A TED talk worth watching

While this is not exactly new stuff, I still found it very relevant.

The snowball effect

Technically, it's a positive feedback loop. Say A acts on B and likewise, B acts on A. So, if A goes up, B does, which in loops back, increasing A. The cycle keeps continuing until either A or B max out or an external force quells both.

This is the opposite of the negative feedback loop, where A goes up if B goes down and vice versa. Whereas negative loops are self-correcting and are stable, positive loops go out of control. This is important because small changes in this type of system has massive impacts as even small fluctuations are magnified.

This has many implications:

Snowball Earth:
If a natural disaster such as a volcanic eruption or a meteor impact released a large cloud of obscuring ash, it would block sunlight and lower the temperature of the Earth. Fluctuations in the Sun's energy output or changes in methane and carbon dioxide levels would also have had the same effect.

This is believed to have actually happened, roughly 750 million years ago.

Ice, normally contained at the poles, then advanced towards the equator. As more area froze over, it was changed from dark earth and water to white ice. Since white ice reflects heat better than dark earth and water, the more the ice advanced, the less heat the earth would get. This would make even more ice form, and the cycle continued. This eventually spiraled out of control until the entire earth was frozen in a snowball.

Explained by this BBC video, the second of the series Horizon:




Butterfly Effect: Commonly known as the chaos theory, whose most commonly-known example is how a butterfly flapping its wings above the Atlantic could, after a series of magnifying events, trigger a

Cascading Failure: This was the cause of the Great Lakes-Northeast American Blackout of 2003. Because of a power flow monitoring failure and a human operator problem, a generating plant was shut down. This increased the load put on other transforming stations, transmission lines, and plants. As more and more failed, even the best-maintained plants could not handle the load, resulting in the failure of the entire system and the blackout.

Public Panics: The Salem Witch trials, for example, were started by a small group of accusing girls. The accused, in order to save their own hides, accuse others. This spreads until nobody feels safe and is in a constant state of panic.

Disparity in Wealth: Once someone reaches a certain wealth threshold where all basic needs are fulfilled, he can begin investing. Once he begins investing and trading stocks, he can make even more money, depending on the profits. With this, he will invest even more and earn even more to continue the cycle. Now, roughly the top 10% of the world controls 85% of the world's wealth.

Traffic: A traffic jam sometimes begins not with a physical obstruction like a crash, but just because of normal driving behavior. If there is a moderate stream of cars on the road, then the act of one person suddenly swerving can trigger a shockwave that ripples backwards to the other drivers. The car immediately behind the swerver slows down to avoid hitting the swerver. In turn, the next car does the same, and so on.



Economic Fluctuation: Mass sellings such as the Black Tuesday one that was the precursor to the Great Depression are often triggered by chain-reaction selling. As prices drop, people see that they're losing money and sell to cut losses. This drops the price further, which causes others to sell. Paradoxically, this is a positive feedback loop although it works in a negative manner.

New nucleotide

Back in my day, we just had adenine, cytosine, thymine, guanine, and uracil. Scientists have recently discovered a new base pair, 5-methylcytosine that replaces cytosine's place.

Its placement helps to regulate gene expression and expands the possibilities of manipulation by scientists. It works with methylation to determine which genes are expressed or muted.

What this nucleotide does is not yet clear. Initial tests suggested that it may play a role in demethylating DNA, but Kriaucionis and Heintz believe it may have a positive role in regulating gene expression as well. The reason that this nucleotide had not been seen before, the researchers say, is because of the methodologies used in most epigenetic experiments. Typically, scientists use a procedure called bisulfite sequencing to identify the sites of DNA methylation. But this test cannot distinguish between 5-hydroxymethylcytosine and 5-methylcytosine, a shortcoming that has kept the newly discovered nucleotide hidden for years, the researchers say. Its discovery may force investigators to revisit earlier work. The Human Epigenome Project, for example, is in the process of mapping all of the sites of methylation using bisulfite sequencing. "If it turns out in the future that (5-hydroxymethylcytosine and 5-methylcytosine) have different stable biological meanings, which we believe very likely, then epigenome mapping experiments will have to be repeated with the help of new tools that would distinguish the two," says Kriaucionis.

