, it shows how our intuitions are often based on the limited range of conditions experienced by our ancestors on Earth, and thus reflective of only a subset of what is true about the universe generally. We expect air resistance to exist everywhere, despite the airless character of many stellar bodies.

Of course, science fiction authors seem to expect all moons and planets to not only have atmospheres, but have atmospheres that Kirk and company can breathe unaided, but that is a different misplaced assumption.

Climate Reality Project

All day tomorrow, September 14th 2011, Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project will be broadcasting a multinational, multilingual attempt to inform people about climate change and what ought to be done about it.

Hopefully, this will help to recapture the attention of the public and policy-makers. It has drifted a lot in the last few years, partly because those opposed to acting on climate change have been so effective at confusing people and shifting the terms of the public debate in their favour.

This American Life on patents

A recent episode of the This American Life podcast centres around technology patents, with emphasis on the so-called ‘patent trolls’ who harass legitimate companies using dubious patent claims, in hopes of getting cash settlements.

Designing an ideal patent system is an interesting question from a utilitarian perspective. It seems beneficial to encourage innovation and protect small companies with novel ideas from giant companies that might steal them. At the same time, patents can be used by big companies to bully small ones, and when obvious ideas are given patents it can prevent useful technologies from becoming widely available.