A Curious Statistical Anomaly

I ran across this Wired article that mentioned an article in the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry that internet addiction be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  Really, people get a grip.

This is the kind of stuff that causes non-psychologists/psychiatrists to believe that all mental disorders are bunk.  Addiction is a real problem and some people, especially those with addictive personalities can become addiction to just about anything: drugs, alcohol, gambling, people. In other words,  just because some people get addicted to the internet, it doesn’t mean that the internet causes the addiction. There is nothing inherent in using the internet that causes people to become addicted to it.  When someone exhibits addictive behavior it is far better to first look at what else is going on in that person’s life.

Many of us in the computer field/industry use computers daily and nearly continuously for hours.  Are we addicted? No, we’re working.  On the other hand, a lonely person who’s bullied at home, school, or work may turn to the internet for the interactions and support that they are missing in their daily lives.  A relative of mine spent hours on the internet, everyone claimed she was addicted to it.  But in point of fact, she was miserable in her life and was not getting any support at home or from her family.  Addicted? It seemed that way but once she got divorced and remarried to someone she met over the internet the constant hours on line ended because she didn’t need the escape the internet was providing.

There is a fine line between addiction and use as a relief valve or escape from an unpleasant situation.  Labeling internet use over a certain number of hours, checking of email, desire to upgrade equipment, and so on as indicators of addiction seem to always come from people who don’t work on computers or write code for a living.

Before deciding to label something an addiction, it would be better to actually study the use patterns across groups controlling for profession, life style, and other factors — this wouldn’t be brought up to the association.  Perhaps if doctors learned to use computers as a tool to communicate information and assistance to their patients, they too might begin to check their email and consider upgrading their equipment and software.

There needs to be a lot more research and serious study of the issue before even contemplating adding another item to the book.

The quote above was made by Carl Sagan. That quote has become even more meaningful recently with the release of a new research study by Zita Martins, Oliver Botta, Marilyn L. Fogel, Mark A. Sephton, Daniel P. Glavin, Jonathan S. Watson, Jason P. Dworkin, Alan W. Schwartz and Pascale Ehrenfreund. The title of the paper is “Extraterrestrial nucleobases in the Murchison meteorite.” Basically, they found uracil and xanthine in a meteorite. These are raw materials for making RNA and DNA that make up us and every living thing on earth.

In their abstract, they say:

Carbon-rich meteorites, carbonaceous chondrites, contain many biologically relevant organic molecules and delivered prebiotic material to the young Earth. We present compound-specific carbon isotope data indicating that measured purine and pyrimidine compounds are indigenous components of the Murchison meteorite. Carbon isotope ratios for uracil and xanthine of ?13C = + 44.5‰ and + 37.7‰, respectively, indicate a non-terrestrial origin for these compounds. These new results demonstrate that organic compounds, which are components of the genetic code in modern biochemistry, were already present in the early solar system and may have played a key role in life’s origin.

I was really excited to hear about this finding and would have loved to read the paper, but alas you have to pay to read it. I really wish more scientists would publish their research under Creative Commons licenses so that more of us interested nonprofessionals could read up on these things. Maybe if more of the results of scientific studies were readily available there would be less fear of science as a sort of mumbo-jumbo voodoo thing to be feared. Oops, that rant is for some other time.

What’s really interesting is that these DNA-RNA precursor materials were found on a meteorite. So, did life evolve totally independently on Earth? Did it have help from a few saturated meteorites crashing into our bubbling cauldron of a cooling planet? Is life a random combination of chemicals that could happen anywhere and so are found just about everywhere including space traveling bits of debris?

Whatever the answers to these question, and I’m sure it will take a lot more research and thinking to come up with answers rather than more questions, it means that we, all of us, are made of star stuff. When we look up to the stars and the milky way and the constellations, we now know that we are part of the solar system, our galaxy, and the universe. We are not alone; we are part of the starry heavens.

