A Bug Without a Home

The International Space Station and its bully the Sun

The International Space Station and its bully the Sun

This short piece on space radiation is a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy it. For citation purposes:

Song is Smash Mouth's "Walking on the Sun"

The short clips are all from the NASA sounds page: www.nasa.gov/connect/sounds/#.UmCwbyTk_Wo and from this NASA video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw4GDBJyZ2I

The Longer Interview is actually an excerpt from this short video produced by Telegraph.co.us/video and can be found here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw4GDBJyZ2I

The picture is from scienceblogs.com: scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/…tars-doomed-fro/

Real Green Energy

Song Sample: "Rise"- Eddie Vedder

Google File System and Distributed Computing Podcast

Your Brain on Consciousness

A science podcast by Dane Whitman and Hilary Whitney.

To wake or not to wake

To Wake or Not to Wake: Unveiling the mysteries of sleep consciousness

I was the last passenger to board a very full red-eye flight from San Diego to New York City. I scurried to my window seat, which required climbing over my already asleep neighbor. She miraculously stayed sleeping as I settled in next to her. And then, as I am inclined to do, I started wondering about her mind…

I could see her eyes move like that characteristic of REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement). I knew that meant she was likely having a dream, but as to the content and nature of that dream? No idea. The only way I could know would be to shake her awake and ask her to immediately recall to me what was going on in her dreamworld. But, my social graces told me not to.

Fortunately for curious people like me, there are curious sleep scientists who do just that—wake people up and ask them about the moment ago when they were sleeping. One such group of scientists is working at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to develop new and improved methods for studying sleep consciousness. The team, led by Francesca Siclari and Joshua LaRocque, just released a report detailing their new method, and it’s potential for advancing sleep science.

Before explaining their new method, the authors acknowledge what’s typically been done. In a classic laboratory study, you (the subject) fall asleep for some researchers who have wired you to an EEG (electroencephalogram), which captures live readings of brain activity. An EEG can tell a trained eye which stage of sleep you are in, and so the researchers wake you up depending on what stage of sleep you are in, and how long you’ve been in that stage. At most, they might wake you up five times during the course of the night and ask you to describe the sleep experience you just left.

The Wisconsin team is doing things differently. Rather than wake you up at a few routine times throughout the night, they wake up you up randomly and often. Their hope is that this will make the data more representative of the enormous variety of conscious states during sleep. It’s not that they don’t care about what stage of sleep you are in—they care quite a bit—but they don’t want stage of sleep to be a deciding factor as to when they wake you up. So, they wake you up randomly and often, and ask a wide array of questions regarding the conscious experience you were or weren’t just having while asleep. These questions get at the content and nature of the dream: how long can you remember back into the dream; were you thinking or perceiving; was the dream mostly about you or was it more about your environment? So far, Siclari and LaRocque’s data is “in good agreement with the literature.” Meaning, a lot of previous data from sleep experimentation fits with what their new experimental method is showing.

But why are they trying so hard to understand sleep consciousness? Don't most interesting things happen while we are awake? And isn't it easier to study consciousness with an awake subject?…Sure, but great insights can emerge from studying what that something is not. So, if we’re interested in understanding the nature of conscious experience in wakefulness, we should also try to understand what happens to the conscious process in sleep. Furthermore, as we all know from having wild and crazy dreams, sleep consciousness is not devoid of interesting activity. This is partly driving Siclari and LaRocque’s work; sleep consciousness “undergoes major quantitative and qualitative changes in the course of the night.”  The asleep mind is far more complex than simply falling asleep in the evening and waking up in the morning. And the Wisconsin crew has moved us a bit closer to thoroughly investigating the complexity that ensues when we settle down to get some shut-eye.

Francesca Siclari, Joshua J. LaRocque, Bradley R. Postle and Giulio Tononi. (2013) Assessing sleep consciousness within subjects using a serial awakening paradigm. Frontiers in Psychology 4, 1-9. 

Geoengineering: Turning Problems Into Solutions

    With all the bad hype that carbon dioxide gets, people sometimes forget that its an essential part of advanced life on Earth. I'm not saying that the excess of carbon dioxide isn't a potential threat, but that doesn't mean its not manageable, or even a utilizable resource. Much in the same way technology has made possible the digestion of garbage into fuel, there may be potential for finding a way to sequester, if not benefit from, carbon dioxide emissions.

   Geoengineering is the process of manipulating the planetary environment in an attempt to counteract man-made climate change (Royal Society, 2009). This is possible in two ways, one of them being intuitive: suck up the carbon. Easy enough, but expensive. Some estimates guess carbon capturing would cost up to $1,000 per ton of carbon dioxide (House et. al, 2010). Nonetheless, the technology we have may be enough to adopt a sense of intelligent optimism about the future of climate change mitigation.

   The second kind of geoengineering has no direct effect on carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, but instead regulates global warming symptomatically. Solar Radiation Management refers to a number of "techniques" which according to the Royal Society "reflect a small percentage of the sun's light and heat back into space." This is possible in a number of ways: covering the desert with reflective material, simulating a volcanic eruption with atmospheric aerosols, or installing a satellite which reflects sunlight back into space before it even reaches the Earth. These techniques are still mostly theoretical and relatively complex, but that doesn't stop scientists from investigating what affects they could have on our planet.

    The Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) is the product of these intrepid researchers' labor, and the findings of their project indirectly illuminate the potential for the planetary benefits of carbon dioxide. The GeoMIP climate models found that when excess carbon dioxide is paired with solar radiation management, one result is increased ecosystem productivity. 

   Forests around the world depend on carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, but excessive heat puts stress on plants, limiting their growth. Subsequently, by complementing the greenhouse effect with a planetary shade cloth, forests around the world boom in growth. Carbon dioxide could be not only be stored in trees and plants, but provide support to all the forest animal species that depend on vegetation for survival.

   Of course, a number of disclaimers should follow the relative simplicity that climate simulation offer, regarding the complexity of climate science, ecological systems, and political mechanisms of change. However, this way of looking at our so-called problems places them in a new light. Perhaps solutions to climate change can ultimately benefit, rather than exclusively put strain upon nature and society. In conclusion, keep informed, stay engaged, and look forward to the self-determined natural history of tomorrow!