1471017691000

science

%feed
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fjeff-schweitzer%2Fvoodoo-medicine-time-to-s_b_11474550.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8
Voodoo Medicine: Time to Stop
The world's most celebrated athlete standing on the podium in Rio in honor of receiving yet another gold medal has something important in common with your lazy uncle throwing back a cold one in his Barcalounger. Yes, swimming powerhouse Michael Phelps, purple-spotted from cupping therapy, and your slovenly relative with a beer gut both share a bond - a weakness in succumbing to the allure of voodoo medicine. Modern-day snake oil salesmen hawking quick cures and TV doctors peddling the latest diet miracle with blatantly ridiculous claims are everywhere on the tube, social media, the supermarket and old-fashioned billboards. Anecdotes and celebrity testimonials have in many cases replaced evidence-based medicine in our popular culture. Diet, nutrition and medical claims are thrown together in an olio of nonsense of false promise and false hope.

Problems with Western Medicine

Let's pause here a moment. Before ripping further into the obvious drawbacks of voodoo medicine, that is, any medical claims absent substantiating data, let's first emphasize that of course evidence-based medicine (often called western medicine) has its own set of serious problems and significant limitations. Clinical studies can be and have been tainted by pharmaceutical company sponsors or by doctors with financial interests in the outcome; negative data can be buried or manipulated; drugs shown to be safe in small trials can turn out to have significant or even deadly side effects in a broader population; treatment can lead to addiction; and interactions among different drugs can be hazardous. Biology is complex, and our understanding of disease incomplete, meaning that treatments are often hit or miss or luck of the draw rather than based on first principles. Perhaps the biggest flaw with modern western medicine, though, is that we have created a false expectation that our ills can be cured with a pill when it fact the cure more often lies in making difficult lifestyle changes. Smoking, lack of exercise and overeating come to mind. But these flaws in modern medicine are, in theory, amenable to improvement because the foundation is evidence-based. With scrutiny and reproducibility comes an accountability that will eventually expose weaknesses to be addressed. Or at least that possibility exists, which is not the case for claims that are made with no attempt at rigorous evaluation - like cupping.

The Allure of False Hope

Cupping can be traced to ancient Chinese practices used ostensibly to treat a variety of ailments including arthritis and muscle soreness. There is no credible clinical evidence that cupping is anything more than a placebo - or one big hickey -- with no medical benefit at all. And consider this question - did you see any of the Chinese athletes doing cupping therapy? Think about it. Perhaps if this ancient Chinese treatment really worked over millennia we might see Chinese athletes partaking of its benefits?

Like their cousin cupping, faddish cryotherapy and chelation also offer an alternative to actual medicine. Chelation, which has a legitimate application in treating acute heavy metal poisoning, is sold instead as a cure or treatment for arthritis, hormone imbalances, and heart disease, which unscrupulous practitioners attribute to "heavy metal toxicity" or some other false claim about why chelation is beneficial. No scientific evidence supports this. All of these claims are unproven. The same applies to cryotherapy (or more faddishly whole body cryotherapy, or WBC), touted as a way to slow aging, improve sleep, enhance athletic performance and reduce various pains. There is not a shred of credible scientific support for these assertions. This list goes on and on: Ayurvedic medicine, aromatherapy, homeopathy, shamanism, naturopathy, Hopi Indian ear candling, Sekkotsu, Christian faith healing, stem cell therapy, probiotics, treatment for systemic "inflammation"...

These therapies and treatments all share the same fatal flaw; none has undergone rigorous clinical studies to determine safety and efficacy. In the absence of such trials, it cannot possibly be known if the drug or treatment is effective, if there will be serious side effects, if it will actually make the condition worse, or it will interfere with drugs or treatments that would otherwise help. Wishful thinking is not a viable treatment plan. In the absence of rigorous evaluation, you simply cannot know if your favorite treatment or supplement works no matter how many convincing testimonials you hear or how many anecdotes you may read. You or Grandma or Aunt Tilly or your best friend are just making it up based on lore and hearsay, no different than randomly going into a supermarket, picking out a package of peas and claiming that eating half a bag a day (but only if eaten at noon) will cure arthritis. The claim is convincing if the familiar face of a celebrity testifies that eating a bag of peas each day at noon will cure your ills or if an actor dressed as a doctor, removing a pair of glasses to simulate intimacy, solemnly attests to the benefits of pea eating. But testimonials and anecdotes do not make the claim any more valid. You might think chelating works because someone you trust told you so - but you are doing nothing different than picking out that bag of peas.

