Science Friday

Today's New York Times carries an interesting feature about the $250 million EarthScope project -- and, in particular, its San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) component, which is drilling an observation hole to directly sample a seismically active fault zone. The drilling site, near Parkfield, was chosen because of its abundant microearthquake activity, and the researchers will be studying everything they can, right down to the helium isotopes in the cuttings, in the hope of gaining more insight into the earthquake process. (Though they claim they're not looking for a way to predict earthquakes, says the Times, the hope of advancing earthquake prediction "has been one of the biggest unspoken expectations since a test hole was drilled here two years ago.")

A team of researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard, and Caltech have put forth, in this week's Science, a new model for one of the more puzzling steps in the dawn of life: the creation, and evolution, of self-replicating, membrane-bound units -- that is, cells. In the past, most workers have assumed that cells evolved when primitive genetic material (probably RNA) started driving active synthesis of cell membranes. But Chen et al., performing experiments with artificial sacs of fatty acids, found that when RNA is encapsulated in fatty acid vesicles, it exerts an osmotic pressure on the membrane that drives it to scavange additional membrane from other, "relaxed" vesicles. Result: Fatty-acid "bubbles" that happened to contain bits of efficiently replicating RNA would grow faster than other vesicles, "leading to the emergence of Darwinian evolution at the cellular level." Most interesting. The abstract of the article is free with registration; you can also read more on Science Blog.

Another Science paper you'll be seeing a lot of in the next few days is the finding, published online (registration required for abstract), that the East Asian avian influenza A virus (the "Bird Flu") can infect ordinary cats -- which subsequently might be able to transmit the virus to humans (or, in the more neutral language of the report, which "may play a role in the epidemiology of this virus"). New Scientist writes up the report and its implications.

Also on New Scientist: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project has apparently picked up "the best candidate yet for a contact by intelligent aliens in the nearly six-year history of the SETI@home project," the celebrated distributed-computing venture that harnesses the power of millions of ordinary users' PCs to analyze the signals received through SETI's radio telescope. Don't get too excited, however: The researchers still haven't been able to rule out the possibility that the signal is a previously unknown astronomical phenomenon, instrument problems, or even fraud by a renegade SETI@home user.

And, in any event, a new paper in Nature argues that extraterrestrials seeking to communicate with us would find it much more efficient to use "inscribed matter" (i.e., written docs) -- the old message-in-a-bottle approach -- than radio waves. "[O]ur initial contact with extraterrestrial civilizations," write the article's authors, "may be more likely to occur through physical artefacts . . . than via electromagnetic communication." In the related story on news@nature.com, SETI's Jill Tarter acknowledges that "We should look for artifacts of all kinds in our local neighbourhood, including packages on our doorstep" -- but also adds that, in terms of best bets, she's "sticking with radio."

That's all for now.

Ashcroft DOJ Saves Us from Ourselves

Just ran across a very nice post on The Memory Hole, documenting the Department of Justice's creative approach to protecting national security. Apparently, among the passages that the Department required the ACLU to black out in a court brief against the Patriot Act (on the grounds that releasing the material publicly could harm U.S. security or jeopardize intelligence sources) was a quotation from a 1972 Supreme Court case.

Well, I certainly feel safer. How about you?

Morning Rant: Prince Hal, My *ss

By now you've probably seen the marvelous Salon piece about George W. Bush's "missing year." The basic arc of the story is that George H. W. Bush, the current White House resident's father, back in 1972 persuaded one of his political consultants and, at the time, close friends, Jimmy Allison, to find a job for his eldest son, George W., in the Alabama Senate campaign that Allison was then managing. No surprises so far; after all, G.W. was no stranger to sucking at the family tit, and owes pretty much everything he has to the peculiar political connectivity of the Bush clan.

The interesting part, though, is that the elder Bush apparently prevailed on Allison to find Georgie a job somewhere far from Midland because wild-party G.W. was becoming a political liability in Texas. In Salon:

"The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."

So, apparently, Bush spent the "missing year" -- during which he claims to have "honorably served" in the National Guard -- "com[ing] in late and leav[ing] early" on his campaign job, boasting about his drinking exploits, trashing his rented house (and neglecting to pay for the damages), and urinating on cars. (Well, O.K., let's be fair here -- he only urinated on one car.)

(As a side note, the Salon piece, which focuses on the point of view of Allison's widow, gives a glimpse at how willing the Bush Matriarchy has been to sh*t on friends when they cease to be useful. The Matriarch, Barbara Bush, emerges as a particularly loathesome figure.)

But oh, wait, I forgot. We're not supposed to hold G.W.'s "youthful high spirits" against him -- Born Again, yadda yadda yadda, Prince Hal, yadda yadda yadda.

