Archive
Does TV Watching Make You Sick? Not Exactly…
Beware! It might kill you! Photo Credit: Istvan Takacs
I’m a little annoyed with some headlines hitting a few news websites today:
TV Watching Raises Risk of Health problems, dying young
Excess TV time linked to early death
TV time tied to death, diabetes risk
The stories are talking about a study getting published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study is a meta-analysis of 8 studies over the past 40 years which look at the correlation between watching television and risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The study found, unsurprisingly, that increased television watching was correlated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The pooled relative risks per 2 hours of TV viewing per day were 1.20 (95% CI, 1.14-1.27) for type 2 diabetes, 1.15 (95% CI, 1.06-1.23) for fatal or nonfatal cardiovascular disease, and 1.13 (95% CI, 1.07-1.18) for all-cause mortality.
In layman’s terms, this means that for each 2 hours of television watched per day, risk of type 2 diabetes increased by about 20%, risk of developing fatal or non-fatal heart disease increased by about 15%, and risk of dying of any cause increased by about 13%.
So does watching TV make you sick? Not exactly.
I’m not doubting the results of the study, though they should be taken with the usual grain of salt that should be taken with all epidemiological studies.
They are observational studies, not controlled studies in a lab. There are many variables which can influence the results.
That being said, the results of the study are not surprising and I have every confidence that there is truth in there.
But the media takes these types of studies, gives them a sensationalized headline and doesn’t put them in the proper context.
Watching TV does not make you sick; being lazy makes you sick. What this study is really showing is that watching TV correlates to a lazy lifestyle.
There’s nothing wrong with kicking back and watching some Star Trek reruns or even *groan* Dancing with the Stars. Just make sure you go out for a jog now and then. Or play some basketball. Or just do anything that isn’t sitting around and being lazy!
I’m sure snacking is a big factor in the results of this study as well. No doubt increased time in front of the TV leads to eating more unhealthy foods.
But if you sit in front of the tube and eat baby carrots or oatmeal, then you are probably not at a huge risk of developing heart disease or diabetes.
So if you watch a lot of TV, you’re not necessarily going to die young because TV doesn’t make you sick.
But if you eat a lot of junk food and don’t exercise, then you might die young. But then again, THAT’S not exactly news, is it?
CERN Traps Anti-Matter For 1000 Seconds
Antimatter is cool.
It lets us perform PET scans and powers the starship Enterprise. But it is extremely difficult to study.
That is because when anti-matter comes into contact with normal matter, they annihilate one another, emitting pure energy (photons). This is unfortunate for scientists because they would love to study anti-matter, but developing a trap for it is understandably tricky. The anti-matter particles can easily interact with background gases or the walls of the container.
But last year, researchers at CERN published a paper in Nature (which I also blogged about) describing how they managed to trap 38 atoms of anti-hydrogen (an antiproton orbited by a positron) for 172 ms.
They have not stopped working on improving their trap, however, and have now performed a study detailing how they were able to trap anti-hydrogen for 1000 seconds, an increase of nearly 4 orders of magnitude from their previous paper.
This is what they did:
First, CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator creates the antiprotons which will be used to create atoms of antihydrogen. The Anitproton Decelerator provides antiprotons in groups roughly 3 x 107 in number. Only anti-protons which have an energy less than a certain amount (< 3 keV) are trapped. Typically the number of antiprotons less than this energy threshold is ~6 x 104. These antiprotons are then cooled and compressed.
After this initial step, the antiprotons are then mixed with a cloud of positrons in an effort to get these two components to combine into atoms of antihydrogen. After mixing for about 1 second, the researchers end up with about 6 x 103 atoms of antihydrogen.
All this takes place inside a magnetic trap. The trap is cylindrical in shape and has a length of 270 mm and a diameter of 44.5 mm.
A schematic diagram of the anti-hydrogen trap (a). The other graphs in this figure show the strength of the magnetic field at different points in the trap.
In order to actually “trap” the anti-hydrogen atoms, a magnetic field is generated inside this cylinder. The field is shaped such that the magnetic field is weakest in the middle of the trap (~ 1 T), and stronger along the edges of the trap (~ 2 – 3 T). In this way, a type of “well” is created which keeps the antihydrogen atoms in the middle of the apparatus, which prevents them from interacting with the walls of the trap and annihilating themselves.