Intersection of Voodoo Diet and Medicine

Claims surrounding nutrition are equally noxious. Of all the voodoo treatments mentioned, my personal favorites are those meant to address the curse of "inflammation" because these claims are the perfect confluence between voodoo medicine and diet. Here is a typical claim:

"Inflammation controls our lives. Have you or a loved one dealt with pain, obesity, ADD/ADHD, peripheral neuropathy, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, migraines, thyroid issues, dental issues, or cancer? If you answered yes to any of these disorders you are dealing with inflammation."

Well, no, inflammation does not control our lives. Like many others, this author claims inflammation is responsible for a huge range of maladies, ranging from Alzheimer's to lupus to stroke to fibromyalgia; I counted 30 on this site. This is nothing but cringe-worthy. Yes, inflammation is terribly important, and is associated with disease. But the oversimplification and weak link to biology that we find on sites like these are misdirection from understanding what is actually happening in our bodies. Such misunderstanding leads to odd nutritional or medical recommendations that are useless at best or dangerous at worst.

We are awash in a sea of these crazy and exaggerated claims about inflammation that have taken root in popular culture, as even a quick Google search reveals:

"Chronic inflammation is the root cause of many serious diseases." No it is not; it is an important step, but one of many, in the progression of diseases generally caused by bad habits.

"Inflammation is the cause of nearly all disease." Wrong at every level; there are many diseases not associated with inflammation, and it is not typically the cause of disease. Rather inflammation is a pathway to pathology shared across many diseases.

"Ginger and turmeric have been shown to have anti-inflammatory properties." I love ginger and turmeric, but there is scant epidemiology to support the claim. It is just wishful thinking and the kind of bogus claim that distracts us from reality.

"Excess sugar intake will contribute to inflammation. It's not just the obvious sugar but also the hidden sugars." There is no such thing as hidden sugars; and sugar itself has nothing to do with inflammation, other than adding calories, which in excess we know can cause inflammation.

"Phytochemicals - natural chemicals found in plant foods... are also believed to help reduce inflammation." There is no evidence for this statement. Of course, eating plant rather than animal products would reduce saturated fat intake, which in excess can cause inflammation. Cyanide is a natural chemical found in plants so the endorsement here is not ringing.

"Inflammation has also been linked to unbalanced levels of certain hormones, such as estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. That's why chronic inflammation often inflicts menopausal women, causing conditions like osteoporosis, weight gain, and adult acne." This claim is not substantiated by any serious clinical research. None.

"Foods that combat inflammation include tomatoes, green leafy vegetables and nuts like almonds and walnuts." Well, no, that is not true at all. These foods simply do not promote inflammation, which is not the same as combatting it. Avoiding rotten food is not the same thing as treating food poisoning.

"Monica has done exhaustive research on the nutritional components of 1,600 common foods, and rated them according to scientifically validated factors related to inflammation." Well, scientists would be surprised by this since there are no "scientifically validated factors related to inflammation." Just foods with or without saturated fats, which we know in excess can lead to inflammation. This does not require "exhaustive research."

Voodoo Nutrition and the Curse of Supplements

Atkins, Dean Ornish, the Zone, South Beach, Glycemic Index... this list of fad diets too is nearly endless. Grocery stores sell magazines shouting out blatantly false claims that promise to help readers "lose weight like a teenager," "lose belly fat," "lose 11 lbs a week," and "fill up on fat-burning super foods." We are sold hormone supplements, told the benefits of "anti-inflammatory foods" and promised results if we only would take acetyl coenzyme A. These promises cannot be kept because they defy the simplest laws of biology and physics.

