Tag: science

The scientific stupidity of the TSA’s security rules.

10:03 am

The scientific stupidity of the TSA’s security rules.

Here’s one example from the article:

Take the Transportation Security Administration’s rules about carry-on electronics, for example. Laptops have to come out of their bags and lie flat in a plastic tub—but not tablets, phones, Kindles, cameras or portable game consoles. Why the distinction? The TSA says that it’s not just about detecting explosives: removing bigger gadgets also unclutters your bag for better x-ray examination. Even so, on close inspection the rules get arbitrary very quickly. For example, according to the TSA, the 11-inch model of the MacBook Air is fine to leave in your bag, but the 13-inch model must be removed.

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More fraud in the social psychology field: A psychologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam has resigned, with two of his papers now retracted.

3:58 pm

More fraud in the social psychology field: A psychologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam has resigned for faking data, with two of his papers now retracted.

[Dirk] Smeesters conceded to employing the so-called “blue-dot technique,” in which subjects who have apparently not read study instructions carefully are identified and excluded from analysis if it helps bolster the outcome. According to the report, Smeesters said this type of massaging was nothing out of the ordinary. He “repeatedly indicates that the culture in his field and his department is such that he does not feel personally responsible, and is convinced that in the area of marketing and (to a lesser extent) social psychology, many consciously leave out data to reach significance without saying so.”

But the university panel goes on to say that it can’t determine whether the numbers Smeesters says he massaged existed at all. He could not supply raw data for the three problematic experiments; they had been stored on a computer at his home that had crashed in September 2011 and whose data his brother-in-law had assured him were irretrievable. In addition, the “paper-and-pencil data” had also been lost when Smeesters moved house. The panel says it cannot establish Smeesters committed fraud, but says he is responsible for the loss of the raw data and their massaging.

That Smeesters considers it perfectly okay to manipulate data to strengthen his conclusions tells us how little he knows about science. That he considers this “common in his field” suggests that we should probably not pay much attention to almost anything published in the field of social psychology, especially considering last year’s scandal.

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A human-powered helicopter was successfully flown for 50 seconds on June 21, setting a new world record.

9:31 am

A human-powered helicopter was successfully flown for 50 seconds on June 21, setting a new world record. Video below the fold.

This effort is an attempt to win the $250,000 AHS Sikorsky Prize, which requires a human-powered helicopter to fly for one minute at a height of three meters. The prize was first announced in 1980, and has remained unclaimed for the past 32 years.
» Read more

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An asteroid that was discovered only four days before it flew by the Earth on June 14 has turned out to be much bigger than first thought.

8:34 am

An asteroid that was discovered only four days before it flew by the Earth on June 14 has turned out to be much bigger than first thought.

This particular asteroid may not have been a danger, but much of the concern was rooted in the late warning of its detection — 2012 LZ1 was spotted only four days before closest approach. One of the reasons for its late discovery is because it was detected in Southern Hemisphere skies, part of the world were we have few asteroid-watching programs. If it had been on a collision course with Earth, a few days notice is no time at all.

So, in the aftermath of the flyby, astronomers at the famous Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico used radar to image the interplanetary interloper (pictured top). What they uncovered was a surprise: Asteroid 2012 LZ1 is actually bigger than thought… in fact, it is quite a lot bigger. 2012 LZ1 is one kilometer wide (0.62 miles), double the initial estimate.

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New data from Antarctica suggests that the south pole icecap is not warming, as predicted by climate models.

12:53 pm

New data from Antarctica suggests that the south pole icecap is not melting, as predicted by climate models.

It turns out that past studies, which were based on computer models without any direct data for comparison or guidance, overestimate the water temperatures and extent of melting beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf. This has led to the misconception, Hattermann said, that the ice shelf is losing mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass, leading to an overall loss of mass. The model results were in contrast to the available data from satellite observations, which are supported by the new measurements.

The team’s results show that water temperatures are far lower than computer models predicted, which means that the Fimbul Ice Shelf is melting at a slower rate. Perhaps indicating that the shelf is neither losing nor gaining mass at the moment because ice buildup from snowfall has kept up with the rate of mass loss, Hattermann said.

In other words, the climate models were wrong. When actual data was obtained, first by satellites and now from the water under the ice shelf itself, the new data found that the ice shelf is stable, not melting as predicted.

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Two exoplanets in a tight orbital dance.

12:31 pm

Two exoplanets in a tight orbital dance.

“These are the closest two planets to one another that have ever been found,” Agol said. “The bigger planet is pushing the smaller planet around more, so the smaller planet was harder to find.”

Orbiting a star in the Cygnus constellation referred to as Kepler-36a, the planets are designated Kepler-36b and Kepler-36c. Planet b is a rocky planet like Earth, though 4.5 times more massive and with a radius 1.5 times greater. Kepler-36c, which could be either gaseous like Jupiter or watery, is 8.1 times more massive than Earth and has a radius 3.7 times greater.

But wait, there’s more!

The fact that the two planets are so close to each other and exhibit specific orbital patterns allowed the scientists to make fairly precise estimates of each planet’s characteristics, based on their gravitational effects on each other and the resulting variations in the orbits. To date, this is the best-characterized system with small planets, the researchers said.

They believe the smaller planet is 30 percent iron, less than 1 percent atmospheric hydrogen and helium and probably no more than 15 percent water. The larger planet, on the other hand, likely has a rocky core surrounded by a substantial amount of atmospheric hydrogen and helium.

