SD Science Junction

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Scroll down for recent posts.  Check page menu at top of left column for more information about South Dakota Science Junction and posting and commenting here.  Suggestions welcome. Thanks for taking a look here and hope you find something interesting and maybe even useful for development of science and technology and related industries here in South Dakota.

Write to President Obama about Science and SCOTUS

I recently send a message to President Obama at the White House.  The text is below:

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President Obama,

I have read about your interests in science and technology and related education including
your comments in last Popular Science.

You are no doubt aware of all the court cases that now involve science, computer programing,
medical research, genetic research, etc.

In light of the tremendous importance of science and the scientific method and respect for
testable theories and data, It seems to me it is time to get somebody on US Supreme Court with
both legal knowledge and a very strong science, technology, medicine or similar background.  Such
knowledge and respect for real data is likely to become more and more important in the coming
years.

It would also be a very good way to mess with the minds of the retrogrades who oppose your
policies and appointments no matter how wise or good.

Douglas A. Wiken

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I suggest those of you interested in science and technology or actively working in science and technology or teaching science and technology make a similar suggestion to the President. The rise in importance of scientific process and systems requires that the court have at least one person on it who is more than just a lawyer.

You can submit comments to the President at Submit comments to White House Online.

Just takes a few minutes.  I really don't have a clue if it will do a bit of good, but I think it is important anyway.

*** Stay tuned and stay awake--- Doug Wiken

 

Statins and stroke survival

The November 1, 2014 Science News Magazine page 10 has an article titled "Statins may improve Stroke Survival.  I found this a bit more interesting than the NPR and commercial TV celebrity crap involving Lebrun James. 

According to the article, stokes can be caused by brain clots or brain bleeding.  About 20% involve brain bleeding.  It has been thought that statins might make such brain bleeds worse.  Seemed logical.  But, careful research has shown otherwise.

Check the magazine for full details, but the statistics which should catch the attention of medical people include these.  Of 3,481 patients of Kaiser Permanente in Redwood City, CA. admitted for hemorrhagic stokes over a 10 year period, 18.4% of those receiving statins while in the hospital died within 30 days,but 38.7% of those not receiving statins died within 30 days.  When data was adjusted for other factors, the survival rate was nearly 4 times greater for those on statins while in the hospital.

More striking was the data concerning patients who were taken off statins after they were in the hospital, stoke patients had nearly 58% death rate within 30 days.  On the other hand, those who were on statins and kept on statins after the stroke, the death rate dropped to about 19%.

The odds don't appear too wonderful in any case, but it appears that keeping hemmorrhagic stroke victims on statins should no longer concern doctors.

---- Doug Wiken with information for Science News

Related articles

Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs May Help After Certain Strokes

Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs May Help After Certain Strokes

Statins Double Stroke Victims' Survival Chances: Study

Brand name versus generic statins

Does the controversy over statin drugs herald a new era of doctoring?

***Not quite Ebola news, but important ...for that too

I just got Science News October 18, 2014 issue.  Some interesting information, some way beyond my unpaid level however, but two that should be interesting to all South Dakotans and even a few SD scientists.

Get some data on the obesity epidemic.  Move cursor over the state on the map to get the information.

State of Obesity interactive map.

South Dakota not the worst, and not the best either. The US obesity rate has gone from 15% in 1990 in Mississippi to 35.1% in 2013.  Colorado started and ended better, but still sort of scary.   The obesity rate in Colorado in 1990 was 6.9% and increased to 21.3% in 2013.  And I just ate a couple handfuls of mixed nuts while reading the article and posting this.

For years, I have thought an experiment tracing "infection" rate from door handles, etc. in a day would be interesting, but wasn't competent in such areas to devise a safe yet meaningful experiment.  The University of Arizona in Tucson did such an experiment also reported in the Science News issue above.  Microbiologist Charles Gerber and collegues spread their innocuous virus on an office door handle at a healthcare facility showed up on 40 to 60 percent of the employees depending on door or table, etc initially infected.  The virus showed up on bed rails, a a coffee break room and on phones and computers.  That is the bad news.

The sorta good news is that when Gerber, et al offered employees hand wipes to disinfect hands and surfaces, that reduced infection rate by 80 percent even thouse only about half the employees used the disinfectant wipes.  Science News story by Nathan Seppa.

There are simple protocols and techniques that can greatly reduce hospital and facility disease spread that are inexpensive and effective .  Scientists and medical workers should be pushing these protocols and techniques.   A zero rate is not unrealistic if South Dakota gets its butt in gear on this.

----- Doug Wiken with information from Science News.

Related articles

VT Medicine: Concerns Regarding Ebola

Wonkbook: Ebola is in the U.S. Here's how officials will try to stop it.

Ebola Author Says Outbreak Is 'Part of a Pattern' of Emerging, Deadly Diseases

THE ABCs OF OBESITY IN AMERICA

Compact and connected communities improve public health, says new research

Free Flu Shots Offered To All SD Kids

*** Science, Politics, Fructose, Hookah

Today, I got the Saturday and Sunday RC Journals and the June 1, Science News.  This combination was interesting on this day.

