Science

OK, this is too cool. From Physics News Update (with thanks to Strata for the link):

For centuries, world travelers have known of sand dunes that issue loud sounds, sometimes of great tonal quality. In the 12th century Marco Polo heard singing sand in China and Charles Darwin described the clear sounds coming from a sand deposit up against a mountain in Chile. Now, a team of scientists has disproved the long held belief that the sound comes from vibrations of the dune as a whole and proven, through field studies and through controlled experiments in a lab, that the sounds come from the synchronized motions of the grains in avalanches of a certain size.

You can hear recordings of singing avalanches from CNRS labs, and Prof. Melany Hunt at caltech has some movies of creating singing avalanches on her website.

NPR’s Morning Edition has a nice piece on Media Lab Prof. Deb Roy and his language-learning robot Ripley, a part of their series this week on exploring language.

From this month’s Nature (if you don’t feel like registering, try one of these):

A two-laser trick that renders opaque media transparent can be achieved in systems of tiny optical resonators — with potentially profound consequences for optical communication and information processing.

The discovery of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) — an unusual effect that occurs when two laser beams interact within an optical material — and the use of novel techniques to fabricate ever smaller structures to control light have been recent exciting developments in optical physics. Writing in Physical Review Letters, Xu et al. neatly combine the two, demonstrating an on-chip, all-optical analogue of EIT based on the response of coupled optical microresonators. The result may open up untrodden pathways in photonics, offering prospects of smaller, more efficient devices for the manipulation and transmission of light.

(Thanks to eLMo for the link!)

Professor Deb Roy at the MIT Media Lab has launched what sounds to me like the biggest “record absolutely everything” type project to date. He and his wife had their first child nine months ago, and have outfitted their home with 11 ceiling-mounted omni-directional cameras, 14 microphones and a 5-terabyte disk cache in the basement to record all their daily interactions with their new son. (As you might expect, they’ve also got several systems in place to maintain privacy, including easy-to-access off and erase buttons.)

Previous projects of this nature have been designed with the eventual goal of becoming memory aids (notably EuroPARC’s Forget-Me-Not, Ricoh Innovation’s Infinite Memory Multifunction Machine, and Microsoft BARC’s MyLifeBits), as training data for context-aware applications (Brian Clarkson’s Life Patterns) or as performance art (Steve Mann’s Wearable Wireless Webcam). In contrast, though Deb is interested in the memory augmentation aspects of the project, his main purpose is purely scientific — he’s using this Human Speechome Project to build up a huge data bank that he can later mine to better understand how human language acquisition works:

“Just as the Human Genome Project illuminates the innate genetic code that shapes us, the Speechome project is an important first step toward creating a map of how the environment shapes human development and learning,” said Frank Moss, director of the Media Lab.

…

Once at the Media Lab, the data is stored in a massive petabyte (1 million gigabyte) disk storage system donated by several companies: Bell Microproducts, Seagate Technology, Marvell and Zetera. To test hypotheses of how children learn, Roy’s team will develop machine learning systems that “step into the shoes” of his son by processing the sights and sounds of three years of life at home. The effort constitutes one of the most extensive scientific analyses of long-term infant learning patterns ever undertaken.

Update 5/31/06: For more info see the paper, to be presented at the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society in July.

I don’t know enough physics to really grok how important or not this is, but man this sounds interesting:

Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity and could help physicists to make a significant step towards the long-sought-after quantum theory of gravity.

…

Small acceleration sensors placed at different locations close to the spinning superconductor, which has to be accelerated for the effect to be noticeable, recorded an acceleration field outside the superconductor that appears to be produced by gravitomagnetism. “This experiment is the gravitational analogue of Faraday’s electromagnetic induction experiment in 1831.

It demonstrates that a superconductive gyroscope is capable of generating a powerful gravitomagnetic field, and is therefore the gravitational counterpart of the magnetic coil. Depending on further confirmation, this effect could form the basis for a new technological domain, which would have numerous applications in space and other high-tech sectors” says de Matos. Although just 100 millionths of the acceleration due to the Earth’s gravitational field, the measured field is a surprising one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein’s General Relativity predicts. Initially, the researchers were reluctant to believe their own results.

(Via /. via Kurt.)

The European Space Agency & Australian National University just announced a new type of ion engine that has four times the efficiency of previous engines. That’s pretty cool, but the part of the story that really impressed me was this:

The new experimental engine, called the Dual-Stage 4-Grid (DS4G) ion thruster, was designed and built under a contract with ESA in the extremely short time of four months by a dedicated team at the Australian National University. “The success of the DS4G prototype shows what can be achieved with the passion and drive of a capable and committed team. It was an incredible experience to work with ESA to transform such an elegant idea into a record-breaking reality”, says Dr. Orson Sutherland, the engine’s designer and head of the development team at the ANU.

I don’t know how much technology they were able to leverage or really what’s involved, but 4 months sounds really fast to go from idea to working prototype. Wow.

(Thanks to Nerfduck for the link!)

Ooh! Popular Science reports on a new invention: soap to blow colored bubbles that don’t stain your clothing (or the walls, or the dog):

Tim Kehoe has stained the whites of his eyes deep blue. He’s also stained his face, his car, several bathtubs and a few dozen children. He’s had to evacuate his family because he filled the house with noxious fumes. He’s ruined every kitchen he’s ever had. Kehoe, a 35-year-old toy inventor from St. Paul, Minnesota, has done all this in an effort to make real an idea he had more than 10 years ago, one he’s been told repeatedly cannot be realized: a colored bubble.

(Thanks to Ricky for the link!)

Ben Goldacre’s latest Guardian column Bad Science has a nice look at how journalists fail to correctly interpret scientific studies, in particular looking at a recent flap over the (lack of a) link found between autism and vaccines. His concluding advice to science journalists and presumably the rest of us:

…if you don’t get it then you have only two choices: you can either learn to interpret data yourself and come to your own informed conclusions; or you decide who to trust. Choose wisely.

(By way of Mind Hacks.)

Bob Park over at What’s New sums up the trouble facing those who still try to insist that global warming is just a hoax:

fiction n. Imaginative creation that does not represent truth. For weeks the news was dominated by Katrina and Rita, which drew their energy from the record warm waters of the Gulf. The news this week included satellite images of an open ocean. What made it news was that it was the Arctic Ocean, where the ice cap is rapidly shrinking. What do you do if you’re Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and you’ve assured people over and over that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”? If you’re Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), you hold a full committee hearing and invite a science fiction writer to testify. Michael Crichton, author of “State of Fear,” an environmental thriller in which environmentalists cook up evidence to keep federal bucks coming, was Inholfe’s expert.

It must be tough for global-warming skeptics now that they can’t find who actually has credentials in the field to back their side. (If only they’d prepared ahead of time like the New-Earth Creationists did, and started their own “degree” programs…)

Q: What is scientific data? A: Whatever the Secretary of the Interior says it is.

At least that’ll be the case if congress passes HR 3824, now headed for the floor of the House. From the bill:

The term `best available scientific data’ means scientific data, regardless of source, that are available to the Secretary at the time of a decision or action for which such data are required by this Act and that the Secretary determines are the most accurate, reliable, and relevant for use in that decision or action.

Given that this administration defines “best available scientific data” as “that data that supports the president’s life-in-a-bubble view of reality,” as a political appointee the Secretary of the Interior is probably far more qualified to judge the scientific merit of a study than any scientist.