Dr. Oz has on his website a section entitled, "The Top 10 Fat-Burning Foods." This is what the FDA and nutritionists say about fat-burning foods: there is no such thing. Dr. Oz is conning you, feeding you pure nonsense, selling miracle cures no better than snake oil vendors of old. FDA says, "Consumers should know that there is no such thing as a fat-burning pill." Just to be clear, the FDA adds further about fat-burning foods that, "No substance has ever been shown to actually do this." It is a big lie, a scam.

People daily pop, drink and chow down on nutritional supplements with great abandon - without the slightest evidence that any of them have any potential benefit. But things are worse than that; not only do you not know if the supplement you take has any health benefit at all, you actually don't know if you are taking the supplement you intend. You may well be taking something detrimental to health or something potentially healthy but in unsafe doses. This from an expose in the New York Times:

Among the attorney general's findings was a popular store brand of ginseng pills at Walgreens, promoted for "physical endurance and vitality," that contained only powdered garlic and rice. At Walmart, the authorities found that its ginkgo biloba, a Chinese plant promoted as a memory enhancer, contained little more than powdered radish, houseplants and wheat -- despite a claim on the label that the product was wheat- and gluten-free. Three out of six herbal products at Target -- ginkgo biloba, St. John's wort and valerian root, a sleep aid -- tested negative for the herbs on their labels. But they did contain powdered rice, beans, peas and wild carrots. And at GNC, the agency said, it found pills with unlisted ingredients used as fillers, like powdered legumes, the class of plants that includes peanuts and soybeans, a hazard for people with allergies.

The Times is not alone in their summary findings, as we see from an article from Consumer Health Choices:

Supplement manufacturers routinely, and legally, sell their products without first having to demonstrate that they are safe and effective. Unlabeled ingredients found in many supplements are: bitter orange, chaparral, colloidal silver, coltsfoot, comfrey, country mallow, germanium, greater celandine, kava, lobelia, and yohimbe. The FDA has warned about at least eight of them, some as long ago as 1993. Of the more than 54,000 dietary supplement products in the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, more than 40,000 have no level of safety and effectiveness supported by scientific evidence.

Next time you have an urge to take fish oil, ginger and ginkgo biloba, just pop some peas into your mouth; there is no evidence one is more healthful than the other.

There is no room here to debunk the ocean of nonsense we encounter daily; this small sample of crazy is not even the tip of the tip of the iceberg. The voodoo surrounding probiotics and hormone supplements for example is each in itself a blog, or book. But understand that unless you restrict your intake of drugs and supplements to those proven to be effective and safe through rigorous scientific evaluation, you are just randomly putting stuff in your mouth. You should stop doing that. And Michael Phelps should stop cupping; it is embarrassing.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

science

1470948940000

science

%feed
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fsheyna-e-gifford-md-ma-ms%2Fthe-freedom-to-fail-simul_b_11411936.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8
The Freedom To Fail: Simulations And The Future Of Our Species
"Plans are useless. Planning is everything." - Dwight David Eisenhower

If all goes as planned, in 18 days the hatch will open and our one-year mission to simulated space will end. Thanks in part to this mission, if all goes as planned, a generation from now we'll be waist-deep in our first attempt to land humans on Mars. Between now and then, plans will accumulate: a plan for building a launch vehicle; a plan for getting our stuff there (hopefully, most of it in advance); a plan for how to select and train and feed and water a crew of four or more for three years. Sometimes, twenty years feels like enough time to make all this happen. Then, I remember how long it took to plan, design, build, test, launch, and land the Mars Curiosity Rover: ~2004-2012. When a robot's one-way trip was eight years in the making, twenty years to get people safely to Mars and back suddenly seems like a mighty tall order.

Fortunately, we've already started. Our mission is proof of that.

To be fair, it took ~8 years to build not 1 but 2.5 Curiosity Rovers: the one that went to Mars, the one that lived in the test bed on Earth, and the one that existed in pieces in a software and hardware testing lab. Credit: By NASA via Wikimedia Commons.

Simulations like ours are a critical part of any serious endeavor. The reason is simple: humans need to practice in order to get things right. Whatever we attempt - be it a geometry problem, a round-house kick, or an asteroid rendezvous - the odds of our success are inextricably linked to how many times we've tried that particular maneuver before. Entropy will always introduce unforeseen twists and turns. The more times we've simulated the scenario, the less likely we are to fall flat when our standing plans fail.

