cafecuriosity

Nuking A Conspiracy Theory

There is no sense of proportion to human obsession or to the relentless search by academia for funding. This also applies to the scientific method which leaves no stone unturned when conducting an experiment. Now ever since he died, conspiracy theories have swirled around Napoleon's early demise. The most popular theory cast Napoleon as the victim of arsenic poisoning. Now Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics claims to have ruled out arsenic poisoning - and all they had to do was to borrow a small nuclear reactor, plus find four samples of Napoleon's hair taken at different times during his life, together with hair samples from his son the King of Rome and the Empress Josephine! This involved coordinating three museums and two universities. The researchers also tested 10 hair samples from living people. The results? There were no differences in arsenic levels between Napoleon's boyhood samples and samples taken after Napoleon's death. Looks like Napoleon's guard on Saint Helena were innocent after all. Oh and it seems that at the beginning of the 19th Century people absorbed arsenic at levels which would be considered toxic today. The Good Old Days weren't so good after all! http://www.infn.it/indexen.php   Image: Hair samples about to undergo neutron activation in the nuclear reactor in Pavia, Instituto Nazional di Fisica Nucleare

Goodbye Arthur C. Clarke

Work life balance remains a fraught debate. One school of thought welcomes early retirement and an end to the tyranny of the 5 day working week. Arthur C Clarke typified another strand. Work that was fun was not to be lightly laid aside - particularly when you happened to be good at it! After an eventful life as a visionary science fiction writer which included seventy books, the 1945 original vision of modern day communication satellites, two television series, collaboration with Stanley Kubrick on "2001: A Space Odyssey" a shower of literary honours, a knighthood, and a geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometres above the equator (the Clarke Orbit) named in his honour by the International Astronomical Union, Clarke passed away aged 90 in Sri Lanka, joining Heinlein and Asimov in the Sci Fi pantheon. His work was a captivating fusion of engineering, technology and imagination and helped introduce me to Sci Fi in the back of the Orange library 'bookmobile ' that visited my one teacher country school all those years ago. While his private life proved contentious, he shrugged it off continued to write until the end, passing away only days after reading the manuscript of his final book 'The Last Theorem' co-authored with Frederik Pohl - not a bad argument against early retirement! 

Image: Arthur C Clarke, 2005, Amy Marash

Quantum Physics 'Rules'

What is it with Australian scientists? Not content with the CSIRO's attempt to form the world's most perfect kilogram, now Griffith University has created the world's most accurate ruler. Is there some kind of measurement fetish amongst our boffins? Incredibly, the concept involves passing a single photon through the sample being measured several times (the test used 36 photons in 378 passes to, "measure length differences down to less than one ten thousandth of the width of a human hair.") That's a seriously miniscule amount of light compared to laser scanners and LED lights. As usual, the ability to collaborate proved a pivotal skills. The breakthrough came when the team combined ideas from three areas of quantum theory, quantum computing, quantum control and quantum communication (plus anything that draws on Heisenberg's uncertainty principal has to be cool!).   http://www.researchaustralia.com.au/files/Griffith_Uni_naturepaper__15_11_07.pdf   Image: Dr. Geoff Pryde, Prof. Howard Wiseman, PhD candidate Brendon Higgins, Chris Stacey, Griffith University

Breaking the Military's Bacteria Code

Think of the war in Iraq and scenes of havoc immediately spring to mind. We don't spend much time thinking about the aftermath or the complexities of sustaining a war. Paradoxically, one of the unexpected events during the conflict has been a series of outbreaks of high drug-resistant infections, which have killed 27 people in U.S. military hospitals, including Washington's prestigious Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the hospital ship Comfort stationed in the Gulf and the Army's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. The culprit was eventually revealed as Acinetobacter Baumann, once easily treated with conventional antibiotics but now, proving increasingly stubborn. During the war, instances of drug-resistance spiked from 2% to 12%! The original outbreak may have originated in hospitals in Iraq and Kuwait, but its virulence is yet another example of the unpredictable nature of conflict environments.  http://www.physorg.com/news110430103.html   Image: Acinetobacter Baumann