After holding the antihydrogen atoms for a certain period of time, the researchers would shut down the magnets and wait for the atoms to annihilate themselves by hitting the walls of the trap. A special detector counts these annihilation events and allows them to detect the number of anithydrogen atoms remaining after the experiment.
Why don’t all the antihydrogen atoms remain? Most of them are lost through interactions with gases inside the trap, such as helium and molecular hydrogen.
They varied the experiment time from 0.4 seconds to 2000 seconds, and did several attempts for all time lengths. As you might expect, they detected more annihilation events per attempt for the short time lengths (e.g. 1.13 ± 0.13 events/attempt for 0.4 second time length) than the longer time lengths (0.77 ± 0.29 events/attempt for 1000 second time length).
Ah but now you are thinking, “but they did some experiments at 2000 seconds, why aren’t we hearing about that?”
The reason is that they only did 3 experiments at the 2000 second time scale, and while they did detect a few events, the results were not strong enough to say for sure that they were able to trap antihydrogen at that time scale.
The paper also discusses some of their computer simulations and how they compare to the actual experiment results, but I will leave that to the interested reader.
So what are the implications of this work?
Being able to trap anti-matter for this period of time will allow for much easier ability to perform spectroscopy, since the density of atoms and intensity of radiation needed are dramatically reduced in the anti-matter can be held for a long period of time.
In addition, trapping anti-hydrogen for this long time scale will allow researchers to cool the anti-matter to very low levels, allowing them to probe the effect of gravity on anti-matter.
ALPHA Collaboration, G. B. Andresen, M. D. Ashkezari, M. Baquero-Ruiz, W. Bertsche, E. Butler, C. L. Cesar, A. Deller, S. Eriksson, J. Fajans, T. Friesen, M. C. Fujiwara, D. R. Gill, A. Gutierrez, J. S. Hangst, W. N. Hardy, R. S. Hayano, M. E. Hayden, A. J. Humphries, R. Hydomako, S. Jonsell, S. Kemp, L. Kurchaninov, N. Madsen, S. Menary, P. Nolan, K. Olchanski, A. Olin, P. Pusa, C. Ø. Rasmussen, F. Robicheaux, E. Sarid, D. M. Silveira, C. So, J. W. Storey, R. I. Thompson, D. P. van der Werf, J. S. Wurtele, & Y. Yamazaki (2011). Confinement of antihydrogen for 1000 seconds arXiv arXiv: 1104.4982v1
The Science of Your Political Views
While Canadian politics could never match the emotional idiocy of American politics, I’ve seen some pretty heated discussions in the past few weeks.
The Canadian federal election is a couple of weeks away, and with the debates over and done, we are in the home stretch of campaigning.
But how much do attack-ads and party platforms really affect our decision of whom to vote for? Is it possible that our political leanings are more influenced by ‘nature’ than ‘nurture’?
An article in The Globe today discusses the neuroscience behind political viewpoints. As it turns out, the brain of a conservative works differently than that of a liberal.
Dr. David Amodio, Assistant Professor of Psychology at New York University, discussed what these differences were, and how they affect what political party we support.
According to a 2007 paper Dr. Amodio published in Nature Neuroscience:
on average, conservatives show more structured and persistent cognitive styles, whereas liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty.
So conservatives tend to be more, shall we say, stubborn in their political viewpoints than liberals, who tend to gather more information and can be more flexible with their views.
While this may conjure up a stereotypical image of the crotchety old man, so set in his ways that he refuses to vote for anyone but the Conservatives, you should take these studies with a grain of salt.
It is only fair to point out that most of these studies are designed by liberals and may have some bias, and there are certainly many exceptions to these “rules”.
One very interesting study discussed in The Globe conducted at Princeton University:
people were shown black-and-white photographs of the faces of rival political candidates. After viewing each pair of photos for a mere half a second, they were asked which candidate looked more competent. In fact, the candidates they judged to be more competent had won their races two-thirds of the time.
This indicates that, regardless of political leanings, people tend to vote with their emotions as much, if not more, than with their brains. As much as I hate attack ads and staged photo-ops, it would seem the strategists are using science to their advantage.
So whether you identify yourself as a Liberal or a Conservative, NDP or Green, it couldn’t hurt any of us to be aware that the way our brains work can influence how we vote, and we should make an extra effort to stay informed on all the issues; instead of voting for the same party every time just out of habit.