Sgt. Brian Matthews, scout sniper and Marine Corps Martial Arts Program instructor trainer, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, demonstrates a MCMAP technique as part of the martial arts demonstration during Marine Day in Times Square. Credit: Sgt. Jimmy D. Shea, MarineCorps NewYork via Wikimedia Commons (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0).

Case in point: we planned July's water supply down to within a centimeter of our tank's low-water mark. Based on the last ten months of data, our chief engineer was able to make a call that accurate. His projections were dead-on. Nonetheless, our refill plan failed. When the appointed time came, no water 'bot arrived.

This was due to a mechanical failure on their end. On our end, there is an emergency water tank for just such scenarios. However, it hadn't been touched in years. Like a stubborn Schrodinger's box, the quality of the water in our tank was totally unknown, even after we opened it. Also unknown: when we would get more water delivered.

Fortunately, though our initial plan failed, we've been practicing water extraction and water restriction for nearly the entire mission. A a result, we had the power to SCIENCE our way out of disaster by distilling the emergency water: by boiling it and channeling the evaporated contents into a container. Within hours of us realizing that we weren't going to get our scheduled water delivery, we had just such a system set up and running .

"2016-08-09-1470780781-8308052-waterlevelcopyright.jpg"

Thanks to water restriction days, which were an invention of this crew, we knew how much water we needed to produce to survive and by what margin. Experience also told us how much power we could spare to run the electric heaters that were boiling the water one pot at a time into steam that collected onto plastic sheeting, which then ran down until it gathered underneath the weight of a metal spoon and dripped into the bottom of the black storage bin in which the entire contraption was contained.

In this way, clean water collected slowly and steadily. Every so often, one of us would come along with a baster, suck the distilled water out of the bottom of the bins and add more water to the pots. This evaporation system produced liters of purified water: enough to keep us going, at least for a while.

"2016-08-09-1470780845-7304539-makingnewwater.jpg"

This crew dealt with that level of potential disaster without so much as breaking a sweat. We didn't even have to change the rhythm of our day much to do it. I'm not sure how a crew who had only been up here for only a month, or four, would have handled it, which brings us to a question we are asked fairly frequently: What would happen in a real emergency?

Let's say that we hadn't been up here for very long, or that the crew was inexperienced with water reclamation; let say there wasn't enough plastic sheeting to make such a system work, or there weren't enough clamps to hold the sheeting in place (we would default to duct tape, but let's just assume for now that we're running low on that, too). What would have been our fate?

In a real emergency, there are people on this land mass who could make their way up the mountain with bottled water. On Mars, not so much. Going forward, to be sure that crews can handle it both physically and psychologically, we should probably simulate water shortages, as well as food shortages, power shortages, and all the depravation-situations with which the six of us are now intimately familiar.

"2016-08-09-1470780917-3137672-siphoning.jpg"

It goes without saying: for most of us, becoming an expert in water purification was never the plan - nor was mastering composting toilet maintainence, repairing hiking boots with duct tape, or any of several dozen things we've taught ourselves over these last 11.5 months. The wonderful thing about our experiment is that we have the opportunity to learn and the freedom to fail - even, one could argue, the imperative. Now is the time to test out these scenarios; to try our hands at pushing limits and pulling ourselves back from the brink. Sometimes, we won't quite make it, and that's ok. We won't fall too hard or fall too far - for now.

Our relative successes and failures from the last 348 days - at growing radishes, conserving water and power, staying in shape, and getting along with each other - will become part of data that goes into planning the first human missions to Mars. Owing to successes and failures from this and other simulations, humankind will master the art and science of planning long-duration space missions. It's the only way we can acquire this skill in advance. In a generation or more, whether the actual plan succeeds as intended (they rarely do), mastery of interplanetary mission planning will sooner or later see us safely through to the next world. Of that much, at least, I am certain.