Sure.

Morning Reflection: More Political Science

My ramblings yesterday on the Bush Administration's mixed signals on climate change begs a larger question: Just how important a role will science policy play in this election? Not too important, I suspect, in light of the general public's rather questionable understanding of science. Of course, if scientists as a group were as important a voting bloc as, say, the storied state of Ohio, Bush would probably have a lot more spare brush-clearing time in Crawford beginning next January. (Of course, if scientists were an important voting bloc, Bush's science policy probably wouldn't be the disaster it is, so maybe it wouldn't work out that way after all.)

The one scientific issue that seems to have legs in this election is, of course, the policy flap regarding embryonic stem cells -- but here again, the public seems to have only the vaguest notion of what's at stake here. A nice posting yesterday on the Technology Review site put this into some perspective: Although a staggering 83%% of respondents to a recent poll claimed to have heard or read about stem cell issues, and 73% of respondents approved of ESC research (versus 11% who disapproved), some scientists who support the research are nonetheless concerned about whether the public has too overblown a view of what work with ESCs can accomplish at present. The TR post quoted one stem cell worker about this problem:

"How much is going to happen therapeutically, and how quickly, is not being discussed in realistic terms," says Neil Theise, a physician and stem cell researcher at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City who says he has been invited to speak to fifth-grade classes on the subject. "In all likelihood, stem cell technology will lead to improvement, if not a cure, for the diseases talked about," Theise says. "But how quickly it will happen is being exaggerated."

Uninformed as the public may be, the kinds of numbers cited above explain why the Bushites have been spinning their policy so furiously to make it look like the restrictive Bush policy, which limits federally funded ESC research to a handful of existing cell lines, is actually promoting stem cell research -- rather than the real chilling effect that has overtaken this branch of U.S. science. (It is no accident that one of the year's most stunning advances in ESC science came out of South Korea, not the U.S.) The First Lady seems to have been drafted as the key point person on justifying her husband's approach, and that has resulted in some breathtaking examples of doublethink (even for a Republican). Another example of Bushite political tightrope-walking between its radical-right constituency and the general public -- and of consummate doublethink by political whores like Giuliani, Schwartznegger, and McCain, who can somehow support this president and claim to be "moderates" in favor of stem cell research, tolerance toward gays, and a more enlightened climate change policy.

Brief Afternoon Outrage: Ahhnold and the Druggies

Here's one to lose your lunch by, courtesy of the Progress Report:

ARNOLD TRIP PAID FOR BY DRUG INDUSTRY LOOKING FOR A VETO: Corporations are ponying up about $350,000 to finance Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) trip to the convention, including a lavish party at Planet Hollywood (taxpayers will be footing the bill for his security). Many of the contributions come from large pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer who are actively lobbying the governor to veto four bills passed by the state legislature "designed to help Californians buy cheaper prescription drugs from Canada."

Grrr . . .

Morning Review: The Bushites and Climate Change

A number of press outlets have devoted space to a recent Bush Administration report on global climate change, in which government climate researchers acknowledge that humans do contribute to global warming. Although there's much of interest in the report -- Our Changing Planet, from the U.S. Global Change Research Program -- most of the news coverage pivots on a brief paragraph in the report's "Climate Variablity and Change" chapter that, in essence, says you can't understand the North American climate pattern of the past half-century or so without assuming at least some human influence. I'll quote the paragraph the press found most eye-catching in full here:

A recent study shows that the average global results reported above also pertain over the North American region. Several indices of large-scale patterns of surface temperature variation were used to investigate climate change in North America over the 20 th century. The observed variability of these indices was simulated well by several climate models. Comparison of index trends in observations and model simulations shows that North American temperature changes from 1950 to 1999 were unlikely to be due only to natural climate variations. Observed trends over this period are consistent with simulations that include anthropogenic forcing from increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols. However, most of the observed warming from 1900 to 1949 was likely due to natural climate variation.

News sources tended to report this as an abrupt volte-face by the administration. The reality, I think, is a bit more subtle. Note, for example, that the paragraph doesn't really say just how much of an impact anthropogenic forcings have had relative to natural ones -- only that the numbers for North America don't come out right unless you include some kind of anthropogenic effect. In this, the paragraph above echoes language slightly earlier in the report referring to global (rather than solely North American) temperatures, where it says that multiple numerical simulations "show that observed globally averaged surface air temperatures can be replicated only when both anthropogenic forcings, e.g., greenhouse gases, as well as natural forcings such as solar variability and volcanic eruptions are included in the model."

