A Curious Statistical Anomaly

I came across an interesting article the other day but didn’t have time to fully think about it. It seems that about every 8 minutes a magnetic portal opens between the Sun and the Earth and high-energy particles flow through the connection. Then the connection ends until the next time it cycles comes around.

Scientist thought this was a bunch of codswallop but now the facts are just so overwhelming it it can no longer be denied.    Now it’s time to start trying to figure out what’s happening. This is one of the things that makes science great, at least for me. Facts are facts and no matter how much you might wish to ignore, disbelieve, or refute them — if you are honest you have to accept the fact of the matter, adjust, and move on. That’s what science is all about. Having a theory, testing it, then depending on the facts that are gathered, changing the theory, or accepting it as “good enough for now, until new data comes in” and moving on, using this information as a basis for other theories.

Our world is constantly changing, if not in actuality, at least in our understanding of it. Centuries ago we believed the world was flat, then we believed it was round, and now we’ve seen it from space and know that it’s sort of a bulgy-squashed oval shape, slightly more roundish than not actually. But there! We learn, we grow, and our understanding grows also.

So, what does this mean that the Sun and Earth have been having these flux-transfer events. I don’t really know. But it’s been going on for ages so it must be something we need and have learned to adapt and live with. Why does it happen? Why every 8 minutes? Who knows, but now that scientists are aware of the phenomena, I’m confident that we’ll eventually learn a lot more about these flux transfer events. Personally, I wonder because of the magnetic aspect and because it begins over the equator and moves to the pole if it has anything to do with auroras — either helping to build up the charge or release it — but hey, what do I know. I’m just thinking again and that’s always dangerous.

You know I like these flux transfer events. They’re not related, but it makes me think of all those science fiction flux-thingys — flux capacitors, quantum fluxes, and others.

[Hyperion: Two things.  I wonder if the timing has anything to do with the fact that earth is 8 light-minutes away from the sun?  And second, it’s often joked that in science that first a theory is ridiculed, then its violently opposed, and finally its accepted as trivially obvious.]

I just love it when science finds that not only is eating chocolate okay — it’s even good for you. Of course, not for all of us — a friend of mine gets migraines if she has too much chocolate, or even a bit of it. But then for the rest of the chocoholics of the world — go for it.

It seems that half a bar of dark chocolate per week is good for your heart. Believe me I’m not looking this gift horse in the mouth (which is why I didn’t even try to find the original research paper), but the article in PhyOrg.com says:

“We started from the hypothesis- says Romina di Giuseppe, 33, lead author of the study- that high amounts of antioxidants contained in the cocoa seeds, in particular flavonoids and other kinds of poly-phenols, might have beneficial effects on the inflammatory state. Our results have been absolutely encouraging: people having moderate amounts of dark chocolate regularly have significantly lower levels of C-reactive protein in their blood. In other words, their inflammatory state is considerably reduced.” The 17% average reduction observed may appear quite small, but it is enough to decrease the risk of cardio-vascular disease for one third in women and one fourth in men. It is undoubtedly a remarkable outcome”.

The most amazing thing is it works better in women than in men. And since chocolate also seems to lock to the same receptors in the brain that get stimulated with sex — hey, this is a really good thing on lonely nights. But I think we actually may need more than half a bar per week.

Actually, I’m really so-so on the chocolate thing but my husband is a chocoholic — big time. So, this is right up his nutritional menu plan. However, when I do have chocolate, it’s the dark chocolate that I like. I’m especially fond of bittersweet dark chocolate bits or bars. I loved the Chantico drinking chocolate that you used to be able to get at Starbucks — a bit too sweet for my taste but boy did it pack a caffeine wallop. Six ounces and you buzzed for hours. They don’t have it anymore in the winter — wonder if it’s because of the buzz.

Anyway, take another look at your milk chocolate stash and when it’s gone replace it with dark, rich, dark, chunks, of dark chocolate. Afterall, science is on our side.

I was reading some techie sites today and they mentioned the LHC Rap had more hits than the Astrobiology Rap. So naturally, I had to check this out.

