A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Today the staff of SFRevu, TechRevu, and Gumshoe Review got together for our monthly meeting. Along with catching up on each other and kibitzing about possible changes to our sites and discussion of ways to make our zines better for our readers, we take some time to get to know each other better and to have some fun. So, we have a meeting followed by food, whatever movie that got the highest vote, and then share our best website of the month. Well, one person’s best website was TED: Ideas worth Spreading.

I’d been to the site before to listen and watch a talk or two. If you haven’t been there and you enjoy learning about new things or getting a hit to the side of the head to jump you out of your regular thought processes — it’s a great site with some thoughtfully presented ideas. The talk we listened to was by Dean Kamen about how he came to work on the bionic arm. Normally, I’d embed the video but this one is long and I thought it would be better if you went to the site — besides, you’re probably going to want to poke around over there anyway and bookmark it for later visits.

If you’ve been reading my site regularly, you’ll know that I’ve had a couple of rants about how technology in the US has been falling behind. Well, Dean Kamen has raised my hopes. This arm was done in 13 months from the start of the project. Evidently, with a committed and eager group working on a project they believe in — work can be done and done well. This is now up for funding from what I’ve read elsewhere and I’m hoping it gets more funding for trials and then some fine tuning. This is so much better for people missing an arm or even two arms than a stick with a hook or a plastic and wood approximation of an arm but without movement.

Evidently, the spirit to invent when matched with the right task and the right people shows that we can still do some pretty amazing things. I just hope this gets down to the people who actually needs these arms.

Every once in a while you come across something that just makes you stand (or sit) and stare with your mouth hanging open. Today, for me, it was looking at a satellite photo of an avalanche that occurred on Mars.

Just think about it for a minute. Today, we got to see a photo of an avalanche that happened on another planet. Not only can we see it but there’s a puff of dust from the avalanche in the photo.

I remember in high school begging to stay up late to see the pictures coming back from our space program. The launches were seen in school on a TV that was brought in for that purpose. Then things seems too ho-hum for constant coverage and even today it’s usually just an item in the news program unless you go to a NASA or other science site to see the news coverage. For example, I didn’t know or didn’t follow up on the Swift Science Satellite program and if I hadn’t seen the link on TechRevu I’d have missed the gorgeous photo of the M33 galaxy (better known as the Triangulum Galaxy).

There is just so much to learn about our world, the universe around us and yet we constantly find conservative lobbies trying to curtail science education in our schools. There’s nothing like seeing an avalanche on another planet in our solar system or other galaxies beyond our own to bring home just how much there is to learn and how far we’ve come to understanding ourselves and our universe.

There seems to be a willingness in this country (the U.S.) to denigrate science and scientists, to glorify sports heros, and honor ignorance. We’ve reduced scholarships and funding for students to attend colleges — in some cases pricing it out of reach of middle as well as low income students. I worked my way through college as well as having a lot of financial aid but from talking with people now and looking at going back for an advanced degree — I really don’t see how many families can afford to send their children to college without taking some drastic steps (like second and third mortgages) that could impact their retirement years.

If the US wants to once again be a leader in the world in science and engineering — it must take educating its people seriously. I remember seeing several years ago a news item where they were talking about American ingenuity and the wonderful breakthrough in science that had been made at an American college. The camera then switched to a picture of the team of students and professor in the lab — guess what? The professor was from the US but all those Ph.D students were foreign students. That’s a fact of life in academia — and until the government and the people become concerned enough to support US students who make the grade as other countries do we’ll continue to sink down into mediocrity.

But meanwhile, I’ll enjoy the wonder of what we have done and have high hopes that our future will see more wonders and insights into our universe.

I saw this report on my favorite tech news site (slashdot.org) and it’s sort of been in my mind swirling around with a lot of other miscellaneous thoughts. The article from the University of Michigan News Service said:

A new energy-capturing knee brace can generate enough electricity from walking to operate a portable GPS locator, a cell phone, a motorized prosthetic joint or an implanted neurotransmitter, research involving the University of Michigan shows.

So, I’m wondering could we eventually have a lighter weight knee brace that’s fitted into our jeans or athletic gear and it somehow stores the energy into fiber batteries so later it can be downloaded to some off-line (out of my clothes) storage battery-type thingy. I mean if walking was not only healthy for me but would reduce my electrical bill because I could generate power to charge/run small devices then … well, maybe a lot more American would be out there walking… well, maybe not — but it’s a thought.

I like to multi-task — though I’ve been told that it’s physically impossible (that got a chuckle out of me but the person(s) who said this was deadly serious and a past employer for obvious reasons) anyway so since I read on the exercise bike or knit/bike/watch TV, why not reduce my electric bill by doing something to feel good, get healthy and help to save the environment. Imagine the generator brace on both knees, both elbows and then taking a brisk walk or run (for me it would be a slow walk but it’s the thought that counts anyway).

It turns out that some people don’t learn from their mistakes. From the article in The Future of Things:

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany have found a genetic factor that affects our ability to learn from our errors. The scientists demonstrated that men carrying the A1 mutation, which reduces the amount of dopamine D2 receptors in the brain, are less successful at learning to avoid mistakes than men who do not carry this genetic mutation. This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors.

To me this becomes more interesting when you realize that so much of our society is based on learning from our mistakes. So, how would this disposition to not learn from mistakes maintain its 30% of the population? My guess, and remember I’m a normal thinking geek, is that in some situations you want people who don’t learn from their mistakes because in some cases having someone willing to try again IS a survival trait. The press release from the Max Planck Institute for Neurological Research give more technical detail on the A1-allele carriers and its impact on dopamine D2 receptors. There’s also a link to the Science article (but you have to pay to read it unless you otherwise have access — like being a member or subscriber).

What interests me is the impact this has on society. Remember the famous saying:

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
George Santayana

Well, I’m thinking perhaps we should have our Congress and high office holders tested for this A1-allele condition. Maybe we need to make sure that Congress and all decision making bodies have the 60% who learn from their mistakes and the 30% who don’t — just make sure that when we continue to make a mistake it’s with due deliberation and not because we haven’t learned our lesson.

It’s just a thought but I’ll be mulling this information over for a bit now that I know.

Recently some Norwegian and Swiss biologists have made an amazing discovery. After examining genetic material, they found that the non-bacterial life (eukaryotic life) should be listed in four main groups, not the five that are currently listed in textbooks.

Many people would find this discovery to be proof that science isn’t very good or doesn’t work well. However, this discovery proves that science does work. To a scientist, it’s as important to prove a hypothesis as it is to disprove one. The joy and excitement of scientific inquiry is finding out something you didn’t know before, to learn something new, to expand knowledge, or to broaden our vision of our universe.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
From Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson.

Science is the study of fact — not truth or what is politically correct, but fact. If research finds that, with more facts at our disposal, the meaning of those facts now points in a different direction then so be it. It does no good to deny what is. These biologists found by looking beyond what we could previously examine, to examine the genetic material itself that what they thought they knew was incorrect. So, rather than bemoan the error, or try to hide it — they gathered information, collated the data and found that what needed to change was our understanding of what we knew. We now have a new view of non-bacterial life and hopefully this updated information will help biologists in taking a new look at what they thought they knew and revising and re-examining existing research in light of this new information.

The true scientific mindset is to seek, to find, to learn and not yield or bend knowledge away from what IS to what one wants.