The RC Journal indicated the Mayoral candidate Kirkeby criticized Rapid City Mayor Sam Kooiker for attacking capitalism when Kooiker opposed Hookah lounges.  Now, I don't know if Mayor Sam went after Hookah pipes because his fundamentalist religious ideals frowned on such sin and alcohol or because he was aware of the extra problems with such smoking.

Science, religion, and politics are often lap at the edges of the others.  Today, Science News gave another very good reason to oppose Hookah lounges in Rapid City and elsewhere.  The June 1, 2013 Science News article "Hookah smoking far from safe" page 9 indicates that research shows that smoking via hookah pipes is actually more dangerous to lungs and other organs that even are cigarettes. Hookah smokers got more benzene and pyrene and absorbed more carbon monoxide than did cigaretter smokers. One might be a bit suspicious of research that comes from a tobacco state, but the results were interesting.  I guess we should not be surprised that pulling any non-air substances into our lungs is not a real great idea. Public TV do-it-yourself carpentry shows stress the importance of dust masks because of the dangers associated with inhaling dusts from exotic woods.

The same Science Now issue on page 23 "Sweet Confusion" (see related link following this) reports research indicating the the real problem with Fructose vs. Sucrose is not so much with either being much better or much worse than the other but fructose is so cheap that food manufacturers load everything they can with it. Early research showed a parallel between increased fructose consumption and increased obesity, etc.   However, that may have been a coincidence of timing with increased consumption.  Also, our brains might not indicate sugar levels with fructose compared to sucrose.  Consequently, we all get far too much fructose and sucrose.   What we need to avoid obesity and some other problems is less of either or both.  Miriam Vos, a researcher's comment is used to end the article with ""If you replaced all the high fructose corn syrup with cane sugar, would we be better off?", she says. "No, We would be in exactly the same place.".

So, if you need to lose weight, claiming "fructose is the problem" is only a good excuse for some people with particular genetic differences.

I find it hard not to think that our society would be a better system if more politicians and judges (also politicians by the way) knew more about science and less about religion and partisan scheming, deception, and propaganda  tactics.

------ Doug Wiken with info from RC Journal and Science News

Related articles

Kooiker tries to smoke out Kirkeby at mayoral debate

Mayoral candidates stake out positions as race comes to a close

Kirkeby's run for mayor big on criticizing incumbent

The Sticky Truth About Sugar

Sweet Confusion

High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Causing Addiction Similar To Cocaine

Chemicals and O-Ring Compatibility

The information in the Parker handbook may be useful for builders, repairmen, and scientists.  Something to page through on a wet, snowy, cold day..or night.

Parker O-Ring PDF Handbook-- 57 pages of chemical lists and Applicable O-Rings

Of course, those concerned about the environment don't want leaks because of somebody cheaping out and using the wrong O-Rings to contain some chemical.  And, If they or you want to get just a little concerned about all the chemicals in our environment, this also provides a 57-page list of chemicals.  The link below was found by TypePad and has nothing to do with O-Rings, but a computer finds stuff about plasma rings. The link on carbon dioxide comes from R&D Magazine.  Free subscriptions are available..  Subscribe to R&D Print or E-Mag.

--- By Doug Wiken based on link information found by Brant D. Wiken

Related articles

4/7/2013 -- HAARP generates Plasma Rings -- diagram looks EXACTLY like what we see on RADAR

It's Grab-A-Byte Time at SBB!

Carbon dioxide could help produce valuable chemical cheaply

*** Dangerous 6-outlet electric extensions and related Science

At my primary blog Dakota Today, I have a couple posts on my experience with an overheated six-outlet extension cord with switch and breaker on it.  One of my highschool and college friends was graduated from SDSM&T with an Electrical Engineering degree.  He has worked for over 40 years with that work associated with computer hardware; mostly logic design. He taught myself a number of programming languages over the years, and that has really come in handy for him. He wrote many ad hoc programs to facilitate logic design projects. My Dakota Today post caught his attention and he sent me the e-mail copied below.

Your Dakota Today post on that melted 6-outlet extension cord is interesting. I use space heaters to heat bedrooms in the winter. A few years ago I had a heater plugged into one of those six outlet expanders that are inserted and screwed down directly at a wall outlet, in place of the faceplate. I smelled something, and realized that the expander was heating up and melting. Since then, I plug heaters directly into wall outlets.

I measured the current that one of my heaters uses (a photo of my current measuring adapter is attached). The current was 10.5 amperes, which at 120 volts makes the effective resistance 11.43 ohms. I then wrote a little program to plot the resistance of a defective connection vs. the power dissipated at the connection (see attached graph).

The graph shows that a resistance of only 0.5 ohms would dissipate about 50 watts, which is more than enough to create problems (for comparison, two of my old solder irons draw only 20 watts and 41 watts, respectively).

When a connection starts to heat up, the oxidation and impurities would likely increase the resistance, which would cause an avalanche effect. The dissipated power peaks out at 315 watts when the bad connection resistance matches the effective heater resistance.

