Element 112, coming soon to a periodic table near you

A new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112 will soon be officially included in the periodic table, German researchers said.

A team in the southwest German city of Darmstadt first produced 112 in 1996 by firing charged zinc atoms through a 120-meter-long particle accelerator to hit a lead target.

"The new element is approximately 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element in the periodic table," the scientists at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The zinc and lead nuclei were fused to form the nucleus of the new element, also known as Ununbium, Latin for 112.

New, superheavy element to enter periodic table (Reuters)

Gene-therapy treatments for AIDS sighted on the horizon

The startling case of an AIDS patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia is stirring new hope that gene-therapy strategies on the far edges of AIDS research might someday cure the disease.

The patient, a 42-year-old American living in Berlin, is still recovering from his leukemia therapy, but he appears to have won his battle with AIDS. Doctors have not been able to detect the virus in his blood for more than 600 days, despite his having ceased all conventional AIDS medication. Normally when a patient stops taking AIDS drugs, the virus stampedes through the body within weeks, or days.

"I was very surprised," said the doctor, Gero Hütter.

The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. Hütter, a soft-spoken hematologist who isn't an AIDS specialist, deliberately replaced the patient's bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

A Doctor, a Mutation, and a Potential Cure for AIDS (Wall Street Journal, 7 November 2008)

Photographing a cough

Oh man... schlieren photography is way cool.

Court and spark

[Stanley Miller] wanted to test the current ideas for the origin of life, by striking electric sparks in a mixture of gases thought to resemble the atmosphere of the young Earth.

When his analysis of the products in the experiments revealed traces of the building blocks of life, amino acids (which combine to make proteins), Stanley Miller became an instant celebrity - though the 1950s newspapers were overstating the case when they claimed he had actually recreated life in the lab.

When Stanley Miller died in May last year, his former student, Jeffrey Bada, inherited his materials; including, it turns out, several boxes containing vials of dried samples from those 1950s experiments, and the accompanying notebooks.

BBC News Science: New Spark In Classic Experiments

Bada and colleagues are now re-creating Miller's classic experiment with objectively better tools and methods, and what they hope is an improved understanding of what conditions at the time were likely to be. Fascinating article.

Hat tip: Carrie

Becoming Batman

What's most plausible about portrayals of Batman's skills?
You could train somebody to be a tremendous athlete and to have a significant martial arts background, and also to use some of the gear that he has, which requires a lot of physical prowess. Most of what you see there is feasible to the extent that somebody could be trained to that extreme. We're seeing that kind of thing in less than a month in the Olympics.

What's less realistic?
A great example is in the movies where Batman is fighting multiple opponents and all of a sudden he's taking on 10 people. If you just estimate how fast somebody could punch and kick, and how many times you could hit one person in a second, you wind up with numbers like five or six. This doesn't mean you could fight four or five people. But it's also hard for four or five people to simultaneously attack somebody, because they get in each other's way. More realistic is a couple of attackers.

How long would Bruce Wayne have to train to become Batman?
In some of the timelines you see in the comics, the backstory is he goes away for five years—some it's three to five years, or eight years, or 12 years. In terms of the physical changes (strength and conditioning), that's happening fairly quickly. We're talking three to five years. In terms of the physical skills to be able to defend himself against all these opponents all the time, I would benchmark that at 10 to 12 years. Probably the most reality-based representation of Batman and his training was in Batman Begins.

Why such a long training time?
Batman can't really afford to lose. Losing means death—or at least not being able to be Batman anymore. But another benchmark is having enough skill and experience to defend himself without killing anyone. Because that's part of his credo. It would be much easier to fight somebody if you could incapacitate them with extreme force. Punching somebody in the throat could be a lethal blow. That's pretty easy to do.
But if you're thinking about something that doesn't result in lethal force, that's more tricky. It's really hard for people to get their heads around, I think. To be that good, to not actually lethally injure anyone, requires an extremely high level of skill that would take maybe 15 to 18 years to accumulate.

