What “Mad” Mike Tells Us About Science Denialism

Today in science denialism, we consider the case of “Mad” Mike Hughes, who is on a quest to prove the Earth is flat.

Until the FAA put the kibosh on his plans last month, Hughes was planning to strap himself into a homemade rocket and travel about a mile at 500 miles per hour over a ghost town in California. While he only planned to hit 1,800 feet in this trip, his ultimate goal is to build a rocket that will propel him high enough to prove that astronauts have been lying all these years about the shape of the Earth.

If building and launching a rocket sounds like a pretty scientific endeavor -- well, you’re wrong, according to Hughes.

“I don’t believe in science,” he told the Associated Press. “I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air, about the certain size of rocket nozzles, and thrust. But that’s not science, that’s just a formula. There’s no difference between science and science fiction.”

If your brain just leaked out your ears a little bit, consider the connotation of his words. He doesn’t believe in Science -- what he sees as an elitist club of government-backed conspirators -- but he clearly believes in scientific principles and advances.

His story certainly seems to support research that suggests it’s not reasoning capability, but deeper social issues that drive us apart on issues like climate change, vaccines and the shape of the Earth.

Ten Hundred Word Challenge

Here’s a challenge for all you scientists out there: Could you describe your research using only the 1,000 most common words in the English language?

Science Buffs, a STEM blog produced by a group of CU Boulder graduate students, has been doing just that with fellow graduate students, asking them to explain topics like nitrogen emissions and endocrine dysfunction using only the simplest language.

Their “Ten Hundred Word Challenge” was inspired by an xkcd comic, which described NASA’s Saturn V rocket, or “U.S. Space Team’s Up-Goer Five,” using only common words. It resulted in phrases like “thing to help people escape really fast if there’s a problem and everything is on fire so they decide not to go to space” (my personal favorite).

In a recent video on Wired, a neuroscience researcher undertook a similar experiment to explain a concept to five different people, from a five-year-old to a neuroscience graduate student.

“One of the things we’re not doing well as a field is sort of educating and telling people beyond our field the benefits of what we can achieve,” he said in explaining why he tried it.

While it may seem silly, I believe every scientist should have to do something like this at least once. If you can’t explain your research to everyone, it’s going to be tough to keep the public engaged in -- and willing to financially support -- what you’re doing.

Oil & Gas Behind Colorado Bad Ozone Days

So much for clear mountain air.

A recent study by researchers from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that on days with moderate to high emissions from oil and gas production, the levels of harmful ozone in the northern Front Range exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s health standards.

Unlike the ozone in the Earth’s upper atmosphere that protects us from the sun, ground level -- or “bad” -- ozone is created when nitrogen oxides in the air react with volatile organic compounds released by things like vehicle emissions or oil drilling. The resulting ozone causes smog and is harmful to our health, according to the EPA.

While the state has stringent emissions standards for oil and gas production, the study, published in Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, suggests that they may not be stringent enough. Overall, it encouraged more extensive measurement of things like nitrogen oxides and ozone to better understand how pollutants are being created and how they travel in the air.

“Better understanding of emissions and of the relative contributions of the various pollutants in the region will increase the effectiveness of mitigation actions and regulations,” the authors said.

Peer Review in the Public Eye

The Bodleian Library at Oxford University announced last month that carbon dating of an ancient Sanskrit mathematical text contained the “oldest recorded origins of the symbol 'zero'.”

The library’s news release and YouTube video resulted in plenty of press coverage, but this week, an article lead authored by Kim Plofker of the University of Alberta took the Bodleian to task for releasing the information without feedback from other academics.

The article is an interesting glimpse into scientific peer review, allowing readers to see some of the questions that other researchers might have asked the Bodleian. For instance, Plofker and her co-authors -- which included a well-regarded expert on the manuscript in question -- wanted to know more about:

• How the manuscript was prepared before testing.

• Why the researchers only tested the birch-bark leaves and not the ink.

• Why they ignored apparent consistency in the composition itself in claiming that parts of the manuscript were written centuries apart.

“Without wishing to dampen the laudable ardor shown in this project for scientifically investigating the material characteristics of ancient documents, we urge the investigators to consider the importance of reconciling their findings with historical knowledge and inferences obtained by other means,” the authors conclude. “It should not be hastily assumed that the apparent implications of results from physical tests must be valid even if the conclusions they suggest appear historically absurd.”

