| Judge Keeps Ban on Stem Cell Funds A federal judge refused to lift a ban on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. feeds.nytimes.com |
Secret messages written into fabric of our world A girl playing noughts and crosses, a Playboy centrefold, Sky satellite dishes, the trill of a modem – all have hidden meaningsFrank Swain blogs at http://scienceblogs.com/sciencepunk/Even if you don't watch much TV, you've probably come across Carole Hersee. Her TV career has spanned over forty years, clocking up around 70,000 hours of on-screen time with her faithful co-star Bubbles. She's appeared on a host of BBC channels, typically in the early hours, but has yet to land a speaking role. If you hadn't guessed already, I am of course referring to the eternally youthful subject of the BBC test cards, who has graced our screens since 1967.I like the BBC test card, because it's a wonderful example of how practical industrial design can develop into an enigmatic work of art. But even better is knowing that the image isn't just art, it has an objective purpose worked into it, a secret meaning that reveals itself under scrutiny. The architecture of industrial design is filled with these subtle codes, and together they create a world around us filled with hidden meaning.If we look at the BBC test cards, the colours and patterns framing Carole have a fairly obvious purpose, providing reference points for colour and contrast. The white triangles aligned with the cardinal points are there to check if the edges of the image line up with those of the screen. In test card J, the X on the noughts and crosses board marks the exact centre of the screen. Even Carole was chosen for a reason – her skin tone makes it easy to spot if something is wrong with the colours displayed, while Bubbles is there to add some green, so that all three primary colours appear in the image. (Bubbles has since embarked on a solo career, popping up in the BBC website error pages). Carole isn't the only woman to have been immortalised in a test card in this way. A modest crop of the November 1972 Playboy centrefold Lena Soderberg became the standard test for image compression software.A couple of months ago I flew over to HP's DIMO facility in Dublin, the sprawling high-tech campus where the electronics giant develops new ink technology. We toured the stadium-sized production room, where conveyor belts loop and twist though a dozen giant machines that assemble cartridges and squirt brightly coloured fluids into them. At the end of the tour we passed through a small room sectioned off by heavy plastic drapes, where the cartridges are tested on a variety of printers. Piled among the benches were sheets of arcane patterns – the printer test pages. I aksed our guide Thom Brown to decipher the meaning behind them.Here's a typical example. The T shapes mark out page alignment, while the solid blocks of colour are actually made up of individual lines painted sequentially by each nozzle – hence a misfiring nozzle leaves a long trace across the block. Most printers will produce a grid pattern of some sort so that an engineer can identify the exact nozzle that is at fault."Each line in the grid represents a nozzle. Notice that a missing line means that one nozzle is completely not firing (clogged most likely)," says Brown. "But then some lines are faint or partial: an unhealthy nozzle that's partially clogged or ink isn't for some reason completely filling the chamber. And then some lines are crooked or misdirected, so that drop isn't firing exactly straight like we want it."Hidden patterns exist everywhere. If you get disoriented in the streets of London, look for a Sky satellite dish – they always point south-east. Need to synchronise your watch? Wait for the pips to be broadcast on Radio 4 – synchronised with an atomic clock in the basement of Broadcasting House, they begin precisely five seconds before the hour with the start of the final, longest pip marking the exact moment the hour changes. Grab a newspaper – see those blocks of colour down the edge of the page? Those are printer test patterns too, a quick reference to check if there's been an error during press. And what about the barcode on the back? Those extra-long double lines at each end and down the middle are "guard bars", which are there to help the scanner align itself properly. It's a subtle detail that's often missed by tattoo artists, leading to punks walking around with the binary equivalent of nonsense Chinese characters on their neck. I still get nostalgic when I hear a dial-up modem break into song, and I'm thrilled at how, despite the exact meaning behind each tone being way beyond my comprehension, my ear can still detect regional variations in the handshake signal, like some kind of robotic accent.Like the best tailors, the men and women who craft our technological environment often strive to hide the seams of their work. But if you know where to look, you can occasionally peel back the fabric of your surroundings and spot a trace of what's holding it all together.Frank Swain is a science writer working in print, TV and radio who blogs at http://scienceblogs.com/sciencepunk/TelevisionTelevisionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Ig Nobel awards go to slime mould and fruity bats Britain lands a national record four wins at awards for scientific research that makes people laugh first and think laterBritain has once again proved a country to be reckoned with in science after landing a national record four wins at the annual Ig Nobel awards ceremony at Harvard University.Researchers from across the UK were honoured for achievements that included proof that swearing relieves pain, a means of collecting whale snot with a remote-controlled helicopter and the first documented case of fellatio in fruit bats.Not to be confused with the real (and more lucrative) Nobel prizes, which are due to be announced next week, the "Igs" are awarded to scientists whose work makes people laugh first and think later.The ceremony, hosted by the Harvard-based journal Annals of Improbable Research, took place last night with the much-coveted prizes handed out by real Nobel laureates. Recipients were allowed a maximum of 60 seconds to deliver their acceptance speech, a time limit enforced by an eight-year-old girl.Commenting on the strong showing of UK scientists this year, Marc Abrahams, the master of