Secrets of the Universe, eh?

Well, I'm getting reactionary, older and wiser, or sophomoric. Anyway, this week's article is entitled, "Sept launch for bid to crack secrets of universe" (Reuters, August 7, 2008). Ok, so I understand the need to be dramatic to sell news. But what the particle accerlator supposedly will do is this (again, more quoting), "help explain fundamental questions such as how particles acquire mass. They will also probe the mysterious dark matter of the universe and investigate why there is more matter than antimatter."

So, are these indeed the fundamental questions? What about the ones on my list:
- Why do men think differently than women? (i.e. directions, feelings, raising children, having children, etc. etc. etc.)
- What is it about young children and "why" questions?
- What are people irresitibly attracted to accidents?
- Are humans intrinsically good or evil?
- What, exactly, is the soul? (Do animals have one? If so, what animals? Primates? Lower animals?)
- What makes humans different than animals?

Okay, so I know that a particle accelerator cannot answer these questions for me. But the article writers really shouldn't get my hopes up like that.

Who Cares About Kevin Bacon?

So I just read this article in the Washington Post, confirming that anyone on earth is only about six (in reality its more like seven) degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Ignoring for a moment the facets of Kevin Bacon that make him, to me, a eerily creepy individual (I'm sure he's a nice guy, but there's just something about him...), let's go to how the grand conclusion was made.

Researchers initially did this through mathematical computations (ok).

And then decided to confirm it with a month-long study of our Instant Messaging habits.

The study was conducted by Eric Horvitz and Jure Leskovec, and published in June 2007. They state that they did not have access to the content of the IMs, but instead, " (1) user demographic information, (2) time and user stamped events describing the presence of a particular user, and (3) communication session logs, where, for all participants, the number of exchanged messages and the periods of time spent participating in sessions is recorded."

Does this freak anyone else out? How did they obtain this demographic information, etc.? Was I unintentionally a part of this study? I don't want to be anywhere near Kevin Bacon, period. Thank you.

Okay, now that I'm done ranting, they did find some interesting things:

1) Some IM conversations contained more than 50 participants (I cannot even imagine that. I can't imagine even a normal conversation with that many people. I would actually like to see the demographic for that conversation. I imagine it is teenyboppers, but that's just me).

2) Of course, 99% of the conversations were between only 2 people.

3) One of the pitfalls of many experiments is the lack of large enough sampling size. In this study, this does not seem to be the case. Need proof? "We gathered data for 30 days of June 2006. Each day yielded about 150 gigabytes of compressed text logs (4.5 terabytes in total). Copying the data to a dedicated eight-processor server with 32 gigabytes of memory took 12 hours. Our log-parsing system employed a pipeline of four threads that parse the data in parallel, collapse the session oin/leave events into sets of conversations, and save the data in a compact ompressed binary format. This process compressed the data down to 45 gigabytes per day. Processing the data took an additional 4 to 5 hours per day."

4) For users submitting an age (6.5% chose not too), the age group of 15-35 represents a larger share of the IM population when compared to the planetary population. See the chart pictured for a comparison with the world population (The bars are IM population; the lines down the center world population).


5) Some population demographics: People tend to talk to people of similar age, and older people tend to talk longer. People who are further apart geographically communicate via Messenger more often than those who are closer. Also, people tend to communicate more with people of the opposite gender.

6) The average social distance (i.e. degrees of separation) was measured to be seven between IM users. The longest social distance measured was 29.

They took their information during the month of June 2006. Think to yourself now, were you using IM during that time? If so, you were a part of this study.

So, how many degrees from Kevin Bacon are you? And are you ok with that?

Bees, All the Way

I can remember the last time, before this year, when I was stung. I don't remember exactly how old I was, but it was around seven or eight. I was at my grandparents house in CT, playing tag with my cousins. We were running around their yard, and I fell down in the front yard. I landed on the bee. With my knee. I remember my Aunt D, the nurse, scraping the stinger out and putting a paste of baking soda on it, and laying on the couch with my leg up. But I didn't blame the bee. After all, I landed on it, it didn't try to sting me on purpose.



Last month, I was sitting in my truck doing paperwork, and all of a sudden my bum started to really, really hurt. Enough that I thought I was sitting on something sharp, only I also started feeling naseous. Apparently, a bee had wandered in through my open windows, and I had unknowingly sat on it. Like any good biologist, I did not remove the stinger. And I was not near any ice, so it didn't get ice until at least 20 minutes later. However, besides the stomach issue, there weren't any problems. I was fine by the next day. But I put the dead bee on my dashboard as a warning to other bees.