My analysis assumes that the effective resistance of the heater would stay constant as the connection resistance changes. This probably isn’t strictly true, but I doubt if it changes enough to affect the results significantly.

Note that a resistive connection actually reduces the current drawn through the breaker, so the breaker won’t give any protection for this (unless, as you note, the heat creates a short).

Two label images (front and back) from one of my heaters are also attached. Based on our experience, the advice on the label looks pretty good.

John

The label John refers to is at Dakota Today. His e-mail above provides reason for believing the label and similar warnings. This is a good indicator of the value of scientific knowledge in daily life. Below is a chart his software generated. It shows a view of the likely results of poor connections escalating into localized heat in the wrong places.

Click on image for a larger version.

Below is the C Code John wrote to generate above.  Below that is a photo of the connector he made to measure current.

-------------------------------------------------------------
/*
03/17/13 J. Logue -- initial release             Version 1.0
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <time.h>   

int main()
{
  double Rh;   // resistance of heater
  double Rp;   // resistance of defective plug
  double Rt;   // total resistance
  double I;    // current
  double W_Rp; // watts dissipated in Rp

  Rh = 11.43; // heater resistance is assumed constant
  for(Rp = 0.0; Rp <= 20.1; Rp += 0.5)
  { // scan Rp from 0 to 20 ohms
    Rt = Rh + Rp;
    I = 120.0/Rt;
    W_Rp = (I * I) * Rp;
    printf("%4.2lf, %4.2lf\n", Rp, W_Rp);
  }

  return (0);
} // end function main

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Below is an image of the electric cable with male and female ends and a loop in a conductor wire allowing measurement of current.

Click on image for a larger version.

Any comments are welcome.  I hope readers here find the posts with basic information at Dakota Today interesting as well as seeing the above as indicating the value of science knowledge in daily life.  The science behind the "fiats" and warning labels is both interesting and useful.

*** Post by Douglas Wiken with information from John Logue.

 

Related articles

Space Heater Safety Tips Can Help Prevent Burns, Fires

Dangers of using space heaters

Electrical Problem to Blame for Residential Fire

Arc Fault Breakers

*** Decal-like Solar Cells...another South Dakota Opportunity?

Stanford researchers have worked out a way to essentially make peel and stick solar cells.

GIZ-MAG  Stanford Researchers create Peel-and-stick solar cells.

New appearances may be deceiving, but this looks like something with incredible potential for a state once calling itself a sunshine state and a coyote state.

Still waiting for South Dakota physicists to jump on the Thorium salt reactor plan.  We really wouldn't need to pay heed to the mid-east or anyplace else with fossil fuels if that idea could get moving.

 

MIT News...new glass invented

I received a pc magazine today that mentioned MIT had invented a new kind of glass with microscopic cones that might make the glass useful for cellphones where glare is a problem

MIT News--Through a Glass Clearly..fog, glare, dust resistant

South Dakota researchers and students might find the development interesting for solar collectors, fog-free medical equipment monitors, goggles, etc.

Link to PC World

--- Doug Wiken with information from PC World Print edition and MIT News

*** Something must be happening at Sanford Underground Lab.

KELO TV has some coverage of the Sanford Underground Lab at the old Homestake Mine in Lead.  Sure would be nice to get a little information on that, but Bill Harlan, chief propaganda minister for the project and founder of the blog Mt. Blogmore, does not believe blogs such as SD Scientific Junction or Dakota Today warrant any kind of notification of news releases or even notices at Sandord Underground Research Lab.

So look for that important stuff someplace else.

--- Doug Wiken with information from nowhere

*** College lectures archaic practice left over from Gutenberg Press days

I have sat through perhaps thousands of University course lectures and wondered since the first day if there couldn't be a better way to do this.  A professor or graduate assistant standing at the front of the room droning on with information that does not relate in a useful way to text material is something left over from 100s of  years ago when books were very scarce and very expensive.  That is not the case now and has not been for many years.

Right now (noon to 1PM, Jan 4, 2012) SDPB-Radio is running a program from American Radio Works titled "Don't Lecture Me".  The gist of it suggests that science and math lecture instruction is currently very ineffective uses of professors' and students' time. 

College instruction which is aimed primarily at sorting out unworthies such as that at SDSM&T prevents serious consideration of alternate instruction systems which might not waste the time and lives of 2/3 of the students who start at SDSM&T. 

If you want to get an idea of how science instruction/education must be changed if the US is not to languish in Science and technology becoming the equivalent of a third-world science country, listen to  "Don't Lecture Me". 

Systems based on scarcities of year 1440, do not make sense in 2012 and haven't made sense for many years.  Faculty administrators and professors have a cushy familiar system which benefits them primarily and their students only secondarily or thirdly or worsely {I know, but as my daughter used to say, "It could have been wuss, mommy.").

The South Dakota Board of Regents is failing nearly completely to seriously consider the time and resources of students.  The whole South Dakotahigher education system needs very fundamental re-working based on how humans actually learn.  But, don't hold your breath, this should have been obvious nearly 100 years ago.

by Doug Wiken opinion based Public Radio and enduring a score of years listening to lectures.