Dark Knight Shift: Why Batman Could Exist--But Not for Long (Scientific American)

Amino acid test

In April 1993, a man in a balaclava mask escaped after sexually assaulting a 36-year-old woman in the town of Bridgwater, England. More than 13 years later, forensic detectives used an unusual approach to track the man down: A genetic trace that led first to his sister.

Known as familial searching, the U.K. technique has already helped crack 20 difficult cases and led to the arrest of several long-elusive murderers and rapists.

The innovation is propelled by the growth of Britain's DNA database, which holds the records of 4.2 million people in England and Wales, or nearly 8% of the population there, one of the largest proportions in the world. Anyone arrested -- including for minor offenses -- must provide a DNA sample, which stays in the database permanently, even if the person is acquitted. About a quarter of the profiles are of minors, some as young as 10.

The U.S. is now considering following Britain's lead...

The Gene Police (Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2008)

Motion Mountain

How do objects and images move? How can animals move? What is motion?

How does a rainbow form?
Is levitation possible?
Do time machines exist?
What does 'quantum' mean?
What is the maximum force value found in nature?
Is 'empty space' really empty?
Is the universe a set?
Which problems in physics are still unsolved?

This site provides a free physics textbook that tells the story of how it became possible, after 2500 years of exploration, to answer such questions. The book is written for the curious: it is entertaining, surprising and challenging on every page.

With little mathematics, starting from observations of everyday life, the text explores the most fascinating parts of mechanics, thermodynamics, special and general relativity, electrodynamics, quantum theory and modern attempts at unification. The essence of these fields is summarized in the most simple terms. For example, the text presents modern physics as consequence of the notions of minimum entropy, maximum speed, maximum force, minimum change of charge and minimum action.

Download the text (21st edition, December 2007).

MotionMountain.net

(via Cool Tools)

Happy new year!

For the first post of 2008, a reminder that here at enrevanche, we're Not Afraid To Be Service-y:

For such a common malady, the hangover still has a bit of mystery about it. As an M.D. wrote in an NIH publication wrote a few years back, “Despite the prevalence of hangovers … this condition is not well understood scientifically.”

Still, it is possible to piece a few things out. Alcohol interferes with a hormone that regulates urination, leaving drinkers dehydrated, according to a hangover review in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Booze irritates the stomach and intestines, which can contribute to the gut pain and nausea associated with hangover. It also interacts with several neurotransmitters and hormones that have been associated with headaches, though the hangover-headache connection isn’t entirely clear.

Anatomy of a Hangover: Wall Street Journal Health Blog

Unsurprisingly, cats domesticated themselves

Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, such as hyenas and larger cats.

The rodents that infested the settlers’ homes and granaries were sufficient prey. Seeing that she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight.

At least five females of the wildcat subspecies known as Felis silvestris lybica accomplished this delicate transition from forest to village. And from these five matriarchs all the world’s 600 million house cats are descended.

[...]

Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, which could account for the haughty independence of their descendants.

Study Traces Cat's Origins To The Middle East (New York Times, 29 June 2007)

Mister Gato adds: Soon after we domesticated ourselves, cats began drinking Neolithic man's coffee. (Okay, actually there's water in that cup. Coffee is bad for cats.)

See more bloggers' pets at The Modulator's Friday Ark; this Sunday, the Carnival of the Cats is hosted by The Scratching Post.

The birth of urban public health

Cool! Steven Johnson is now blogging at the New York Times:

In late August of 1854, in London’s crowded working-class neighborhood of Soho, a 5-month-old girl fell ill with cholera, and unleashed a chain of events that ultimately helped shape the world we live in today. The girl — known only as a “Baby Lewis” — lived with her parents, Sarah and Thomas Lewis, at 40 Broad Street, across from a public water pump known throughout Soho for its reliably clean and cool water. When Sarah Lewis emptied out the water she had used to clean her child’s soiled linens, a small amount of that waste found its way into the well beneath the Broad Street pump, thanks to decaying brickwork that separated the well from the cesspool in the Lewises’ basement.