"2016-08-09-1470780961-8031696-spoon.jpg"

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

science

1470948934000

science

%feed
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fmarc-dantonio%2Fpost_12821_b_11418600.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8
Reinventing The Drake Equation

"2016-08-10-1470801736-7043250-MoonRingRising2.jpg"

The Drake Equation is a thought problem created in 1961 by Astronomer Frank Drake that contained a number of factors that taken together could produce a number meant to indicate how many intelligent and detectable civilizations may exist in the Milky Way galaxy which is our home in the Universe.

The classical equation looks like this where all the factors are multiplied together:

N = R x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L

The factors break down as:
N = number of alien civilizations in the Milky Way

R = number of stars in our galaxy
fp = Fraction of stars with planets
ne = number of planets that where life as we know it can exist
fl = % of those planets where life arises
fi = % of those planets (fl) where intelligence develops
fc = % of those societies that develop electromagnetic science
fL = % of societies that emit electromagnetically into space for a long time

The Drake equation actually required guesses for many important factors. It also provided the means to quantify with a value the number of potential civilizations that emitted some form of intelligent signals that could be picked up by our current technology at the time. Drake had formulated this equation prior to any Exoplanet research and finds but as it turns out, those finds change everything...

As you can imagine and for those familiar with the equation, we dont have actual data for MOST of the Classical Drake equation factors, but they are guesses, based on human trends, human technology leaps, and so on. So with only one known life-bearing planet at the time, ours, the calculation of the ultimate value for the Drake Equation was always a conservative guess based on comparison to the progress of human civilization and the technologic precipices we faced. Naturally we dont yet know of any advanced civilization. We are all we know. We represent a single data point and only one such point is not sufficient to create a trend or an understanding.

With the most recent additions to the Exoplanet list however we at least have a way to make more educated guesses for some of the Drake factors using statistical sampling of known data. We still dont have the proof of extraterrestrial intelligent life yet but some of the Drake factors can be addressed with more accuracy. In our current Exoplanet count we puts the total number of Exoplanets somewhat north of 3300. This is very exciting. Originally the planet hunting results were more limited, providing us with the ability to find only the biggest Jupiter sized planets. But as techniques were honed to a finer art, we started to find smaller more Earth sized planets.

In the Exoplanet catalog of known planets a fair number of our confirmed planets are known as "Super-Earths". The term is the nomenclature applied to any planet that is under 10 Earth masses. Super-Earth implies Earth -like I know but the term doesnt distinguish between planets that are habitable or not. It just says that if its between 1 and 10 times Earth's mass, its a Super-Earth. Such a planet could be a massive paradise, a seething maelstrom of gases, or an airless rock.

The ability to find such planets however represents a significant improvement in planet detection capability. Currently it is theorized in some circles that as many as 10% of the stars in our galaxy may have suitable habitable zone planets, which is a number between 10 billion and 40 billion. There are more conservative estimates as well but these numbers are also in mainstream thought.

A number of factors in the equation have requirements not readily apparent. The planet must be in that habitable zone around its star. If you read my Huffington Post blog article on Habitable Zones you know that this zone is that not too hot not to cold region around any star where a planet could support liquid water and could manage to hold onto an atmosphere. In addition to the habitable zone requirement, a stable star is also a requirement. Such a restriction removes a number of hotter more energetic stars from our hunting list because the radiation and strong stellar winds emanating from those particular stars would likely have blown the atmospheres off the planets or irradiated their surfaces to sterility.

(You can read about this in Understanding Exoplanets : The Habitable Zone at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marc-dantonio/ )

Returning to the Drake Equation, we have to consider that when Frank Drake wrote up the thought problem that eventually became the Drake Equation, he did this THIRTY FOUR YEARS before Exoplanet searches started producing some candidates and confirmed results... We had no confirmed Exoplanets up until that point. Drake had to formulate the equation without a single planet other than the Earth as a starting point.

So as more data was obtained, analyzed and as more planets were added to the list, it became more obvious that the Classical Drake Equation no longer worked as the complexity of each term increased, Thus, the Drake Equation was reworked by a number of organizations and dozens of new papers were written addressing the new data and how it bodes for life in the Universe.