So, this week. My daughter was out on the patio painting. I went out to see how she was doing. And a yellow jacket (there were a bunch flying around, I have no idea how she didn't get stung) comes out of the bottom corner and attacks my hand. I was a bit angry I guess, and thinking, as it is placing it's stinger in my hand "I don't want it stinging me again, I'd better take it out" I smack it, rendering it dead, and also stuck in my finger. At this point my daughter has noticed the yellow jackets and is a little, well a lot, hysterical. Meanwhile, I've got a bug stuck in and on my finger, and lots more flying around, and a 4-year-old to try to get inside, and lots of pain. After a few minutes of screaming (I would have picked her up, but I only had one hand and she's rather tall for a munchkin), I got her inside and went inside myself. Then I removed the stinger and put ice on, and went back outside for the painting supplies, which were the cause of the hysteria (you try explaining to a hysterical 4-year-old that the "bees" aren't going to hurt her paints).



So, my finger gets all swollen and red. And stays that way for the next 2 days. And itches and hurts. And my hand starts to also swell, and the next finger too. Also, I am still naseous. At this point I'm thinking that this is not an ordinary sting. After a Saturday trip to the doctor, all my worrying and whining about the pain is vindicated. I have an infection. Now, not only was I viciously attacked by that insect, it infected me, and after I did all the correct things. What's the deal? Give me the bees anytime. They are much nicer, and apparently less full of bacteria, at least in my limited (2-to-1) experience.

What is a pet?

Courtesy of the PA State Parks website:

A house pet is limited to any dog or cat commonly kept in household captivity, or a caged pet.

A caged pet is an animal that will not be released from its cage for the duration of its stay in the state park, like birds and hamsters.

A pet is not livestock, like horses, cows, pigs, sheep and goats.

A pet is not a vicious or dangerous animal, like any animal with a history of attacking without provocation.


So, hey, take your hamster camping!

Peep House of Horrors

So I had a graduation party for myself last Saturday, because I am so happy to be graduated, and it was a reason to invite everyone over. And we made Peep dioramas. So I thought I would post them below, since everyone decided to leave them at my house for my dog to drool over and my daughter to play with (and, given their violent content, this is no easy thing to explain to her. "Why is this one in a cage Mommy? What are these ones doing Mommy? What is this one doing Mommy?"). I would also like to note, for the record, that certain people refused to participate in this very, very fun activity. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.


This is Cheryl's happy summery peep rendition, perhaps the only non-violent one of the bunch.


Anna's peep C-section.



Jason's peep siege/battle. Chickie wanted to know what the catapult was. She thought it was some weird sort of see-saw.




This is Justin's. I think it's some sort of hunting thing. Chickie was very disturbed by the peep in the cage, and really, really wants to set it free. What can I say, like mother, like daughter.



Alicia's "Lord of the Peeps".


Chad's Pirate Peeps. Note the violent use of toothpicks in what, at first glance, seems like a nice sailboat outing.




Dana's "Peep Extinction Theories: 1) Glaciers, 2) Peep-Pox, 3) Meteors, 4) Alien Abduction"


Sean's Peeps in a boat.


This is mine, and yes, it's Peeps roasting other Peeps over a fire. See this post for explanation.

Microphobia R Us

Once upon a time I worked as a Teaching Assistant, teaching Intro to Biology Labs. One of the labs that we did with the students was to provide them agar plates (used to grow bacteria and molds). They divided it into four quadrants. We gave them 4 toothpicks, which they rubbed on any surface they wanted, and then rubbed each toothpick on a quadrant. The next week they came back to see what “grew” in each quadrant. Gross and true: the bottom of your shoe is usually cleaner than a doorknob. Good intro to Microbiology. So this lab was really good at the visual effect, and grossing students out (also, never, ever, ever eat anything off a lab bench, no matter how well you think you cleaned or disinfected it. I don’t care about the 5-second rule. It does not apply in the laboratory.). But it stopped there. I mean, it didn’t explain anything about hand-washing (getting the microbes off your hands before they get to your mouth – most infections get to you through the oral route you know). It also failed to discuss the immune system, and how exposure to microbes is how you build immunological memory and antibodies. Without exposure, you have none of that. And really, we are exposed to billions and billions of those things every single day. It’s not until we see it on that agar plate that we are grossed out.