Japanese ‘Hidden Figure’ Provided Backbone for Sunspot Record

“I simply can't stop observing when thinking that one can never know when the nature will show us something unusual,” Hisako Koyama wrote in 1981.

That dedication to observation earned the amatuer astronomer recognition from the professional community, most recently in an article published in the journal Space Weather by Delores Knipp of the University of Colorado Boulder.

In the article, Knipp outlines Koyama’s career, during which she sketched nearly 40 years of sunspots, including the largest sunspot of the 20th century in 1947. Sunspots -- dark spots on the surface of the sun caused by powerful magnetic fields -- are important to scientists because the radiation and gusts of energy they produce can impact humans and satellites traveling in space. Koyama’s record is especially important because its consistency and thoroughness helped provide a backbone for a recent effort by scientists to recalibrate a 400-year record of sunspot activity, going back to Galileo.  

Koyama served as a staff member at the National Museum of Nature and Science and published her findings at the urging of fellow scientists, all at a time when a high-school education was the best a girl in Japan could expect, Knipp said.

“How many young ‘Ms. Koyamas’ might there be in today's world, just on the verge of scientific contribution and discovery, if only for a nudge of encouragement in the right direction?” Knipp writes. “We hope this manuscript describing Ms. Koyama's work serves as encouragement and inspiration for future scientists.”

Pieter Tans: Carbon Crusader

After tracking greenhouse gases emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere for more than 30 years, Pieter Tans says there are three things he knows for sure.

First, “humans are 100% responsible for the increase in greenhouse gases we are observing,” said the chief of the Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases Group at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

He explained that scientists know this thanks to ice. Research on bubbles of air trapped in ancient ice show that, for millions of years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ranged from 180-280 parts per million. Since humans started burning fossil fuels in earnest during the Industrial Revolution, that number has risen to 400 parts per million.

A scientist checks a sample canister in the Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases lab. 

The second is a matter of basic physics: More greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, means more heat trapped in the atmosphere and higher global temperatures. “We understand in great detail how greenhouse gases absorb radiation,” Tans said.

Third, they know that those gases are going to stick around for a long time. Plants and oceans are constantly pulling carbon dioxide out of the air, but the amount produced by humans has far overwhelmed natural process. That excess is going to remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years, Tans said, multiplying the climate-changing effects of continued carbon production.

Which leads him to one final conclusion.

“I know that we have a very serious predicament globally,” Tan said. “I know this.”

The way out of that predicament is for humans to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by ending their reliance on fossil fuels, he said. He’s got a lot of advice on how that can be done, from retrofitting buildings to use less energy, to improving public transportation systems around the world.

But Tans’ personal contribution to the effort starts much earlier than that. He and his colleagues spend their days tracking greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting compounds, in part to help policymakers decide whether emissions reduction efforts are succeeding.

That tracking is done with great precision and transparency, starting in their Boulder lab. There are more than 70 air sampling points around the world, and more than 30 labs analyzing those samples. Tans’ team must make sure all of their machines are producing accurate readings.

Lining the walls of the NOAA lab are tall canisters with known quantities of gases, which the staff uses to calibrate their machines every morning and throughout the day between tests. The goal is to create canisters with standardized air samples, which are sent out to partner labs. If the measurements of the standard samples at the partner labs match the measurements from Tans’ lab, everyone is on the same page.

The data collected is available directly to the public on the group’s website. Tans said they don’t hand-select data before publishing it, and even results they have flagged as potentially having issues are still available.

“Nothing we do is secret - everything is out in the open on the web,” he said. “If we want to guard against climate deniers and high-priced lawyers, one of the defenses is that everything is transparent.”  

With all that he knows about greenhouse gases, it can be hard for Tans to see the world – and especially the U.S. – not taking climate-change research and policy more seriously.

But Tans said he’s not stopping now. He and the rest of his research network will continue to collect their samples, calibrate their machines and report their findings to the world.

“I’m not really discouraged,” he said. “I’ll just keep doing the best I can.”

Did These Scientists Head Off a Climate Engineering Mistake?

In an interview a few weeks ago with Pieter Tans, the chief scientist of the Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases Group at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was reluctant to endorse climate engineering.