These days the Drake Equation two particular versions of the re-imagined Drake equation take front and center and produce different results between them. Both I am happy to say are more optimistic. One version linked below appears in Astrobiology magazine, and discusses the Drake equation from two separate trains of thought: The Classical Drake equation and the Statistical Drake equation. The Statistical version is a much more complex equation that takes into account various new potential paths that an alien civilization can traverse on its way to being a star faring society.

The second version, a similarly credible version postulated by an MIT professor changes some of the original parameters in the equation to better suit the known data. For instance, that version directly considers the stability of the star system, a key factor when trying to find long term suitability for life like us.

Looking at the Drake Equation with these new eyes and most especially with new data suggests a very DIFFERENT outlook than Frank Drake had postulated. New data brings us new outlooks and the new Drake equations showcase the new data and how it works for us to better understand the Universe.

One thing that the articles linked below dont directly address other than in passing is the capability of a civilization to utilize advanced propulsion such as the Alcubierre Drive which is a 'warp' drive of sorts. The reason is one of focus. The new formulations to the Drake equation care only about whether a civilization can be detected. It doesn't address interstellar travel. It is enough that they are detectable and that is what the equation is meant to help puzzle out.

Claudio Maccone who worked on one version of the Drake equation calls it more of a Statistical Drake Equation. That equation considers a statistical variation in the factors because of the many variables involved. Without considering any statistical variation the new formulation gives us 4590 potential advanced civilizations in the galaxy.

Considering the variations that MUST exist, formulating an answer to the statistical version of the Drake Equation indicates there are potentially between 0 and more than 15000 advanced societies in our galaxy alone.

In Addition, Sara Seager at MIT utilized the current finds in Exoplanet research and a new approach that doesn't make the Drake equation obsolete but creates another "new edition" that helps us predict the probability of detecting another civilization.

Her equation looks slightly different:

N = Ns x Fq x Fhz x Fo x Fl x Fs

Where the overall Number N is the number of planets that have a detectable atmospheric content that contains compounds known to support life. That number depends on these factors:
Ns: The number of stars in the sample that were used
Fq: The number of quiet stars
Fhz: The number of planets in the Habitable Zones around their stars
Fo: The number of actual observable systems we can see
Fl: The fraction of those many planets where life has arisen
Fs: The fraction of planets with detectable spectral signatures

Her calculations of a sample of 30,000 stars gives N=2. This means that in her sample of 30,000 stars there are potentially 2 star systems that are predicted to show detectable, active life on a habitable zone planet. 2 civilizations seems a bit pessimistic at first glance but that number conceals a vast probability when you consider all of the stars in the galaxy and extrapolate. Why?

Because our galaxy alone has between 100 and 400 BILLION stars. So on the low end of the estimate of only 100 billion stars her analysis predicts just over 6.5 million possible civilizations and at the higher end estimate of 400 billion stars in the galaxy, 26 million possible systems with intelligence are predicted.

What does this all mean? It means, significantly, that science is on the side of those who suspect that there is other reasonably intelligent life in the Universe. Whether it is space faring or not is beyond the scope of the equation as is a prediction of such a civilization's technological level. In my book "The Populated Universe" I discuss the many places we see the fundamental building blocks of life in the Universe.

The Universe makes these necessary items naturally without our help and we are here because of this process. So my supposition is that Life is the RULE not the exception. It is a big step to commit to that line of thinking because that position still depends on an expectation of scientific discovery that has yet to be made. But I am comfortable looking up on a starry night and mulling over the possibilities!

I hope you enjoyed this foray into the Drake equation and the children it has generated!

The links to articles that discuss the new Drake Equations are below

Claudio Maccone's research: http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/at-last-how-many-alien-civilizations-are-there/

Sara Seager's research: http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-a-brand-new-equation-reveals-about-our-odds-of-fin-531575395

"2016-08-10-1470803949-2566482-HuffPostEndPageTripleStar001waterplanet.jpg"

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

science

1470943833000

science

%feed
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Frami-hashish%2Fpokemon-goand-get-injured_b_11437770.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8
Pokémon GO... And Get Injured?
From the beaches of Santa Monica to the streets of Manhattan, there is one constant -- masses of people losing themselves in the virtual splendor of Pokémon Go. After its launch on July 6th, the location-based augmented reality game became the top grossing app in the United States within a mere 13 hours, leading to Nintendo's 5-day, $9 billion skyrocket in market value. But per the age-old adage, what goes up, must come down -- and in the case of Pokémon, more literally than figuratively.