Jonathan Chase loves rap and has melded it with his love of science. Even his rapper name, Oort Kuiper, is a nod to his passion for science. Anyway, according to several articles that I read (here and here), he was commissioned by NASA to develop an Astrobiology Rap for the latest edition of NASA’s Astrobiology Magazine European Edition. Luckily for us, the Astrobiology Rap is now on YouTube.

It’s rather nice to see that scientists and those who understand science are reaching out to the younger audience to hopefully get them interested in the wonders and beauty and the big questions that make science so fascinating.

Are we the only sentient race in the universe? I don’t think so — the universe is just so big there has to be another spark of life out there somewhere. The trick is to find it and to recognize it. If what we do on earth is any indication of how we’d treat sentient lifeforms — we just redefine life so that the newly found one doesn’t qualify. We constantly do that here on earth. Don’t believe me? Think about how the definition of sentient life has changed as we discovered some animals use tools, that when taught a language we can understand (American sign language), we decided that just because they made up words out of what they already knew for new items and that people could read their signing it wasn’t “real” language. Evidently, when we’re threatened with not being unique we move the bar and make it harder for anyone/any species other than ourselves to qualify.

Anyway, enjoy the rap. Normally, I don’t care for rap (who wants to be sworn at for 3 minutes), but this one is rhythmic and and has a story to tell.

Time. Time has always been relative. Remember when you were young and summer was just this long season of lazy days filled with nothing to do but enjoy the time off from school? Remember when you wished every day that you were older so you could do whatever it is that you needed to be older for? Then you get older and you wish you could live those earlier times or ages again and appreciate every second of that time you wasted wishing to be in a different time.

Most of us are never in the now. Of course, we live in the now in reality, but in our minds, we either are replaying the past or fantasizing about the future. We think of those comebacks and things we should have done. We plan for the things that we hope to do and we ignore what is going on around us now. However, now is all we actually do have. We can, to some degree, plan our future.  But to get there we have to live each second as it comes. We are always in the now, which becomes the past as we move to the future. But to truly live, it must be now, today, this minute, this second.

We should try to pay attention to what is happening around us; to not put off what we can do now. Live fully each second. Or, as I like to say, Carpe Diem.

So, if you’re wondering what got me thinking about time and its effects on our lives, it’s because I heard about the The Corpus Clock & Chronophage. Here’s the YouTube video.

I totally love the idea of a bug that eats time. Once that time is gone it can’t come back — at least not until and unless we learn to master that fourth dimension and that’s not going to be anytime soon. So, make every second of your life count. Don’t waste time — and just for the record, watching a gorgeous sunrise or sunset, or looking at the shapes in clouds, star gazing, spending time with a friend, comforting someone in pain — are not time wasters. Life is what happens while you wait for something else — that’s wasting time. Be in the now and enjoy your life. Don’t miss it waiting for something else.

We’re usually told that we get all the Vitamin-D we need from the sun. I’ve heard that 10-15 minutes a day in the sun is enough to give you your full daily requirements. However, now-a-days most of us avoid the sun and if we do go out we make sure to put on sunscreen and/or wear a hat. We worry about skin cancer and, since it is on the rise as atmospheric ozone decreases, it’s a legitimate worry.

You can also get Vitamin-D from dietary sources: fish (Salmon, Herring, Sardines, Mackerel), eggs (yolks), milk (fortified), cod liver oil, and probably some other food I’m just not remembering. Most of the times we just never think of Vitamin-D as being a problem.

It was recently brought to my attention that researchers have found a connection between Vitamin-D deficiency and pain. In a BBC New article, scientists found that low levels of Vitamin D, may contribute to chronic pain among women — since this finding is more prevalent among women they believe it may also be related to hormones. Lower levels of Vitamin-D are also linked to osteomalacia but they did not believe that accounted for the link to pain. Dr. Hyppönen said:

“Work was needed to evaluate whether vitamin D supplements could help prevent chronic pain.