It seems that when the Mars soil was first scooped up and the arm tried to dump it in the ovens there was a bit of a problem. The soil was clumpy and things didn’t turn out quite the way they were expected too. However, scientists on Earth sent commands to jiggle/vibrate the screens over the intake tubes of the ovens and some finer bits of the soil filtered through and now the tests can continue.

Okay, I’m still in awe that someone here can send a message (actually computer instructions) to a machine there (170 million miles from here)  and have it work out. I find it very inspiring that Earthlings are actually branching out to explore our solar system in this small way. The more we understand the geology and geography and physical composition of the other planets and bits of debris that populates our solar system — the more we learn about our own environment.

A favorite saying of my grandmother was something like, “you can’t see the forest for the trees”. When we study Earth, we have all sorts of preconceived ideas about how things are and how they should be. So, we look for what we expect to find. In exploring the Mars surface, there is some of that. But, we don’t know what’s there and there are so many competing theories about what it is like and why it’s the way it is–that we have to look with open minds as well as open eyes (or probes, lens, and other mechanical tools). Once we look without the preconceived notions at another planetary body — scientists often find things that make them then turn towards our own planet and look again to see if those same insights can be used to better explain our world.

Of course the study of Earth is a bit complicated by the fact that we have an abundance of plant and animal life in a complex interplay and interconnected reliance on things being in balance. It’s the imbalance that has built up and caused (totally and unabashedly simplified here) what’s endearingly called Global Warming.

All that we learn is added to our knowledge of planetary formation, life, and decay. It can help us understand our own planet. No knowledge is useless, for science always builds on what has gone before — even if it is to reject it and start over from scratch.

Meanwhile, I marvel at the wonder of communicating with another planet even if it is communication with our own machinery.  (Hyperion: Especially when my cell phone won’t function in the brand-new high tech office building where I work.  Maybe we should relocate my office to Mars?)

I know this is a bit old for news but I finally found the original research article and got a chance to read it and then follow up with some encyclopedia entries on haplotypes and haplogroups.

Basically, getting DNA from archaeological sites isn’t that difficult. What is difficult is getting a sample that hasn’t been contaminated by modern DNA. Think of all the people that work on archaeological sites, and that just the tip of the iceberg for counting the people that may have handled the material or touched something that was on them when they handled the material (food, drink, the last person they shook hands with, and on and on). This group was trying to see if they left a layer of dirt over the object (skull in this case) and then that last layer would be removed by scientists in clean suits (shown in the image) and placed in a sterile environment for transport to their clean lab for extraction and further testing.

This is what they found:

Methodology/Principal Findings

We avoided some of these obstacles by analyzing DNA from ten Viking Age subjects that at the time of sampling were untouched by humans for 1,000 years. We removed teeth from the subjects prior to handling by archaeologists and anthropologists using protective equipment. An additional tooth was removed after standard archaeological and anthropological handling. All pre-PCR work was carried out in a “clean- laboratory” dedicated solely to ancient DNA work. Mitochondrial DNA was extracted and overlapping fragments spanning the HVR-1 region as well as diagnostic sites in the coding region were PCR amplified, cloned and sequenced. Consistent results were obtained with the “unhandled” teeth and there was no indication of contamination, while the latter was the case with half of the “handled” teeth. The results allowed the unequivocal assignment of a specific haplotype to each of the subjects, all haplotypes being compatible in their character states with a phylogenetic tree drawn from present day European populations. Several of the haplotypes are either infrequent or have not been observed in modern Scandinavians. The observation of haplogroup I in the present study (<2% in modern Scandinavians) supports our previous findings of a pronounced frequency of this haplogroup in Viking and Iron Age Danes.

Personally, I find this work fascinating. Imagine being able to gather information about our ancestors and telling who they may have met, fell in love (that’s guess work of course — I’m being romantic here), married and had children with. Of course, in the case of Vikings, with their reputation as fighters and pillagers it’s was probably wasn’t as nice and light as I make it out to be.

But the fact is, these scientist did managed to get clean samples and learn from the DNA samples that they got. This sample size of ten adult Viking villagers (3 males, four females for sure and two males and 1 female possibly) is too small a size to determine absolutes but it is a start.