We have become this microbophobic society. We have antimicrobial handwash, babywipes, soaps, spray, lotion, bugspray, dishsoap, pesticides, etc. We have automatic flush toilets, automatic sinks, automatic towel dispensers, automatic hand dryers, automatic soap dispensers. Okay, so who cares that we are wasting water, one of our most important resources? Personally, I do not need my bum washed while I am on the can. Also, everyone uses their foot to flush normal toilets anyway, so why not just do what everyone is already doing, and make them foot-flush toilets? It would save on water, and we wouldn’t have to worry about getting wet bums. And there’s got to be a better way to engineer sinks. Some of the ones with the long handles allow you to turn them on and off with your elbows. That, at least, makes elbows useful for something else besides hitting your sister (and hey, if she gets a few extra germs, why do you care?). Automatic hand dryers I generally avoid, unless they are those Xcelerator dryers that are super-turbo charged, to the point where they actually move your skin around and dry your hands in something like 3.5 seconds. I am fascinated by them something unnatural. But automatic soap dispensers just scare me. First of all, they are just weird. Secondly, they all make some kind of growling noise that must reach back deep into the depths and recall something primal inside of me that says, “RUN, something is trying to eat you!” Because that is what I feel like doing. Also, if there is anything in the bathroom that you should be able to touch, I would think it would be the soap dispenser, right?

There’s got to be a better solution. I propose that we take some of the engineers who work on baby stuff (have you seen some of the stuff they make? The Pack-n-Play? I mean, this stuff is amazing) and set them to work. These people are brilliant. Of course, we can't take all of them; we wouldn’t want the kids to suffer. But just a few of their minds would at least improve the situation I think.

Feminization du Monde

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring has been credited much with forcing society to take a larger look at what chemicals we are putting into the environment, and what effects that has in the long-term, for the health of the environment, ecology, other species, and ourselves. Of particular note was the use of the pesticide DDT and its effect on bird eggs, which were noticably thinner, as well as on the reproductive capacity of birds. DDT has also been found to affect alligators in Florida, effectively "feminizing" the males; build-up of the compound in the system blocks the androgens (male hormone) in their system. Interestingly, sometimes these "environmental estrogens" actually physically mimic and resemble their natural counterparts, while other times they simply use the same mechanisms (McLachlan and Arnold, American Scientist, 1996). These compounds have since been implicated in adverse health effects, ranging from increased allergies to cancer.

So, how might one come into contact with these estrogen-mimicking compounds? One way is as easy as mastication. Phytoestrogens (estrogen or estrogen-like compounds found in plants) can be found in clover, soybeans, other legumes such as rye, and some fruits and veggies. Then there are some that are due to fungal growth (mycoestrogens) which grow on grains; the grain is then fed to the cattle; or the mycoestrogen is used to create a hormonal supplement that is given to the cattle; either way it is present in small amounts in the cattle (hormonally supplemented meat). Mycoestrogens (from fungus) were also used at one time to produce a type of birth control; this was revolutionary since it was a non-steroidal source.

Okay, now onto more environmental estrogens introduced by humans (source here):
- pesticides (as mentioned previously insecticides like DDT, endosulfan, dieldrin, methoxychlor, toxaphene, chlordane; herbicides such as alachlor, atrazine and nitrofen; fungicides such as benomyl, mancozeb and tributyl tin; nematocides such as aldicarb adn dibromochloropropane)
- products associated with plastics (bisphenol A, phthalates)
- medications (drug estrogens - birth control pills, DES, cimetidine)
- ordinary household products (breakdown products of detergents and associated surfactants, including nonylphenol and octylphenol)
- industrial chemicals (polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxin and benzo(a)pyrene)
- heavy metals (lead, mercury, and cadmium)


But, it does not seem to be enough that our environment, our fellow creatures, and our physiological bodies are becoming feminized. Our culture appears to be trending that direction as well. Or at least making the attempt. Maybe it just wants to 'fit in'. Maybe it's something I just haven't caught on to. But whatever it was, it bothered me throughout the entire movie. I am talking about Barnyard. The first few minutes were okay, because none of the cows were really talking. But once they starting talking, and you realized that ALL the cows had udders, even the MALES, it was disturbing! After that, I really had a hard time paying attention. And at the end of the movie, when the little calf is born, the midwife-cow says, "It's a boy!", all I could think was "How can you tell?" I mean, I'm not saying we need to be all realistic or anything, or even Barbie-prim and put fake plastic clothing on certain parts. But, really, udders on all of them? Do you think the PG-audience (check, the movie is RATED PG) will not recognize the cows if they do not all have udders? Or even that, say, those younger children whose parents are letting them watch this movie, will not realize that they are watching a bunch of cows running around? Because, really, I think we get the point. Personally, I was sold with the spots.