Cynic that I am, I find myself picturing the many late-night sessions of language-shading and parsing among government scientists, political appointees, and flacks that must have gone on before everyone agreed to this ambiguous language. Curiously, though, a remarkable diagram that appears in the same section of the report undermines the effect of this carefully hedged language:



What's being shown here are historical global temperature trends. The blue field shows temperatures that would be expected if natural forcing (such as solar variablity and the effect of aerosols from volcanic eruptions) alone are included in the calculation; the pink field shows the expected trend if you factor in both natural forcings and anthropogenic greenhouse gases; the black line shows the actual trend of temperature anomalies (the difference, in degrees C, between temperatures in the year in question and the 1890-1919 mean). Note the nice fit of the black line with the model that includes anthropogenic forcing -- and note that natural forcings, considered alone, provide only fluctuations about the mean, with no upward trend. Translation: Anthropogenic forcing is not only a part of the global warming story; it's the main part of the story.

You won't find a statement this bald anywhere in the report (at least as far as I can tell from a cursory examination). Still, it does acknowledge some human influence on climate, and I suppose that's something. And elsewhere, the report acknowledges that global warming (whatever its causes) is already having effects on sea level, crop yields, weather patterns, etc., etc.

So this just in: Global warming is happening, and humans are at least partly to blame.

But is this carefully hedged position really such a departure from what our mendacious current admministration has declared in the past? Three years ago, when the National Academy of Sciences released its own report on the probable role of humans in global warming, Bush's response seems to have been essentially, "Yes, humans have some role in warming, but we need to know more before we can do anything about it." The recent report, while moving the administration further in the direction of admitting what the NAS and IPCC have already established, still seems, in its actual language, to be very much in that tradition, marking out a position of sufficient ambiguity to allow for inaction while maintaining the appearance of action, open-mindedness, and moderation. (Just right for RNC season.)

In any event, it looks like it would be vain to hope that this new apparent acknowledgment of some human role in warming will translate into a decent climate change policy, or even cursory movement toward one. Bush's science adviser was quick to stress that the report has "no implications for policy," and argued that "there is no discordance between this report and the president's position on climate." Bush himself seems to agree; when asked why the Administration had changed its position on human-induced warming, he responded, in his most Presidential Fashion, "Ah, did we? . . . I don't think so." How's that for decisive leadership?

Conclusion: More pre-convention eyewash.

Morning Rehash: NYC Protests

The pre-RNC protests in New York were a heartening display, both for the high level of organization and for the outpouring of anti-Bush sentiment. No doubt the Republicans will try to paint this as the mere ravings of the dreaded Liberal Elite, and wholly out of touch with the Real America. Wow -- half a million of the Liberal Elite, everyone from Liberal Elite babies to Liberal Elite grandparents to Liberal Elite union members to Liberal Elite Wall Street bankers, crammed onto Seventh Avenue between Chelsea and MSG.

That New York really is a helluva town.

It's events like this that make me really miss New York. I spent nineteen happy years living in the city (mainly the outer boroughs) or in the NJ suburbs, before moving away in 2000 to take a job elsewhere. I'm generally pleased with where I'm living now -- but it's no New York. I like to think that I would have been right out there, adding my voice to swell the ranks of the anti-Bush crowd. (Though in reality, I probably would have just been pissing and moaning about the traffic and the heat.)

I also like to think that the spectacle of 500,000 people of all ages, colors, and professions ranked out under the blistering East Coast sun, even in godless NYC, might be enough at least to give pause to those who hadn't yet thrown in their lot with the Bush/Cheney sham. But the press coverage of this event no doubt will depend heavily on geography. In the New York Times, it was of course a huge story, since it was in part a local one. On CNN's homepage this morning, by contrast, you would have been hard pressed to find much evidence that America's largest city had just played host to its biggest protest event since the Vietnam War. What we saw instead was a large amount of homepage real estate devoted to the runup to the RNC, with one link in smaller type noting "Democratic protests clog NYC streets." So, to CNN, apparently, it really was just a traffic story. Not surprisingly, the Washington Times chose to place its own story of the protest in smaller type below the big headline on Cheney's upstaged Ellis Island convention kickoff. The headline: "Thousands join protests in NY." Not bad; only off by two orders of magnitude. In the future, these Moonie headline writers may want to bear in mind that there's a rather substantial difference in connotative meaning between "thousands" and "hundreds of thousands."

Still, the protests did seem to overshadow much of the preliminary RNC eyewash, and served as the unofficial opening ceremonies of the convention. What were the Republicans thinking when they decided on their Gotham convention setting? Well, no doubt it seemed like a good idea at the time. Now they're in the uncomfortable position of having to demonize and distance themselves from the population of the city in which they've chosen to have their biggest and most important campaign photo-op. Not a situation I'd like to be in.