TED Talk Tuesday: Part 3

This TED Talk is a little mindblowing. Embrace your inner nerd (even if you don’t think you have one) and marvel at where technology could be headed. Then consider that this technology is being developed by the government, and wonder what we don’t know about the real cutting edge, and worry about the unintended consequences that could come.

TED Talk Tuesday: Part 3

I’ve commented before on the science behind fracking, and the lack of media acknowledgement of the improvement in techniques over the 50+ years of the technology. In this TED talk, T. Boone Pickens discusses the possibility that natural gas could be one way to cut America’s dependence on foreign oil. Not sure I agree with everything in the talk, but it is worth considering whether he is making valid claims that would lead us out of our constant need to police the waters of the Persian Gulf to keep the oil coming.

Now that Leap Day Is Over …

What are your plans for the leap second coming later this year? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out this video:

(HT: Rob Martin)

Interesting Statistics from 60 Minutes

I can’t embed the videos here at this point, but here are a series of videos from recent 60 Minutes episodes that reference statistics in the news.

First, on a recent case of forged credentials and misrepresented data at Duke University.

• The main piece can be found here.
• A bit about the researcher and his overstated credentials.

Secondly, a study of the placebo effect that seems to indicate that anti-depressant medication may be nothing more than a very expensive investment in the placebo effect.

• The main piece about looking at all of the research over the years and finding a stunning lack of significance.
• The journalist reflects on the story.

As a statistician, the ability to get a drug approved if two studies show an effect and ten studies show none is ridiculous. This is not good scientifically or statistically.

Wither the Baby Dinosaurs?

Ever wonder why no one ever seems to have any baby dinosaur skeletons? I have, and in this funny and informative TED Talk, Jack Horner offers an answer: we do have them, we were just too busy naming new types to notice. Check it out!

An Exercise for the Patient

Professor John Mainstone, who Currently Maintains the Experiment

At the University of Queensland they have a Physics experiment that has been going on since 1927. The initial setup alone took three years before the experiment itself could begin in 1930. The experiment is ongoing with no end in sight. Here is the story from the University website:

The first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Professor Thomas Parnell, began an experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties. The experiment demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar once used for waterproofing boats. At room temperature pitch feels solid – even brittle – and can easily be shattered with a blow from a hammer. It’s quite amazing then, to see that pitch at room temperature is actually fluid!

In 1927 Professor Parnell heated a sample of pitch and poured it into a glass funnel with a sealed stem. Three years were allowed for the pitch to settle, and in 1930 the sealed stem was cut. From that date on the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel – so slowly that now, 80 years later, the ninth drop is only just forming.

The experiment was set up as a demonstration and is not kept under special environmental conditions (it is actually kept in a display cabinet in the foyer of the Department), so the rate of flow of the pitch varies with seasonal changes in temperature. Nonetheless, it is possible to make an estimate of the viscosity of this sample of pitch (R. Edgeworth, B.J. Dalton and T. Parnell, Eur. J. Phys (1984) 198-200). It turns out to be about 100 billion times more viscous than water! The picture above is of Professor John Mainstone, who currently maintains the experiment.

There is also a live video available on the website. Not sure how exciting it would be, but it would be pretty cool to see the instant it dropped!

(HT: Robert Getty via Google+)

On Fracking, the Science is Clear

An Illustration of a Fracking Well

Unfortunately, while the science on natural gas fracking is clear, the public debate does not reflect this fact. Why? Here is a take from an op-ed piece in the NY Post by Jon Entine:

The academic face of the anti-fracking movement — Cornell marine ecologist Robert Howarth — increasingly looks like he’s willing to turn science into farce.

Last spring, the once-obscure professor became the go-to expert for anti-fracking journalists and lawmakers when he published a report claiming shale gas pollutes more than coal. The New York Times featured his study in two uncritical articles in one week, he was interviewed on dozens of talk shows — and the media echo chamber did the rest: He was a star.

Since then, other scientists have almost universally challenged his findings — but now he’s doubled down.

Last week, Howarth released another scientifically questionable study, now warning that fracking could push the world over a tipping point, sending temperatures irreversibly higher — an inflammatory and demonstrably incorrect assertion.

After some backstory, Entine turns to the science and Howarth’s motivation:

In an interview, Howarth told me his goal was to make the anti-fracking movement mainstream and fashionable. He said he met with the Ithaca-based foundation two years ago, agreeing to produce a study challenging the conventional wisdom that shale gas is comparatively clean.

The polluting impact of shale gas revolves around one key issue: how much methane gas is released during extraction. Methane has more short-term global-warming impact than any other fossil fuel. Howarth emerged from academic nowhere when he claimed shale-gas wells leak like sieves, venting methane half the time, spewing 7 percent to 8 percent of reserves into the atmosphere.

“That’s absurd,” says Michael Levi, director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council of Foreign Relations. “Most methane gas is either ‘delivered to sales’ with no leakage, or it’s burnt off through flaring, which diminishes its greenhouse impact.”