Also, I very much appreciate that these scientists (Linea Melchior, Toomas Kivisild, Niels Lynnerup, Jørgen Dissing) released their research paper under Creative Commons licensing. I’m a science news junkie but I really, really, really, appreciate being able to return to the source of the article whenever I can. Things are much more likely to be misunderstood when the original article isn’t available. Even so any problems with interpretation of these results are mine alone. Check out the paper and think of the possibilities. Yeah, science!

I was at Balticon this weekend and while I knew Phoenix was going to land on Mars and that it had been successful, I didn’t get to read the articles or watch video until today. This YouTube video is from the control room intercut with the lander animation.

The animation only videos are great but there is nothing like seeing and hearing the excitement of the people who’ve working on this project for so long as their baby actually does what it was set up to do — and doing it well. I know it always bring a tear to my eye and chokes me up a bit.You can see the animation video on Astronomy Picture of the Day, which is a wonderful site for astronomy photography. There were news articles in just about all the major papers and news sites. I enjoyed this article with photos from the lander that was posted to the Planetary Society website.

It’s still incredible to me that we can sit at home and see photos of another planet. Mars has always held a special place in my heart probably because of all the science fiction I read as a child. I’m glad that our space program isn’t completely defunct but I wish it could get the funding it needs to truly explore our solar system. There is just so much more to learn and every time we learn about what’s out there it adds to the knowledge of our own planet and how it works.

I’ve been thinking about the abstract comment:

While research on the acoustics of speech production indicates that a vocal tract with this shape is insufficient for producing quantal speech sounds resistant to articulatory error and perceptual confusion, other modeling studies suggest that Neanderthals could have possessed fully-articulate speech capabilities.

I’m thinking that since we’ve never heard the speech of a Neanderthal, we really don’t know what their language was like. They sure didn’t speak English. There are so many languages in the world and many that have components other than the vowels and consonants that we use in English. Some languages are tonal where the same words may mean different things depending on the notes the syllables hit when spoken. There’s a language that uses clicks in addition to sound. So, even if the Neanderthals couldn’t produce quantal speech, they may not have needed it because their language compensated for the lack somehow (lots of hand waving here).

In looking up the word quantal in Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary:

being or relating to a sensitivity response marked by the presence or absence of a definite reaction (an all-or-none response to a stimulus is quantal)

It seems to me that the “quantal-ness” is in the hearer not the speaker. The listener adjusts for errors in articulation not the speaker. So isn’t this backwards? Just thinking because I’m not a linguist but I find that often science uses perfectly good words in ways that make clear understanding by laypeople a tad difficult. Looking at the above definition, I really think the onus of understanding is on the hearer, whether or not the speaker clearly enunciated each syllable, vowel, and/or consonant. Often, I have trouble understanding people who slur or lisp or otherwise have difficulty clearly speaking, but that’s may problem in understanding and their speech problem is a separate issue. I sometimes have problems understanding people who speak clearly (such as politicians) but that an entirely different issue.

I still think the research is amazing and I look forward to hearing a full sentence with their synthesizer but, I think the only way we’d know for sure what a Neanderthal actually sounded like and what their language was like is to invent a time machine and then, of course, we’d have all those pesky time travel tropes to deal with.

Hyperion here. Just thought I’d add one extra datapoint. Several years ago, we were in Scotland for the World Science Fiction Convention. Our hotel was right next door to a hole-in-the-wall fish and chips shoppe. We went in to place our order and the clerk asked me something. Could have been to describe quantum relativity as far as I knew. All I heard was incomprehensible gibberish. So I asked him to repeat it. He did … and it was just as nonsensical as the first time. The third time was just as bad. So I’m staring at him, he’s staring at me, and we both know that we’re not going to be getting anywhere. Then Gayle puts a hand on my shoulder, looks at the clerk, and says, “Let me translate for you … Would you like vinegar on your fish?”. I responded enthusiastically, and then the clerk just stared at us like we were nuts. Then he went off and got two meals ready for the crazy Americans.