I Guess I Have to Retire From Blogging Now
xkcd has (once again) said it all. Basically summarizing my entire blog in a single cartoon.
There’s just…nothing left for me to add. What more can be said? What am I going to do with my time now?
I guess I could try knitting…
Canadians are the World’s Biggest Net-Nerds
A report released yesterday by ComScore has found that Canadians spend more time online, about 43.5 hours per month in 2010, than any other country! Hurray!
The United States was second with 35.3 hours per month, followed by the UK with 32.3.
Some other notable statistics were that there was a 12% growth in Canadian users in the age group of 55+ in 2010 compared to 2009. Keeping in touch with the grandkids I guess.
And while traffic to Social Networking sites like Twitter and Facebook went up 13%, visitors to blogs went down by 9%.
C’mon people, close down your TweetDeck and drive up the site stats on my blog would ya?
I’m not really sure if Canadians should be proud of this or not. Does this mean we are the most tech-savvy of all nations, or that we have nothing better to do?
Of course it does get pretty cold up here in the winter time, so I’d rather be watching stuff on YouTube than braving the -25C weather in Calgary. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, right?
The Adventure of Links: Feb. 19, 2011
Since I’ve been slacking on my links, this will be a big one. Within you will find that sex in space would be tricky, a statue of Robocop, thundersnow, proof of “unintelligent design” and a genetically modified jalapeno.
Physics/Astronomy
Tesla vs. Edison Mad Lib. Yes, you read that correctly.
A biopic about Einstein is in the works.
Scientists smash giant granite balls together to simulate asteroid impacts (w/video)
Its been 10 years since Fox tried to convince people the moon landing was a hoax. Fox has not improved much in the last decade.
Learn physics from an NFL cheerleader. Science rules!
How Vikings navigated using crystals and polarized light.
Health
How long is a severed head conscious for?
Why beer batter is better for fish and chips.
You mean Nutella isn’t really healthy? Whaaa?
Sugary soda may increase efficiency of brain activity.
A jalapeno genetically altered to hold more cream cheese for jalapeno poppers. I feel fatter already.
Fun/Funny
Fantasy casting posters re-imagine classic sci-fi films. Tim Curry as the Joker? Weird…
Ancient humans used skulls as goblets. Mmmmmm…
The Angry Birds finally settle their disagreements.
Detroit to erect a statue of Robocop.
The mystery of which Cubs game Ferris Bueller went to has been solved!
Lions and Tigers playing with an iPad.
A piece of cake from Charles and Diana’s royal wedding sold at auction. Some people have WAY too much money.
Winston Churchill’s false teeth sold at auction. Seriously, TOO MUCH MONEY!
Sexy Stuff
Space sex would be tricky, says NASA.
Best Science headline I’ve read in a while: Two Timing Spacecraft has Date with Another Comet (w/video)
Why girls moan during sex. Sorry guys, turns out we aren’t THAT good….
Folk Myth : Can shoe size predict penile length?
Post Orgasmic Illness Syndrome. Yes, it’s a real thing.
Girls like monkey sex. Literally.
Internet/Technology
Internet users more likely to volunteer
New device uses EM pulses to detonate IEDs from a safe distance.
A robot that can hear you breathing. Through walls.
Want to have a confession but don’t want to talk to an actual priest? There’s an app for that.
Amazon adds real page numbers to the Kindle.
Mexican cops seize a home-made marijuana hurling catapult near U.S. – Mexico border.
We’ve run out of IP addresses! Run!
Nature
Japanese researchers plan to resurrect the Woolly Mammoth in 5 years. Don’t get your hopes up.
The essentials of bear hibernation
Natural selection limits how many attractive males can exist in a population
The mystery of how fleas jump has been solved.
Thundersnow. What else needs to be said?
Polar bear swims 9 days straight.
Skepticism
An explanation for why people hold on to irrational fears.
In India, Astrology is a science. I know, right? *FACEPALM*
Show Homeopathy Works, Win A Million Dollars!
On Saturday, February 5th 2011, skeptics from 10 different countries took a mass overdose of homeopathic “remedies”.
Everyone was ok.
It was part of the 10:23 campaign, which I blogged about on Friday. The point of the demonstration was to show that these products are not medicine, and do absolutely nothing.