2,000 Year Old Routine

One of CafeCuriosity's favourite themes in working with leaders is the role routine plays in human behaviour. We are it seems, creatures of habit. Just how dominant routine is in our lives was reinforced recently by research published by the University of Colorado at Boulder into the movements of ancient Central Americans. For 1,000 years, villagers overcame volcanic eruptions and earthquakes to continually use the same footpaths to cross their mountainous jungle landscape to visit scores of ancestral cemeteries. In the process, the impact of their feet on the soft volcanic soil eroded the surface, creating a series of narrow trenches across the rugged terrain. Researchers used satellite technology to pick up the trenches - some up to 3 metres deep in the Arenal region of Costa Rica and to 'fly' along the footpaths. Erosion collected rainwater in the grooves, changing plant growth. Infrared imaging identified the different plant growth signatures despite the footpaths being barely discernable at ground level. Erosion - usually the environmental bad guy facilitated the discovery. Once again, context proved to be king!

The study also provides an insight into the human propensity for applying technology outside the ambit of its original intent. The software used in the study was originally designed for video games to enable players to tilt angles and zoom in and out. How's that for lateral thinking? http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2003/387.html

Image: Researcher retraces Costs Rican footpath, Payson Sheets, University of Colorado at Boulder

Sticky Foot Fetish

One aspect of discovery CafeCuriosity has come to appreciate is that inspiration lurks all around us. Understanding what prompts people to look in some very unlikely places however is less clear! Increasingly, scientists are connecting nature's design office with human need. Take the sticky problem of adhesives. Man-made adhesive technology struggles to match the natural ability of insects and geckos to stroll leisurely across walls and ceilings. Geckos in particular have extremely fine hairs on the soles of their feet that stick their feet to the surface - a pretty cool application of advanced nanotechnology! Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research took it a step further (sorry about that) by examining insect feet. They found the feet of several species of beetles contain small, mushroom shaped hairs. These hairs gave the beetle all terrain ability. Question is, what attracted researchers to that beetle species out of an estimated 300,000 beetle species to choose from? Was this typical Germanic thoroughness, an intuitive guess, dumb luck or did they have access to a ready supply of that type of beetle? Sticky feet at: http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2006/pressRelease20061102/index.html

Image: Microscopic image of the biomimetic surface structure of the new adhesive material (green) sticking to glass (blue), Max Planck Institute for Metals Research

Mysterious Ancient Clockwork

Humans have a fetish for labels - and not just Versace! We impulsively pin labels on ideas, civilisations, designs, and even entire historical periods. Ironically, knowledge abundance frequently self selects for economy of thought. Labels enable us to categorise knowledge and to fast forward past the dull bits. Labels flag judgments already made, knowledge already explored. Labels are particularly dangerous when summarising ancient civilisations. Just before Christmas, Professor Edmunds from Cardiff University unveiled the secrets of a 2,000 year old mechanical computer which confounds those labels. The Antikythera Mechanism was found by divers in the early 20th Century. It is a clock work astronomical calculator containing more than 30 gears in 80 pieces dating from the 2nd Century BC. Unraveling its mechanism was a collaborative effort involving astronomers, mathematicians, computer geeks, language experts and conservation gurus. It now appears the Antikythera Mechanism tracked astronomical movements with amazing precision. It could follow the movements of the sun and the moon, predict eclipses, recreated the irregular orbit of our moon - even predict the location of some of the planets. We still can't be completely sure what the ancient Greeks used their gadget for, or how pervasive it was. Now here's where labels can lead you astray - the Antikythera Mechanism suggests we've seriously underestimated Greek technology. There was a 1,000 year gap before another civilisation created anything like it (that we know of!). And it raises another inconvenient question; "what else were they making at the time?" As Professor Edmunds said; "In terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa." Some label!  http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/newsevents/22801.html