Within 10 days of Pokémon's release, two men crossed a fenced area in their desperate search of pocket monsters, and fell off a cliff near San Diego, sustaining injuries, the extent of which are unclear. Another gamer reportedly slipped and fell down a ditch, fracturing their pinky toe in the process. And while some may see such incidents as isolated, if we delve a bit deeper into the cause, it becomes painstakingly clear that such injuries are but likely portents to the future.

People have been gaming on their mobile phones ever since 1994 when the Hagenuk MT-2000 came equipped with the popular tile-matching puzzle game, Tetris. But video games require a simple linear interaction between a human and their gaming console. Tetris, for instance, requires mental focus and acuity, as well as quick dexterous responses in order to determine and swiftly place puzzle pieces into their optimal positions. It is thus considered advantageous to allocate attentional resources entirely to the game (i.e. focus on winning). Augmented reality games, on the other hand, require the human to interact with a game, which has elements of the real-world environment that they are simultaneously navigating. Accordingly, augmented reality effectively requires allocation of resources to both the game and the real world (i.e. focus on winning and negotiating the real world).

While allocating attention towards a game may increase your chances at winning in Pokémon, you may end up losing at the game of life. And the reason is clearer than a summer's day -- people aren't very good at dual-tasking (i.e. concurrently performing two tasks). Imagine sitting at a restaurant deep in conversation. The bill comes so you pull out your credit card and hand it to the server. A few minutes later, the server returns and because the restaurant is about to close, you feel obliged to quickly sign the check. Still immersed in conversation, you look at the bill and try to determine the appropriate tip amount. Typically, a math whiz, you now find yourself struggling at calculating the 15-20 percent tip. And though you fashion yourself a good listener, you have the slightest clue of what your beautiful date was saying for the last 30 seconds.

Let's say we up the stakes. Rather than dual-tasking while sitting down having a leisurely conversation, you are now walking down the street texting a friend. It should come as no surprise that performing the secondary task of texting negatively affects the way you walk. Indeed, recent research has shown that people are less likely to walk in a straight path when using their cellphone. A series of studies conducted with a few colleagues of mine further shows that manipulating a mobile device results in slower walking speeds and reduced time spent looking at obstacles in the real-world. Such degraded walking likely explains the 10-fold increase in emergency room visits among distracted pedestrians between 2006 and 2014. It sure would feel a whole lot better to just fudge a date -- regardless of how cute they may be.

Scientific research overwhelmingly supports the notion that performing a secondary action negatively impacts our performance. Even when executing simplistic texting tasks, use of a mobile phone is associated with a limited ability to avoid obstacles and an increased potential for sustaining a slip, trip, or fall. So what do you think will happen when running through Times Square trying to catch those illusive Pokémon?

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

science

1470853191000

science

%feed
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fthe-university-of-central-florida-forum%2Fbuilding-a-pathway-to-eng_b_11430944.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8
Building a Pathway to Engineering for Our Daughters - Brick by Brick
By Ali P. Gordon
UCF Forum columnist

As a father of young elementary and middle school-aged kids, I'm also curious to know exactly how my undergrad students came to be interested in mechanical engineering. An exchange with a UCF student might go like this: "You did a great job on the exam. Congrats! By the way, how did you get interested in mechanical engineering, anyway?" I mentally log the answers for my kids' future benefit.

Any faculty member who is worth her or his salt will agree that teaching a class facilitates the instructor's learning just as much if not more than the students in the audience. When we give challenging problems to our engineering students, they never cease to periodically impress us by deriving solutions that are more elegant than our own.

Every lecture and every office-hour interaction with our students, for that matter, is also a chance for us faculty to incrementally advance our knowledge.