Concurrently with the demonstration, James Randi of the James Randi Educational Foundation issued a challenge to Homeopaths. The challenge is quite simple:
Show that a homeopathic remedy works better than a placebo for ANY illness, in a double-blind clinical trial designed by YOU, the homeopath, and supervised by reputable scientists. If you can show a statistically significant effect in a study of this kind, you will win $1 million for yourself, or the charity of your choice.
If homeopathy worked, this challenge would be an easy win for homeopaths. If a homeopathic remedy did anything at all, it would show a statistically different effect than a placebo. Of course, this type of study has been done many, many, many times and the results are remarkably consistent: homeopathy does not work.
James Randi gives a very nice explanation about the ideas behind homeopathy, which unfortunately are not common knowledge. My favourite quote from the video is
Many people think that the work ‘homeopathic’ just means ‘herbal’ or ‘natural’ medicine and they are shocked to learn what it really means. It should be a crime for pharmaceutical corporations to profit by denying the public this critical information about the products on their shelves.
It is extremely important that the truth about homeopathy becomes well-known. Particularly now, since I have just read on the Huffington Post (which I read when I am feeling masochistic) that a Doctoral degree is being offered in Homeopathy in the United States.
Those who graduate from the doctoral program will be qualified to diagnose illnesses and treat them with homeopathic medicine.
This is frightening. Many people have been harmed by seeking homeopathic treatment in the place of real medicine. And it just simply doesn’t work.
We’ve All Wondered It: How Long Can You Wear Jeans Without Washing Them?
When I was in first year university, living in rez, I probably wore the same pair of jeans for about a month before washing them. I thought it was a little gross, and my mom would have my head if she ever found out, but I did it.
Yeah they smelled a little bit, but laundry just takes so long and I had this paper due and that girl wouldn’t call me back…
But I digress.
So how long can you really wear a pair of jeans without washing them? One student from the University of Alberta put it to the test.
As reported on the CBC, Josh Le wore “skin-tight” jeans for 15 months (did we need to know they were skin-tight?) without washing them, from September 2009 to December 2010.
But he actually did do a bit of science here. After 15 months he swabbed the jeans for bacteria. Then, he washed the jeans, wore them for 2 weeks and swabbed them again, and compared the results.
Josh Le, with his pair of skin tight jeans that he wore for 15 months straight. (John Ulan/Canadian Press)
And wouldn’t you know? The results were about the same!
“They were similar,” [Le’s Professor Rachel McQueen] said of the bacteria count of the freshly washed pair, compared to the pre-washing levels. “I expected they would still be much lower than after 15 months.”
So although the jeans were technically not infested, they did start to smell a bit.
“I triple-bagged them and put them in the freezer,” [Le] said.
Ok, so you COULD wear your jeans for months and they wouldn’t be any more infected with viruses or bacteria than a usual wear of a week or so. But the real question is: should you?
Whether Josh had a date in those 15 months was not mentioned. And frankly, his professor is kind of cute, so I don’t think he should have shown her those jeans.
But, anything in the name of science. Good for you Josh! I admire your gumption.
Redefining the Kilogram
There has been a movement in the physics world for that past few years to standardize the kilogram. At the moment, a kilogram is defined as the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK), housed at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM).
The International Prototype Kilogram. Via BIPM
The prototype is made of 90% Platinum and 10% Iridium. The kilogram is now the only physical constant based on a physical artifact.
Since it is the only constant left to standardize, physicists have been working on a way to do this. Unsurprisingly, it one such strategy has to do with Avogadro’s constant, which is a constant used throughout the physical sciences and relates the number of atoms of a substance to the amount of the substance. It has been previously defined as 6.02214179(30)×1023 mol-1
A study published online yesterday in Physical Review Letters has measured Avogadro’s constant with the highest accuracy yet.
The study was performed by using x-ray crystallography, a technique which studies the way x-rays “bounce” off the material. In this way, scientists can get an idea of the density of the material they are studying, which is directly related to the number of atoms.
The biggest problem with this technique in the past has been the high experimental errors. The BIPM has stated that any new definition of the kilogram must have an error less than 2 x 10-8, which is pretty damn small.
So in this experiment, the researchers used a silicon sphere which had been enriched with the isotope 28Si. Why?
In this way, the absolute calibration of the mass spectrometer with the required small uncertainty could be overcome by applying isotope dilution mass spectrometry combined with multicollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.