Within 36 hours, one of the most explosive outbreaks of cholera in the history of London erupted throughout the neighborhood. By the end, some two weeks later, 10 percent of the Lewises’ neighbors were dead, and far more would have perished had so many residents not fled in terror.

Metropolis Rising (Steven Johnson, Urban Planet, New York Times, 15 November 2006)

Good questions to ask candidates

Dear Candidate,

I am a registered voter in your district, and I want my government to use good science in formulating policy. Please answer the following questions, so I know how to vote on Election Day.

1. Do you support the Science and Engineering Bill of Rights (www.sefora.org)?

2. Do you support lifting the President's ban on the use of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research given appropriate ethical guidelines?

3. Should emergency contraception as recommended by FDA scientific staff and advisory committees be available over the counter for all women of childbearing age?

4. Do you endorse immediate and significant actions to diminish the effects of global warming caused primarily by burning fossil fuel and other human activity?

5. Should the research budgets of federal research agencies be increased substantially?

6. Do you support the teaching of Intelligent Design or creationism as an alternative theory to evolution in science classes?

7. Do you support strengthening the science and engineering advice for Congress by creating an organization to replace the Office of Technology Assessment (abolished in 1995)?

8. Should the United States ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and stop all work on new nuclear weapons?

9. Should the United States adopt visa policies that encourage highly skilled scientists and engineers from around the world to study and work in the United States?

10. Should there be a significant increase in federal funding for training science and mathematics teachers and development of high-quality curricular materials - including teaching materials that use new information technologies like the Internet?

Scientists and Engineers for America

SEforA: Scientists and Engineers for America

A new group, currently in its infancy but growing quickly, seeks to influence US politics by providing support for sound, evidence-based, scientifically-defensible policies.

Meet Scientists and Engineers for America:

Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) influences targeted elections at all levels of government to renew respect for evidence-based debate and decision-making in politics.

Vision

We envision a future where wise science and technology policy can help every American live in a safe and clean environment, enjoy quality health and education, and benefit from a strong system of national defense. SEA is the only national organization dedicated exclusively to electing leaders who share this vision.

Beliefs

The scientists, engineers and concerned citizens who comprise SEA are united by shared values and beliefs. Scientists and Engineers for America believes in:

Good Government

Scientists know how to test theories, how to tell fact from fiction, and how to hold one another accountable. Smart leadership and policy should depend on similar processes.

Open Debate

Vigorous and evidence-based debate improves government policies, just as it improves scientific theories. Excessive secrecy protects ideologues and incompetence.

Competent Leadership

Public officials serve their communities well when their own deeply held convictions are informed by and tested against objective data.

Political Participation

An educated, questioning, and engaged citizenry is essential for successful Democracy.

While the issues and candidates we support change from election cycle to election cycle, these enduring principles guide all of SEA's work.

I've joined, and contributed some seed money; if you care about scientific literacy in this country, I urge you to (at least) sign up for their mailing list, and maybe throw them a few bucks as well.

• Scientists and Engineers for America (SEforA)
• "Serendipity" Blog (SEforA)

"Grammar-based" peptide fights bacteria

As a language geek, I can't tell you how much I dig this story:

Using grammar rules alongside test tubes, biologists may have found a promising new way to fight nasty bacteria, including drug-resistant microbes and anthrax.

Studying a potent type of bacteria-fighters found in nature, called antimicrobial peptides, biologists found that they seemed to follow rules of order and placement that are similar to simple grammar laws. Using those new grammar-like rules for how these antimicrobial peptides work, scientists created 40 new artificial bacteria-fighters.

Nearly half of those new germ-fighters vanquished a variety of bacteria and two of them beat anthrax, according to a paper in Thursday's journal Nature.

Grammar-based peptide fights bacteria - Yahoo! News