After teaching approximately 50 courses, the hundreds of idiosyncratic informal discussions that I reflect on with students are by themselves insignificant, but as a collection definitely worth noting. When kids spend a significant amount of their free time in the garage working on cars or home-improvement projects or working on model cars or most common of all playing with Lego sets, some of them develop a disposition for technology.

To the parents of kids who routinely and independently engage in these sorts of activities, you could very well have a budding mechanical engineer on your hands. Stay the course.

Minorities and women are underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. According to U.S. News & World Report, African Americans and Latinos comprise 5 and 6.2 percent of the engineering workforce, respectively. Depending on the source data, women comprise between 8 and 14 percent of mechanical engineers in the workplace. This gender imbalance in mechanical engineering classrooms is plain to see.

For parents of young daughters, we'll need to be proactive in maintaining their interests in engineering and building abutments to hold off social distractions.

As a personal note, I grew up building Lego sets just like many of my past and present students. Back then my interests were totally captured by the classic space-themed sets, and when I got a little older I could not be separated from the Technic sets featuring planes, cranes and automobiles designed for ages 11 to 16. Santa never delivered Lego Technic Space Shuttle (8480), but I still have hope.

Rather than just static structures, these more technically oriented sets feature gears, springs, pulleys, pneumatics, etc. They are abundant in their composition with the machine components essential to mechanical engineering design. Very frequently, I use gears, springs, and simple Lego constructions to help demonstrate concepts in classes and STEM summer camps.

In 2011, The Lego Group reported that 90 percent of its customers were boys; consequently, the following year Lego introduced the Lego Friends product line designed primarily for girls to relieve the gender imbalance. Think pink, purple, yellow and green hues with building sets featuring scenes in performing arts, animal rescue, camping, restaurants and the like.

They absolutely nailed it and won numerous industry and parents' choice awards. I was delighted and my four daughters have snapped up and snapped together nearly 135 Lego Friends kits. Other toy makers, like GoldieBlox and K'Nex Mighty Makers, have also tapped into this segment. These have been successful in getting more pre-teen girls thinking about engineering.

With an eye vectored towards maintaining and even enhancing our daughters' positive attitude concerning engineering, there needs to be more pre-engineering toys and games that continue to engage girls' free-time interests, especially in the early teenage years. The products that would help to facilitate this, however, leave a lot to be desired.

The Lego Group, for example, has made no compelling effort to expand the Technic product line beyond the race cars and dump trucks that it has had for decades. Visit your neighborhood Target or Walmart to see that STEM-oriented toy and game products only show up in the "boy" aisles. The implicit message in this gender-segregation is that technology is not for our daughters.

No recent Lego Design videos featuring Lego-employed master builders, showing their creations on YouTube, contain women or members of minorities groups. The consequences of this and numerous other idiosyncratic events are individually insignificant but collectively forceful in their contribution toward gender-filtration. The imminent challenges of our society's tomorrow compels us to begin formulating a diverse and capable workforce today.

Rather than merely highlighting the issue, here's some suggestions for candidate Lego Technic, K'Nex, etc. sets that would appeal across the aisles to those in their early teen years:

** Theme park rides: roller coaster, merry-go-round or pendulum
** Items for the home: cuckoo clock, multispeed oscillating fan or blender
** Mechanical animals that walk: dog, crab or spider
** Structures in the city: aerial tramway or stadium with retractable roof
** Space exploration: SpaceX rocket, satellite with retractable panels or remote-control Mars rover
** Medical devices: Mechanical prosthetic hand/arm or microscope
** Let me know if you need these products tested in class, at camp or at home.

Whether these things appear on the shelves is not something on which we parents should be fixated, however. If we want our daughters to have predilections toward technology, a "girl's" or "gender-neutral" version of a product isn't necessarily the best solution. The most elegant solution is helping her to identify problems in her world and then giving her the tools, materials, guidance and freedom to come up with her own solution.

Play well.

Ali P. Gordon is an associate professor in UCF's Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. He can be reached at ali@ucf.edu.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

science

QTH? Lower-frequency 'scope seeks ET

But fear not our galaxy has in-built SPF protection

Blinded observers granted gift.

Will team up to defeat drug resistant critters