Renowned geologist Lawrence Cathles, also at Cornell, who published a scathing deconstruction of Howarth’s paper this month, says that he “doesn’t document venting but what the industry calls ‘capture.’”

Almost every independent researcher — at the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Energy Department and numerous independent university teams — has slammed Howarth’s conclusions. At a minimum, the evidence suggests he either acted in bad faith or is ignorant of gas technology.

The core problem: Howarth uses Environmental Protection Agency estimates dating to 2007 — ancient data, given how quickly the technology is evolving.

Crucially, he fails to account for innovation. Gas lost through leakage is money lost, literally into thin air. For that reason, new wells are now “green completed” — meaning most leaking gas is captured and sold rather than vented.

Cathles notes the latest Devon study, now being verified by the EPA, documenting that shale gas is vented in only 5 percent of wells. The Energy Department estimates only 1 percent to 2 percent of methane is now lost during production.

Bottom line, almost all nonindustry-linked researchers believe Howarth exaggerates the impact of shale-gas leakage by 10 to 20 times. “His conclusions are more a politically charged articulation than a balanced scientific assessment,” Cathles says.

Howarth hired an aggressive PR firm, the Hastings Group, to promote his politicized viewpoint. Scientists aren’t buying it, but many journalists fall for the fear-mongering.

Howarth doesn’t have to convince anyone he’s right to devastate New York’s budding shale industry and put tens of thousands of jobs into question. He wins if he muddies the waters enough to give cautious Albany bureaucrats reason to stall.

Almost every news story now frames this issue as a standoff between equally valid scientific experts. In fact, it’s really a debate between science and ideology.

You can read the rest of the piece here.

On the High Price of Journals

I’ve commented before on the (shameful) prices of scholarly journals, especially when the research itself is taxpayer funded. If we all paid for the research, it is a shame that we can’t read the results without having more to pay. Barbara Fister comments on this at Inside Higher Ed:

What is it we are getting in exchange for all that accumulated student debt? Well, we have more knowledge than ever, but that’s a chimera, too. We academics don’t actually own the knowledge we create, we only license it. Faculty are too busy producing new scholarship to think much about changing the system, because productivity is measured in publications. Publishers confer prestige, and scholars have to trade their work for bits of that prestige in order to stay in the game. Those who question the rules of the game are quickly reminded that they are lucky to have jobs, that a majority of academic laborers are not so fortunate. (This is not unlike what students hear: look at you, you own a phone! How dare you complain about your student loans!)

All that productivity does not necessarily extend knowledge, or rather it does—but only for those who can afford it. Libraries were once a monument to the wisdom that comes of sharing of knowledge, but now libraries only foot the bill for temporary access to information, and only for their campus community.

A fair amount of basic science is still funded with tax dollars, but that’s because the private sector needs massive public investment into fundamental scientific knowledge. That stuff’s expensive! But the results of that tax funded basic science are not available to just anyone. The reports of research become the property of publishing corporations, including corporations run by scholarly societies such as the American Psychological Association and the American Chemical Society. These societies benefit from being tax exempt, but they actively lobby against open access. An editor of one of the American Chemical Society’s publications once characterized the (so far unsuccessful) legislative attempts to require that recipients of federal funds make their publicly funded research results public as socialized science. (Funding the science is apparently a wise investment of tax dollars, but letting people read the results—socialism!)

Here’s my version of an Occupy Wall Street cardboard sign. At my library, we’ve been seeing big price increases in two big journal packages that we really need. Again. This is what we’re paying for American Chemical Society journals

• 2010 – $29,705
• 2011 – $34,337
• 2012 – $41,741

This is what we’re paying for SAGE journals

• 2010 – $39,105
• 2011 – $41,442
• 2012 – $52,500

Look, don’t get me wrong: these are great publications. I don’t personally use the chemistry collection, but I know it’s excellent stuff and that our students and faculty really need it. I do search SAGE quite often for my own research. Where else will I find such robust research on things like social inequality and gentrification? I’m not just being snarky; I know this kind of high-quality publishing costs money. Fine. I know that faculty are producing more research and presumably somebody’s got to publish it. But the only way I can afford to keep these journals (and I can’t afford not to) is to cut other things. Smaller societies, university presses? Sorry – you’ll be getting less of my money. I’ll do this because I have to, but dammit – this is so wrong.

Read more here.

(HT: Messiah College Librarian Beth Transue)

The Future Is Here: Levitation

This video is just cool. In addition, I have a feeling that technology like this could someday (soon?) revolutionize our world. There are obvious implications for travel and energy if this can be done in large scale without the need for liquid nitrogen (right now it takes very low temperature superconductors to accomplish the levitation. Enjoy! (HT: David Owen, among others)

The Future of Energy?

An interesting technology that may someday soon begin to revolutionize the energy discussion. (HT: Cody Wanner)