ceremonies, told the Guardian: "The nation may agonise over its place in the world, but in this one thing at least, Britannia rules."The Ig Nobel 2010 winners were:Medicine prizePsychologists Simon Rietveld and Ilja van Beest at the University of Amsterdam share the award for discovering that breathing difficulties brought on by asthma can be alleviated by repeated rollercoaster rides.Physics prizeAwarded to Lianne Parkin and her team at the University of Otago in New Zealand for demonstrating that people are less likely to slip over on icy footpaths if they wear their socks outside their shoes instead of inside.Biology prizeA description of the sexual antics of the short-nosed fruit bat earned the award for Gareth Jones at Bristol University and collaborators in China. The team showed that females who performed oral sex on their mates copulated for longer. "It is the first documented case of fellatio by adult animals other than humans to my knowledge, and opens questions about whether female animals can manipulate males via sexual activity, perhaps in this case to improve their chances of successful fertilisation," Jones told the Guardian. He planned to demonstrate the behaviour at the ceremony using puppets.Writing about the research for the Huffington Post last year, the primatologist Frans de Waal said: "The fellatio story on bats is a bright spot in an otherwise miserable record that denies animals the pleasure principle, homosexuality, and other forms of non-reproductive sex."Peace prizeAwarded to psychologist Richard Stephens and others at Keele University for confirming that swearing relieves pain. Stephens, who began the study after striking his thumb with a hammer, found volunteers could tolerate more pain if they repeated swearwords rather than neutral words. He suspects that "swearing induces a fight-or-flight response and nullifies the link between fear of pain and pain perception".Engineering prizeThe task of monitoring dangerous bugs in whales at sea is a formidable one. Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and others at the Institute of Zoology in London developed a way to collect fluids ejected from whales' blowholes by attaching petri dishes to the underside of small, remote-controlled helicopters and hovering them overhead.Transportation prizeWorking with Japanese scientists, Mark Fricker and Dan Bebber at Oxford University used slime mould to model an effective railway network. In the experiment, cities were represented by porridge oats that were linked to one another as the slime mould grew. "The Ig Nobel awards are great. They are a wonderful vehicle for putting some science into the public domain in a fun and interesting way," said Fricker.Management prizeTo Alessandro Pluchino and team at the University of Catania for demonstrating mathematically that companies work more efficiently if staff are promoted at random.Public health prizeAwarded to Manuel Barbeito at the Industrial Health and Safety Office in Maryland for scientific studies that found microbes cling to beards, making more hirsute men a potential laboratory hazard.Chemistry prizeFor research in 2005 that overturned the long-held belief that oil and water do not mix, the prize was awarded to Eric Adams at MIT and others, including researchers at BP.Economics prizeAwarded jointly to the executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, AIG and Magnetar for "creating and promoting new ways to invest money – ways that maximise financial gain and minimise financial risk for the world economy, or for a portion thereof."Ig Nobel PrizesScience prizesResearchHigher educationUnited StatesIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Employment tribunal hears of bizarre hoax phone call The director of Britain's Science Media Centre pretended to be a journalist investigating MP's staff expenses.Few people who are familiar with the small pond that is science journalism in the UK will have failed to gulp on reading about the ex-Labour MP Jim Devine and the unthinkable bullying he unleashed on his boss, Marion Kinley.Devine, who was an MP in Livingston, Scotland, before being done for fiddling expenses last year asked an acquaintance to make a fake call to Kinley and pretend to be a journalist investigating her financial affairs. The story gets darker with every step and you can read more about it here. Devine has since been ordered to pay Kinley £35,000.Though appalling from the off, it was not the top line that shocked many of my colleagues most. What came as a surprise was the revelation far down the story that the fake call in question was made by Fiona Fox, head of the Science Media Centre in London, a prominent venue for press conferences on all matters scientific and medical. Otherwise articulate people who read the story struggled to say more than three letters: WTF?I contacted Fox to ask her about the story and she provided a statement, which she has already sent on to a Scottish newspaper. It reads as follows:"I am pleased Miss Kinley has won her case and deeply regret being unwittingly drawn into this unpleasant saga. In a very, very small way I too was duped by this man. He had assured me that this kind of prank was part and parcel of the humour in his team and that his colleagues gave as good as they got. At that time I had no reason to doubt the integrity of a Member of Parliament who I got to know because of his public support for stem cell research during the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill in 2008."By phone, Fox explained that she knew Devine for around five weeks in 2008. A day after making the fake call - and leaving a message on Kinley's answerphone - Kinley called Fox, who admitted the hoax and apologised. Fox says: "I was a first class idiot." I doubt many will disagree.There are many wonderful things about being a science journalist. You get to spend your days interviewing highly intelligent people who have spent their lives wrestling with profound and fascinating questions about how the world works and all that is in it. Now and then a grim story crops up. This is one of them.Controversies in scienceIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Green: A Cultural Barrier on Climate Change A University of Michigan researcher compares inaction on heat-trapping emissions to the cultural attitudes that delayed the abolition of slavery or bans on indoor smoking. feeds.nytimes.com |