In the meantime, she advised: “If I had chronic pain I would certainly check I was getting enough vitamin D.”

However, on the flip side, Kate Maclver of the Pain Research Institute cautioned:

“Taking too high a dose of Vitamin D supplements as a means of preventing or treating chronic pain could result in Vitamin D toxicity and high blood calcium levels.”

An earlier article on WebMD cited another study that also found a link between Vitamin D deficiency and chronic pain:

In a study involving 150 children and adults with unexplained muscle and bone pain, almost all were found to be vitamin D deficient; many were severely deficient with extremely low levels of vitamin D in their bodies.

About the reality of getting enough sun to satisfy your Vitamin D needs, it was stated:

The amount of sun exposure needed to get the proper dose of vitamin D depends on a person’s skin type, where they live, and time of year, and time of day the exposure occurs. Holick says it is difficult for people living in northern climates to get the vitamin D they need from the sun in the winter, but in the summer a light-skinned person at the beach should get all the vitamin D they need in about five minutes.

“The trick is getting just enough sun to satisfy your body’s vitamin D requirement, without damaging the skin,” he says. “It is difficult to believe that this kind of limited exposure significantly increases a person’s risk of skin cancer.”

A further study, Back Pain and Osteoporosis Special Report: The Bone-Protecting Benefits of Vitamin D in a Johns Hopkins Health Alert found the same relationship between Vitamin D deficiency and pain as the other studies. Again they talk about the difficulty of getting sufficient Vitamin D from sunshine:

When it comes to vitamin D, a few minutes in the sun is all you need, correct? Well, that depends. As it turns out, that is easier said than done for many of us. Draw a rough line across the country from San Francisco to Richmond, Virginia. If you live north of that line, it’s impossible to get enough sun exposure during the winter months to maintain adequate blood levels of vitamin D. And even during the summer, you may not be getting enough vitamin D. That’s especially true if you spend a great deal of time inside, out of the heat—or, ironically, if you’re particularly meticulous about using sunscreen, covering up, and seeking the shade when you’re outside.

Aging and racial background also affect vitamin D status. As we age, our skin doesn’t synthesize vitamin D as efficiently, and our kidneys are less able to convert vitamin D to its active hormone form. As for ethnicity, melanin—the pigment that gives skin its color—reduces the efficiency of vitamin D synthesis from sunlight; therefore dark-skinned individuals require even more sunlight to maintain adequate vitamin D levels.

Medscape Today in the article, Vitamin-D deficiency increases pain of knee OA by Zosia Chustecka from December 23, 2004 pretty had found the same connection as the previously mentioned more recent studies.

Vitamin-D deficiency has become a major health problem in the US, and all physicians should be alert to it, an editorial in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings cautioned last year [3]. It was prompted by a study that found most patients presenting with persistent nonspecific musculoskeletal pain were vitamin-D deficient, many severely so, as reported at the time by rheumawire. “The take-home message . . . is that when patients with nonspecific skeletomuscular pain are evaluated, their serum 25-hydroxyvitamin-D levels should be obtained,” says the editorialist, Dr Michael Holick (Boston University). “Physicians should discard the laboratory-reported lower limit of the normal range. A serum 25-hydroxyvitamin-D level of at least 20 ng/mL is necessary to minimally satisfy the body’s vitamin-D requirement. Maintenance of a serum level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D of 30 to 50 ng/mL is preferred.”

However, Chustecka also goes on to talk about the problem of measuring Vitamine-D level in clinical practice:

Laster cautions, however, that the assays used by different laboratories can show significant variability—for example, 1 commonly used lab assay (from Nichols) significantly underestimates the amount of vitamin D2 derived from dietary and pharmaceutical sources (while D3 is mainly derived from the action of ultraviolet light on the skin).

“I use a vitamin-D assay that accurately identifies both D2 and D3 components of 25-hydroxyvitamin D,” Laster tells rheumawire. “When a level below 30 ng/mL is identified, I recommend ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) 50 000 IU once a week for approximately 8 weeks. I then repeat a level. If it has normalized I then go on to 50 000 IU once or twice a month. If levels remain low, I evaluate for possible malabsorption, etc.”