Image: Antikythera Mechanism Research Project

Perils of Information Storage

In an era of information super abundance, it's easy to under-estimate the long term implications of archiving, storage and conservation. How much of our social and corporate history has vanished simply because we lack the readers to access information stored on obsolete mediums or has allowed information to degrade due to budgetary or resource constraints? This issue was put into perspective for CafeCuriosity by the simple story of a team from Rochester University of Technology who digitally restored a 700-year old Hindu sacred text written by Shri Madvacharya (1238-1317) in Sanskrit on palm-leaf. Known as the Sarvamoola granthas it is a collection of 36 works outlining Madvacharya's Dvaita philosophy of the meaning of life and the role of God. Sadly, 15% of the manuscript is missing and every time the book is opened, part of it crumbles into dust. The processed images will be stored electronically, published in books and stored on silicon wafers. Both fire and water-proof, silicon wafers are ideal archival media and can be read using a (very strong) magnifying glass if push comes to shove! As a final tease, no one knows just how accurate existing translations of the Sarvamoola granthas are. Talk about experiencing eerie echoes of past bad corporate decision making! Wonder what our descendents will inherit in 700 years? http://www.thetigerbeat.com/news/?r=imaging-technology-restores-700-year-old-sacred-hi

Image: Roger Easton, Rochester Institute of Technology and Keith Knox, Boeing LTS.

Great Year For Text Book Writers

2006 was a great year for text book writers. A steady stream of discoveries overturned conventional wisdom and expanded our knowledge of the world around us, seemingly on  a weekly basis. This shows how dangerous it can be to assume we "know" the facts or to invest unquestioningly into expert assessments without first understanding our historical context. Nearly a century ago, scientists outlined a theory explaining the evolutionary path taken by vertebrates and have been debating it ever since! Who would have thought that a simple backbone would cause such a kafuffle? Now a spectacular fossil fish discovery in Western Australia's Kimberley region raises the possibility that Gondwana the ancient super-continent was the point of origin for four-legged vertebrates (tetrapods) and pushes adaptation for life on land back to over 380 million years ago. The fossil called Gogonasus after Gogo Station where it was found had large holes in the top of its head for breathing and muscular front fins with the same configuration of bones found in human arms; an ulna, radius and humerus. Gogo is another example of discovery rolling on, changing the foundations of our place in the universe as it goes along. No wonder researchers call Gogo the "Mother of All tetrapods." http://www.monash.edu.au/news/newsline/story/1049

Image: www.zoo.latrobe.edu.au

The Biggest Experiment On Earth!

Human knowledge has been painstakingly accumulated by a process of trial and error over thousands of years. Defining the edges of curiosity and establishing the context for our observations in fits and starts - particularly when it came to understanding how the universe works and what happened in the instants immediately after it was formed. Questions don't come much bigger than that and the answer was equally big in the shape of the Compact Muon Solenoid particle detector experiment designed to (hopefully) detect new particles - especially the elusive Higgs-Boson (which has been theorised about but never observed), mini black holes, clarify where mass comes from, establish how many dimensions there are, oh and sort out what constitutes dark matter! Big questions requiring equally big solutions - fifteen years have been invested in building a chamber 100 metres below the French town of Cessy as a team of 2,000 scientists from 37 collaborating countries assemble the kit from bits weighing up to 2,000 tonnes. Just before Christmas this year, CERN's Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator will be switched on for the first time, accelerating particle beams around a 27 km circular tunnel to whang together, simulating the conditions of the first instants of the universe after the Big Bang, while the whopping big magnet identifies each particle type. It's an interesting approach and illustrates just how far physics has evolved from other areas of science which live off drip funding and scratch built equipment. I wonder if the citizens of Cessy near the Swiss border share CERN's enthusiasm for living above a potential source of mini black holes?http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_15-12-2006-9-52-44

Image: 1. Massive magnet at the core of the detector, 2.The enormous CMS particle detector, Imperial College London