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According to this article, the water-ice discovered at Shackleton Crater is insufficient for human settlement.

8:44 am

The uncertainty of science: According to this article, the water-ice discovery announced yesterday at Shackleton Crater is insufficient for human settlement.

The latest LRO data indicate “that water is not there … in a way that would facilitate human exploration,” says planetary scientist Maria Zuber, who led the team analyzing the data.

If the signatures the team saw in the soils on the crater floor do indicate water, how much water might there be? Roughly 100 gallons – enough to fill two or three residential rain barrels – spread over a surface of about 133 square miles. Leave the swim-suit at home. “This is not like Mars,” says Dr. Zuber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, in an interview. On the red planet, explorers would find thick layers of icy soil in many locations just by turning over a shovelful or two of topsoil. [emphasis mine]

This story seems to answer my question about Zuber’s participation in the water in Shackleton paper as well as the previous paper saying there is much less water on the Moon than previously believed. It also raises questions about the journalism work of many of the other stories published in the past few days, which heavily touted the possibility of water in Shackleton.

I intend to dig into this story a bit more. Stay tuned.

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New data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter suggests that ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in Shackleton Crater, located on the moon’s south pole. The uncertainty of science: New data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter suggests that ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in Shackleton Crater, located on the moon’s south pole.

11:01 am

The uncertainty of science: New data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter suggests that ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in Shackleton Crater.

What I find most interesting about this result is that the team leader of this paper, Maria Zuber, was also one of the co-authors of the paper I wrote about two days ago that said there was no water in Shackleton Crater.

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The pork of Obamacare

3:00 pm

The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), created by Obamacare, announced its first round of grants today, part of a funding program of fifty “pilot projects” totaling $30 million.

It didn’t take much research for me to conclude that, while some of this work might be useful, most of it sounds like bureaucratic claptrap. For example, consider the description Nature gives for these three grants:
» Read more

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The Moon: a desert after all?

10:10 am

LEND data of lunar south pole

The uncertainty of science: A new science paper, published Saturday in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets,, has found that there is much less water ice trapped in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar poles than previously thought. From the abstract:

This means that all [permanently shadowed regions], except those in Shoemaker, Cabeus and Rozhdestvensky U craters, do not contain any significant amount of hydrogen in comparison with sunlit areas around them at the same latitude.

And from the paper’s conclusion:

[E]ven now the data is enough for definite conclusion that [permanently shadowed regions] at both poles are not reservoirs of large deposits of water ice.

» Read more

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Scientists have concluded that a 460 foot diameter asteroid only has a 1 percent chance of hitting the Earth in 2040.

11:09 am

O goody: Scientists have concluded that a 460 foot diameter asteroid only has a 1 percent chance of hitting the Earth in 2040.

Observations to date indicate there is a slight chance that AG5 could impact Earth in 2040. Attendees expressed confidence that in the next four years, analysis of space and ground-based observations will show the likelihood of 2011 AG5 missing Earth to be greater than 99 percent.

It appears that they won’t really be able to pin down the impact odds for 2040 until 2023, when the asteroid passes the Earth at a distance of 1.1 million miles.

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Engineers have successfully tested a spare reaction wheel on Mars Odyssey in their effort to bring the spacecraft back into full operation.

6:31 pm

Engineers have successfully tested a spare reaction wheel on Mars Odyssey in their effort to bring the spacecraft back into full operation.

After more than 11 years of non-operational storage, the spare reaction wheel passed preliminary tests on Wednesday, June 12, spinning at up to 5,000 rotations per minute forward and backward. Odyssey engineers plan to substitute it for a reaction wheel they have assessed as no longer reliable. That wheel stuck for a few minutes last week, causing Odyssey to put itself into safe mode on June 8, Universal Time (June 7, Pacific Time).

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The North Carolina legislature has passed a bill that requires its coastal planning commission to ignore the accelerated sea level rise predictions of global warming scientists and instead use more conservative numbers.

10:11 am

The North Carolina legislature has passed a bill that requires its coastal planning commission to ignore the accelerated sea level rise predictions of global warming scientists and instead use more conservative numbers.

To put it another way, North Carolina has decided, for coastal planning purposes, to use the slower linear rise in sea level that can be extrapolated from the actual data that scientists have gathered for the past century, and not use the models pushed by the IPCC and other global warming scientists that predict an acceleration of sea level rise in the next century due to human-caused global warming.

This decision by North Carolina has happened because increasingly people of good conscience no longer believe anything the global warming activists in the climate field are telling them. These scientists either perpetuated scientific fraud to sell the idea of human-caused global-warming, or have been willing to whitewash the fraud of other scientists. Rather than listen to them, the North Carolina legislature has decided to interpret the data independently. The legislature might very well be wrong, but what else can they do? They certainly can’t trust the claims of the climate field.

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Unless they can find a buyer the United Kingdom will close down its 3.8 meter infrared UKIRT telescope on Mauna Kea in 2013.

9:41 am

Telescope for sale: Unless they can find a buyer the United Kingdom will close down its 3.8 meter infrared UKIRT telescope on Mauna Kea in 2013.

This is a tragedy. A 3.8 meter telescope is no slouch and can do amazing research. The problem is that all the available money in ground-based astronomy is now being eaten up by the construction of giant telescopes in the 20 to 40 meter range.

What astronomy needs are some wealthy philanthropists who would like to buy these mid-sized telescopes, put their names on it, and finance their operation. This is how most big telescopes were made possible before World War II.

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