“I’m very hesitant about these things because the problem we have is already inadvertent,” he said, referring to humans burning fossil fuels before understanding the effects it would have on the climate.

A study published this week in the journal Scientific Reports underscores the need to exercise caution before attempting to reverse human-caused environmental damage. Scientists from Cardiff University and Stockholm University found that clams, oysters and worms in the Baltic Sea are contributing to greenhouse gas emissions -- mainly methane -- at a level equal to about 20,000 dairy cows.

That’s important because farming of clams and oysters has been put forth as a way to clean up another source of greenhouse gas emissions, called eutrophication. Eutrophication is the excessive buildup of nutrients along coastlines, caused by runoff of synthetic fertilizers from agriculture.

If we farmed clams and oysters on the coastlines, the ocean critters would consume those excess nutrients and provide a food source for humans. At least now we can begin to weigh those advantages against the amounts of greenhouse gases the farms would produce.

How Stories Light Up the Brain

Within the “communications community,” we often discuss the importance of narrative storytelling in engaging readers. But how often do we think about the neuroscience behind it?

In a recent study published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, a psychology and computer science researcher at the University of Southern California looked at how people’s brains reacted while they were reading stories. Morteza Dehghani and his co-authors found the regions of the brain stimulated were connected to how we think about ourselves and others, suggesting that narratives really do help people feel more empathy.

The researchers began by culling 40 blog posts in English on personal topics. Each story was then translated into Mandarin Chinese and Farsi, and read by 90 study participants in their native language as their brains were scanned by an MRI machine.

The patterns of activity that emerged in the scans were very similar, regardless of the language, which suggests that all humans process stories the same way in order to construct meaning. The patterns also engaged the brain’s “default mode network,” which involves sections of the brain responsible for things like accessing personal memories and understanding the emotions of others.

"One of the biggest mysteries of neuroscience is how we create meaning out of the world. Stories are deep-rooted in the core of our nature and help us create this meaning," corresponding author Jonas Kaplan told Science Daily.

Butterfly in the Sky: Radar Edition

We now have so many butterflies migrating through Colorado that they’re being picked up by weather radar.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the influx of painted lady butterflies being observed in the Denver metro area. This week, Coloradans noticed strange bursts of color on the National Weather Service’s radar maps. After some investigation, NWS determined that the unusual signatures were caused by migrating butterflies.

They added that while it’s common for migrating birds to show up on the maps, it’s rare for insects to cause this kind of radar activity.

Creativity Takes Root in Microscopic Video Contest

In the winning video from this year’s Nikon Small World in Motion contest, the root of a Thale cress plant appears to grow before your very eyes, diving downward as a camera follows along.

In reality, the video took 17 hours to record, and the root grew only four millimeters -- about half the length of an average grain of rice.

The scientist who captured the tiny documentary, postdoctoral researcher Daniel von Wangenheim of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, studies the developmental and cell biology of plants. For this particular experiment, he and his colleagues were looking at how plants respond to gravity.

According to Nikon’s website, they used a confocal microscope, which focuses light through a pinhole for higher resolution images. The plant was placed on a rotating platform so the researchers could watch how the root adjusted to bend toward the earth as they turned it.

“One step further, this could finally help to successfully grow plants under microgravity conditions in outer space to provide food for astronauts in long-lasting missions,” von Wangenheim told Nikon.

For more fascinating and hypnotic microscopic videos, like sweat beads forming on a fingertip and blood platelets helping to heal an injury, check out the competition website.

Butterfly in the Sky

I had a slower-than-usual run last weekend, and I blame butterflies.

It seemed like bad karma to kick or step on the small orange creatures, so I found myself slowing my pace to avoid clouds of them rising from the grass.  

A quick Google search helped to identify the species (painted ladies, or Vanessa cardui), but I didn’t remember seeing this many in previous autumns. I emailed Sarah Garrett, a lepidopterist at the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, to see if I was crazy.

“No, you’re not imagining things!” she said. “The extremely high population is a sign that they have had a very productive summer breeding here in the U.S.”

Like monarchs, painted ladies are migratory, moving each year between the southern and northern reaches of North America. Several generations of butterflies are born during each migration season, so weather conditions along their routes can affect populations.

Garrett said the ones we’re seeing this fall are coming from areas northwest of us, which saw generally good rainfall over the summer.