Some practitioners recommend taking 800 IU of vitamin D each day and suggest taking 2 multivitamin tablets every day (many over-the-counter multivitamin products contain 400 IU vitamin D2). However, it has been pointed out that this also increases the dose of vitamin A, and higher levels of vitamin A have been associated with an increase in the risk of fractures, Laster comments. He adds: “What has not been proven, to my knowledge, however, is that supplementing vitamin D to therapeutic levels alleviates pain.”

So, it looks to me, a layperson with chronic pain from fibromyalgia, that maybe I need to get my Vitamin-D levels checked and should talk to my primary care physician during my next visit. But, in the meantime, I’m going to check the amount of Vitamin-D in my daily vitamin and maybe plan to spend just a bit of time each day doing yard work. That’s assuming I have enough spoons to get outside — even if it’s just to sit with a cup of tea. Sunshine may not be all that effective but who knows it may be a boost to the daily vitamin until I can find out if my Vitamin-D levels are deficient.

Hope springs eternal and all that….

I’d thought about writing something on this topic, but hadn’t really figured out what I wanted to say, when I found this article on Numbers on Teen Pregnancy as a Freakonomics NY Times Opinion piece (here’s the Freakonomincs NY Times blog).  I found the statistics on teen pregnancies interesting:

High teen pregnancy rates remain a serious problem in the U.S. Although they have declined since they peaked in 1990, rates are still twice as high as in Canada or England, and eight times as high as in the Netherlands or in Japan.

These international differences are due to low contraceptive use in the U.S.; most of the recent decline in teen pregnancy in the U.S. is due to more consistent use of birth control, although teens are also waiting longer to have sex than in the past. In 1995, almost 20 percent of girls had sex by age 17, compared to 15 percent in 2002.

Notice that the drop in pregnancies among teens has two components — more consistent use of birth control and teen waiting longer to have sex.  As to the first, it’s mighty difficult for teens to consistently use birth control when the sex education in our American school systems is mainly about abstinence. We currently have a shinning example of how well that works to lower teen pregnancy with the recent announcement of the pregnancy of the teenage daughter of the Republican Party’s Vice-Presidential nominee.  Palin espouses the party line of abstinence-only sex education and pairs it with absolutely no choice even for rape or incest.   Obviously, abstinence education didn’t work in this case, as it hasn’t worked for many other teens.  For Palin’s daughter, I’d hope that the future will not look as bleak as for most teenage mothers.  Again from the article:

…on average, teen pregnancies are more likely to result in premature births and low-birth-weight babies. This is not a good start in life. Babies with a low birth weight are more likely to have A.D.H.D. and are less likely to graduate from high school.

Teen moms are less likely than other women to attend or complete college, and their marriages are more likely to end in divorce; about 50 percent of women who married younger than age 18 are divorced after 10 years, compared to 20 percent of women who married at age 25 or older. In turn, single mothers have the highest poverty rates of any demographic group, and 60 percent of the U.S.-born children in mother-only families are poor.

Being a teenage mother, whether married to the father of the child or not, is a bad spot to be in. It’s not all roses and happy times. It’s mainly lots of work: studying for school, working to pay childcare, rent, food, and all the other assorted expenses of being on your own, and find the time and energy to actually spend time with the child, do the laundry, cook meals, study, and, oh yes, sleep.

How do I know? Been there. Done that. Came out okay with a child that I’m very proud of, a college degree, and I’m sure lots of bad decisions and good ones — but all ones I thought I had to make at the time.  How did I end up pregnant? Well, I know it seems strange, but my total sex education was a small six page booklet on menstruation along with the wisdom that only married women get pregnant.  Of course, this was in the dark ages — forty years ago now.  So this has been a perennial problem and it has never worked to stop teens from having sex by telling them to abstain or leaving them ignorant of what sex is and how one actually gets pregnant — (hint, a marriage license has absolutely no effect on the sperm and the egg getting together).