What does that mean? In a nutshell it means that the experimenters changed the isotopic abundance of silicon in the sample. Since the researchers knew what the natural isotopic abundance of silicon was, they were able to measure how it changed after they added more 28Si, and through a little bit of math were able to determine the isotopic abundance of the sample.
Confused? Don’t worry. At the end of they day all it means is they were able to greatly reduce the error in their measurement.
Why silicon? Mostly because it can be produced at very high purity and with very few defects in the crystalline lattice structure.
Next, they measured the atoms in 2 silicon spheres. It was required that the isotopic abundance of the spheres be known (which they did using 28Si enrichment) as well as the molar mass and the volume. Since silicon arranges itself in a well-known crystal pattern (8 atoms per crystal cell), determining these values was feasible.
They also needed the silicon spheres to have the same mass as the BIPM standard. They were able to get the mass the same within 5 micrograms. The volume of the spheres was determined by measuring the diameter of the spheres using optical interferometry. The volume was calculated to a very high accuracy, within 1.3 x 10-7 cm3.
So, by using x-rays, the researchers measured the “lattice parameter”, or the length of one side of a single crystal structure of silicon. Knowing this lattice parameter, as well as the fact that there are 8 atoms per crystal, and the volume of the sphere, they were able to get a measure of Avogadro’s constant.
By averaging the values from both spheres, they were able to get a value for Avogadro’s constant of NA = 6.02214078(18) x 1023 with a relative uncertainty of 3.0 x 10-8.
So their error is still greater than the requirement for a new standard, but its pretty close. The researchers believe this technique can be refined enough to get the uncertainty below that requirement.
Ok, so why do we care? Well coming up with a standard for the kilogram based on Avogadro’s number is an elegant way to link the microscopic world with the macroscopic world. Having the standard will also help with the way experiments get reported all over the world.
Reference:
Andreas, B., Azuma, Y., Bartl, G., Becker, P., Bettin, H., Borys, M., Busch, I., Gray, M., Fuchs, P., Fujii, K., Fujimoto, H., Kessler, E., Krumrey, M., Kuetgens, U., Kuramoto, N., Mana, G., Manson, P., Massa, E., Mizushima, S., Nicolaus, A., Picard, A., Pramann, A., Rienitz, O., Schiel, D., Valkiers, S., & Waseda, A. (2011). Determination of the Avogadro Constant by Counting the Atoms in a ^{28}Si Crystal Physical Review Letters, 106 (3) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.030801
The Adventure of Links: January 17, 2010
After a long break, the Adventure of Links is back. This week, an anti-pirate laser, the largest molecule ever made, and the most pornographic study ever. Enjoy!
Physics/Astronomy
Thunderstorms throw anti-matter into space. If I tried, I couldn’t come up with a cooler sentence than that one.
Playboy photo that was in the Apollo 12 spacecraft is up for auction. Dude, didn’t you know you can get porn for free now on the interwebs?
An astronomical portrait with 1 TERApixel resolution.
A little girl from Canada discovers a supernova. What am I doing with my life?
Astronomer reveals the Zodiac is out of whack. Loyal astrology followers ask him what they should do…
Sex is part of the problem if we are going to colonize Mars.
Health/Biology
Your weekly stoopid: Jenny McCarthy responds to the BMJ calling Andrew Wakefield a fraud. (He falsified his data. His work is a fraud.)
What do sex, drugs, and rock & roll have in common? Dopamine!
Listing nutrition information at fast food joints doesn’t discourage patrons from ordering the Double Quarter-Pounder.
The largest molecule ever made. Hint: It’s carbon-based.
Homeopaths show their nasty side. As opposed to their anti-science woo-loving side, which is closely related.
Fun/Funny
A device that blocks the noise from a dental drill.
The runways at Tampa airport need to be renumbered because the Earth’s magnetic pole is moving.
How to cut the top off a champagne bottle with a knife (with video!).
Trouble with pirates? Blast ’em with a laser!
Discovery of the world’s oldest wine-making facility.
Changes in climate correlate with the fall of the Roman Empire. Scientists once again try to explain the difference between “correlation” and “causation”.
Watson, the IBM supercomputer, beats two human champions in a game of Jeopardy!
NCBI ROFL finds the most pornographic study abstract of all time. Gotta love science!
Florida woman arrested for slapping a horse. And you thought YOU were having a bad day!
A Quantum of Knowledge 