“That in turn increases plant production, i.e. the food caterpillars need, which for painted ladies are mainly asters.”

And we should expect to see them back in the spring, although probably not in as high of numbers as we’ve seen this fall. Which is good news for my running times.

Clickbait Takes a Break with Flu Vaccine-Miscarriage Study

Have media outlets learned their lesson about reporting vaccine-related studies? Maybe so.

A study published Wednesday in the journal Vaccine found a slightly higher rate of miscarriages in a group of women who’d received a certain type of flu vaccine two years in a row. In the paper’s conclusion, the researchers are careful to say they “cannot establish a causal relationship between repeated influenza vaccination and (miscarriages), but further research is warranted.”

While the Washington Post story that alerted me to the study was cautious and well-reported, I was worried about what I would see from other news outlets. But the other headlines that turned up in a Google News search were surprisingly free of clickbait as well.

They ranged from definitive (“There is no evidence that flu vaccines cause miscarriages”) to mostly vague (“Researchers find hint of a link between flu vaccine and miscarriage”) to only slightly leading (“Study linking early miscarriages to flu vaccine puzzles doctors”).

Overall, it seemed like outlets were taking great pains to avoid another “vaccines cause autism” situation. Then again, maybe Google was just protecting me from the Internet’s darker places.

Not So Fast: “Obsolete” Technology in Space

We often think of spacecraft as being the most advanced machines out there. But when you think about their lifecycles, the technology aboard them is often … well, not exactly “space age.”

My fiancé used to work in media relations for the Cassini imaging team, and I remember him telling me once that the cameras on Cassini were the equivalent of one megapixel. 

This image brought to you by a camera you wouldn't be caught dead using to Instagram your brunch (Courtesy the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations) 

With Cassini back in the news recently as it prepares for its grand finale, I started wondering about other “obsolete” technology that’s still helping us explore our solar system.

• The instruments that transmitted data from New Horizons in 2015 used a microwave frequency that was several decades old. Just two years after New Horizons was launched, NASA upgraded to a faster microwave band.   
• The flight computers on the Orion capsule, launched in 2014, used single-core processors that had been around since 2002. In an interview with Space Review, NASA’s Matt Lemke said that’s because they were prioritizing reliability, not speed.
• In The Farthest, a documentary about the Voyager missions, a scientist says that their computing power is less than what we now regularly carry in our pockets. And he wasn’t talking about our smartphones – he was referring to our key fobs.

It just goes to show that, sometimes, tried and true can be preferable to cutting edge. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go pop a tape in the ol' VCR.

A New Gold Standard for Bladder Cancer Treatment?

More than 16,000 people in the U.S. died of bladder cancer in 2016. In a new study published in the journal Bladder Cancer, University of Colorado researchers describe a potential new method for treating the disease using gold nanoparticles and near-infrared lasers.

Here’s how it works: In superficial bladder cancer, the tumor cells are covered in something called EGFR. To target infected cells, doctors develop an antibody that binds to EGFR and attach their cancer fighters to it – a method already used to deliver chemotherapy drugs. The antibody is then injected into the bladder using a catheter.

In this case, instead of attaching chemotherapy drugs, the researchers injected antibodies armed with gold nanoparticles created by University of Colorado Boulder electrical engineering researcher Wounjhang Park. Then, they aimed a near-infrared laser light at the bladder. The laser, while safe for the patient, causes the gold nanoparticles to heat up and destroy the cancer cells to which they’re attached.

While this new ablation technique had been previously demonstrated, the most recent study took the next step toward human trials by testing it in mice. The mice were infected with bioluminescent cancer cells, allowing the researchers to measure the size of the tumor by its glow. The mice were then treated with either a laser alone, or with the laser and nanoparticles.

At the end of the six-week treatment, the researchers reported that the mice treated with lasers and gold nanoparticles had fewer cancer cells left in the bladder. They also said that the technique allowed the treatment to be highly targeted, limiting the damage to nearby healthy cells.

If further human testing is successful, the researchers hope their new technique could be used to target and destroy any cancer cells left behind after chemotherapy.

The study, titled “The Antineoplastic Activity of Photothermal Ablative Therapy with Targeted Gold Nanorods in an Orthotopic Urinary Bladder Cancer Model,” was supported by the National Cancer Institute.