What does work in helping to reduce teen pregnancy?  Truth.  Unvarnished truth about how one gets pregnant, what those teenage hormones feel like, that love and hormones are indeed hard to tell apart but mostly it’s hormones at that age, and that if you are going to have sex, protect yourself and good solid information on how to do that.  Anything else is just leaving young people vulnerable to their hormones and if you don’t remember what that was like when you were a teen, you shouldn’t have any say over what to tell teens about sex.   Abstinence may work, but only if the teens have all the information about what is happening in their body and can make informed decisions.  Since many teens are not going to abstain, there must also be information and access to birth control.

If the Republicans want to stick their heads in the sand about these problems, then the least they can do is also set aside money for free child care, free health care, education assistance, and financial assistant to unwed teenage (and older) single parents.  But, wait…this is the party that is also cutting back on all these programs.  It seems the family values party doesn’t have any concern for families unless they meet strict definitions of what they consider a family and those families are all rich and don’t need any help.  And the Pro-Life policy would be better labeled Pro-Birth, because once the child is born, they no longer care about it until its old enough to vote.

Teenage pregnancy is a real problem for the people involved and for the country as a whole and ignoring it and placing the blame on the teens does nothing to rectify the problem or help to solve it.  I wish Ms. Palin good luck with the child she’s about to have and the marriage she’s about to undertake.  She has a better chance at success than many girls who find themselves in her position, but then she’s not typical.   Hopefully, her being in the limelight; after all it’s her mother who is the candidate, will not cause other teens to follow in her footsteps because she’s an outlier on the curve, not the norm (but I forgot Republicans don’t care that much for science either).

Note: On Where Did I Come From?  I found this book to be a great beginning in opening up discussion with children about sex and where babies come from.  It’s informative, funny, and straightforward.  If you’re looking for a way to broach the subject to young children who are asking — give this book a try.

NASA has opened it’s Space Imagery Library to the general public. This screen shot (I clipped a lot of the middle of the image where there was no information for this photo) shows that there are collections of images of the Universe, the Solar System, Earth, and the Astronauts. There also some workspace and software that will help you put together some embed imagery for your site — I played around a bit but didn’t try it out. So, have at it and let me know how it works out for you.

An article on Australian PC Authority says:

The launch is the first step in a five-year partnership that will add millions of images and thousands of hours of video and audio content, with enhanced search and viewing capabilities and new user features.

That sounds terrific because I could spend hours looking at astronomical photos, videos, and other images because I find them all fascinating. As it is I love checking out the Astronomy Picture of the Day site. But, that’s beside the point here a couple of images from the NASA Imagery site that I thought were just gorgeous.

…..Space may be the final frontier but we can enjoy exploration through NASA many wonderfully informative, useful, and entertaining websites about science, space exploration, and all things astronomical. Have fun visiting this new resource. I did and will continue to explore it further.

Just a few odds and ends (some political ranting so you may want to skip.  If you’re a Republican, you’re not going to be happy.  Come back tomorrow instead.  If you want to object to what I’ve said … don’t.  These are my opinions and it’s my blog.):