Via EurekAlert.

Running and aging

Does running accelerate or postpone aging?

There are obviously the health benefits associated with running consistently. The most direct result is lower body fat because it is all burned while running. Over time, running strengthens your cardiopulmonary system, increasing your blood vessels' flexibility because of the contraction they get during running. Your blood pressure decreases as the resistance the arterial walls have to the heart's pumping of blood decreases. Also, because they are worked while running, your muscles increase their efficiency in utilizing oxygen.

As your muscles, heart, and lungs are used more often, they begin to work at a higher rate even when you're resting. This raises your metabolism, allowing you to stay warmer and eat more since your body will digest the food quickly. However, one problem with a higher metabolism is that it increases the amount of free radicals. These increase aging by damaging cells and tissue. This is like a burning candle as the brighter it burns, the faster it goes out.


There are mental benefits from running. Impelling yourself to go out everyday for a run takes energy and compulsion. This keeps your drive to commit strong because it makes you exercise that every time you do not want to run but still do. Running is also anti-stress as the endorphins that are released to block the pain also relieve tension and anxiety.

Because running causes small injuries to muscle and tissue that are repaired even better than before, it strengthens them. Running wears down joints and connective tissue, especially in the ankles and knees. This could eventually spell the end of regular runs as the small wear and tears on your system add up.

Of course, according to time dilation, the faster you move, the slower time moves for you. So, if you spend your life moving faster, you will end up slightly younger than someone who was more sedentary :-)

Running takes time. In all, including stretching, transportation, acquiring music, getting proper clothing, it takes roughly an hour a day. Depending on the circumstances, this hour could be better put to use sleeping.

The positive aspects outweigh the negative ones here, so in summary, it is much better to run than to not. Even though a few consequences of running increase aging, altogether they help to make you younger and more energetic.

Green light for stem cell research?

Obama is expected to announce tomorrow a reversal on Bush's ban on embryonic stem cell research. Instead of the Bush plan that restricted federal funding to existing lines, his plan will allow scientists who work with new lines to apply for government money.

Thank you Obama for realizing the necessity for more science and better medicine. In my view, there is no ethical dilemma. Either use unfertilized balls of cells to heal otherwise incurable diseases or throw the embryonic cells away. The religious right who purport a violation of ethics should look into their own hypocrisy when it comes to denying relief to the sick.

Via Newsday.

Yay for increased science funding

Obama is pushing a 2010 budget that, among other things will increase for the NIH, Department of Energy, NASA, and EPA. The EPA will get a 35% boost, the National Science Foundation will get a 8.5% boost, NASA will get a $700 million boost, and the Department of Energy will get a $2.4 billion boost.
Other places where money is focused is in climate research and in green industry.
There also will be a 12.8% education budget increase from 2009.

I applaud Obama for his action and in his realization that investment in education and science will pay off in the future with increased technological, medical, and and general innovation.

Via Wired.

Vaccines do not cause autism

Just on Friday the 13th, a special court severed the link between autism and vaccinations (Read here). Finally! A triumph of real science over pseudoscience and reason over speculation.

What pisses me off about those attacks are that they target one of the greatest medical defense networks in place today. With an entire population vaccinated, there is no place for a disease to take root and begin spreading, so it is essentially denied from the population. However, once even a few people are left out of this vaccination net, there is place for the disease to begin to infect people. These then can spread it on to others who, although they may have been vaccinated, may have diminished immunity several years after taking the vaccine.
What we're seeing now is a resurgence in diseases that were once virtually eradicated: whopping cough, measles, and others that are easily prevented.

By continuing to tout the autism-vaccination "link," parents who feel that they are protecting their children are in fact doing the opposite, hurting their children, themselves, and society.
They are attacking the vaccination system are hypocrites as they are damaging a system that has benefited them passively.