But the fact was that he was speaking clearly (for a scotsman anyway), and Gayle could understand him fine. But his accent rendered his speech total opaque to my best efforts. So was the problem in his speaking or in my listening? Or both?

Today, I came across a report in New Scientist called “Neanderthals Speak Out After 30,000 years“. Based on a talk called “Voices out of the past: synthesizing Neanderthal speech” given by Robert McCarthy on research done by himself and F. Yates, P. Lieberman at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting this year. As I understand it from reading the talk’s abstract and the article in New Scientist, the vocal tract doesn’t fossilize so researchers have to guess how the tract would work and fit together. There’s been some work previously. These scientists, as most do, built on the work that came before and then correcting what they perceived as errors in measurements, moved on to synthesize the speech of a Neanderthal. Of course they only did one vowel “E” and hope to later try their theories and equipment on longer words and sentences.

To hear the synthesized speech go here. For comparison listen to the sounds of a modern speaker, here.

As you can hear there is a difference in the sound of the letter E. The paper says that Neanderthals were unable to produce quantal speech or sounds that smooth over errors in articulation. Neanderthals, I believe, must have been very precise speakers or they wouldn’t have been understood by their listeners. Wonder what that did for those with a speech impediment. Hmmm. Of course this is my conjecture not theirs on the non-quantal speech sounds.

What I find curious is that with more study the Neanderthals have rapidly acquired skills, speech, and moved up from the brutish existence that they were thought to have lived when I first heard of them in my childhood whilst trying to find books on dinosaurs and early human (this was pre- all those Clan of the Cave Bear type books, and I wouldn’t have been allowed those at that age anyway.)

The photo of the Neanderthal Child is based on anthropological reconstruction based on the same methods that help police find out what the murder suspect looked like when all they find is “ick” and bones. I think the child looks very modern and a bit like one of the Gelflings in the movie The Dark Crystal. In looking around for any reference to the photo or the Neanderthal speech thing, I found a blog that also recognized the similarities to Gelflings. You really got to love those special effects artists — I’m sure they weren’t trying for Neanderthals but it looks like they got close anyway.

What is the most amazing thing is that we can listen to the speech of a person who has long since passed out of existence and yet, with scientific theory, mathematical modeling, and some educated guess work, we get a piece of our past now…talking to us. It’s amazingly, amazing. I LOVE science.

A new study found that pollution in the air changes the scent of flowers, either masking it or shortening the distance over which bees (and others) can smell them. I came across the report and all of a sudden realized that this means big trouble for all of us.

“The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters [3,300 to 4,000 feet]; but in today’s polluted environment downwind of major cities, they may travel only 200 to 300 meters [650 to 980 feet],” said study team member Jose D. Fuentes.

Think about it, bees don’t gather nectar to eat they also pollinate the plants that they gather from. If they are having trouble finding the flowers because pollution has masked the scent it’s a bigger problem than declining bee colonies. If the plants aren’t pollinated then they don’t set fruit. Without pollination many plants just look pretty and the flowers fade and that’s it — no apples, no tomatoes, no whatever else they buzz around.

No one in Congress takes air pollution seriously (hey most people in the US don’t either) but it causes a lot of the acid rain that is destroying much of the forest along our northern borders and in Canada. It causes breathing problem in just about everyone and especially those with asthma and allergies. There’s a reason that in many states ozone alerts mean free bus rides.

We have a great problem with global warming but because we still have winter and summer and all the rest most people just scoff. How long and what disasters will we need to face before we admit that there is a problem and it needs to be treated seriously. This isn’t just a bunch of tree-huggers or granola do-gooders looking for a cause — this is the future of our planet and our species. We can no longer afford to have laws made to “get me elected again”, this country needs an environmental plan that is based on science and not the wishful thinking of those with a political agenda to pretend that it’s all going to go away if it’s just ignored.

It seems like every time some little study comes out there is another data point that is telling us it’s time to wake up pay attention to our wonderful world before it’s too late.