• Finished my spool of thread. Plied it as 3-ply using Navaho plying. Turns out to be close to sock or light weight. I’ll figure the wraps per inch later. I ended up with about 329 yards. Just need to get it off the niddy-noddy and wash and skein it. Then start on the next spool.
• I can’t believe that our congress critters actually voted to give the telecoms immunity for performing illegal taps on American citizens at the behest of the Shrub without a warrant. Obama voted for the bill. I’ll still vote for him for Pres because I certainly won’t vote for a Republican. I’m trying to maintain the illusion that somehow someone will stand up for the America that we used to have. You know, the one with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Of course our current White House sitter seems to think they are quaint little documents that don’t apply to him or his administration BUT they used to mean something to the people of this country and to the people of the world. Now, we have no honor or standing since we’ve violated most of the treaties we’ve signed, tortured people, hired others to torture people, and spied upon our own citizens just because…well because the W.H. sitter wanted to.
• At least one person in Congress wants to do the right thing. He’s trying to get Congress to impeach the Shrub. Congress can impeach a Pres for having a sex with a consenting adult but we can’t manage to impeach a person who lies to Congress, lies to the American people, violates the Constitution of this Country, ignores the rights and freedoms of the citizenry, and the laws of the land, and gets thousands of American killed in a war that he lied to start. Just where is our honor and integrity — does American even have any left anymore?
• And what do people care about? Not the fact that we’re losing our rights and freedoms and our country is being dismantled around us? No, they paying more attention to the sound bites about religion, patriotism, and safety. I think it was said best that “those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one”.
• Okay, I’m grumpy. I want to live in the country that I grew up in again. I want my Congress critters to do the right things because it is the right thing to do … not because it will get them more pac money or elected next time. If you do the right thing for the right reason and because it is just and needed and for the betterment of all Americans — it will eventually be found that you are a patriot. Wrapping oneself in the flag, as far as I can see is a sure sign that one is NOT a patriot (just look at the current administration — I don’t think based on their statements to the press that they have even read our Constitution or our Bill of Rights).
• As a side note, security theater doesn’t make you safer. It just means that it takes longer to go anywhere or do anything. Entertaining as it may be to watch everyone line up and take off their shoes, it doesn’t make any flight any safer than it was before they made us take off our shoes.
• Did you know that deer will eat onions? I didn’t but one actually came into our garden and dug up our onions and ate them. So, beware there is a deer with really bad breath out there in Maryland somewhere.
• Why do gas prices always go up when there is a holiday when nothing else has changed? Why does gas go up when oil per barrel prices go up but they never go down when they drop?
• Why is the price of American oil the same as for foreign oil.  The pundits keep saying the price of oil is up because of Iran’s threats, or fighting in Nigeria, or whatever.  Is oil in Alaska threatened by Iran or Nigeria?  Why isn’t American pumped oil cheaper?  Oh yeah, because the oil companies have the God given right to make as much money as possible, regardless of how much it hurts America.  Why the hell doesn’t the government claim National Security when our National Security is actually really threatened?  Oh yeah, because the Shrub’s family all make their money off oil.  Silly me.
• Just where is the government funding for actual alternative energy? Why don’t people get rebates that actually would help them add solar panels to their roofs or windmills to their yards? Why do hybrids cost so much more than a gas guzzler?
• Did you know that if everyone took just one bag to the grocery store rather than using a plastic bag it would help save our environment, landfills, and oil? Just one bag not used every week for every person who goes shopping. Amazing how one person CAN make a difference.
• Can you believe that some people believe that Intelligent Design is actually a scientific theory? It’s a religious doctrine folks, not science. It should be taught, if taught at all, in a philosophy class, not in a science classroom. Science is the study of facts, testing what actually happened against what you thought would happen and adjusting. Adjusting facts to fit a belief is not science, it’s wishful thinking. Belief doesn’t have to make sense but science does or things fall apart.  Evolution is a FACT.  It’s observable and measurable.  It’s called a theory because scientists still haven’t worked out enough of the details to warrant changing the name.  “Theory” is a scientific term, with a scientific definition.  Twisting it to match a non-scientific usage doesn’t  change reality.  Evolution is a fact whether you want to call it a Law, Theory, Hypothosis, or Marmoset.
• Life is difficult. Things don’t always work out the way we want them too. It’s not always fair but it is the way it is. They only thing we can do is the best we can each day, living our lives as if this is all we got.  We should be the best person we can because we care about our family, our neighbors, and our fellow human beings and the planet we live on. If there is more (and there may or may not be depending on your beliefs) then living the best life you can, can not hurt your chances for a better afterlife either.

End of rants and odd thoughts. I’ve just had a bad day — I really, really should not listen to news anymore — it only depresses me and makes me think less of my fellow humans. When did the bottom line become the ultimate goal in life. I always thought it was to be the kind of person that other people wouldn’t mind spending time with or knowing.  But then again that’s just me.