Thursday, September 23, 2010 ~ Have your say...

Two New Horned Dinosaurs Discovered... on Lost Continent?


Two new dinosaur species were discovered, and boy-oh-boy, are they strange ones.


The artist's rendering to the left shows the two new dinosaur species -- Utahceratops gettyi (top) and Kosmoceratops richardsoni -- discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument of southern Utah.   Credit: Courtesy of Utah Museum of Natural History.


The rather sensationalized title of this post references the location of the find.

"These new dinosaurs are part of a wave of discoveries made in the southern part of Laramidia that could help solve a mystery roughly a half-century old.
Starting about 50 year ago, paleontologists began noticing that although they found major groups of dinosaurs all throughout Laramidia, different species of these groups appeared in the north than in the south — for example, Alberta and Montana versus New Mexico and Texas. Such provincialism seemed odd, given the small size of the continent. For comparison, there are currently five rhino- to elephant-sized mammals on the entire continent of Africa, while there may have been more than two dozen giant dinosaurs living on Laramidia, a landmass about one-quarter that size.
Apparently, some kind of barrier existed near the latitude of northern Utah and Colorado that limited the exchange of dinosaur species north and south. Perhaps there were physical barriers such as mountains or rivers, "but we have no evidence of such then," Sampson said. "That means that perhaps these areas were separated by ecology, with different plants found in both regions, which in turn would spur different sets of herbivores to evolve and then different sets of carnivores."
Investigations into the roots of this provincialism have been severely limited by the dearth of dinosaurs found in the southern part of Laramidia compared with the north. Scientists are now overcoming this shortfall, unearthing more than a dozen species of dinosaurs in the last decade in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument."
And interestingly enough, it's now thought that the horns were not used as a self-defense mechanism, but were used to attract the opposite sex, much like a peacock's tail feathers.  

The full article can be found here:
http://www.livescience.com/animals/bizarre-horned-dinosaur-discovered-southern-utah-100922.html

Tuesday, September 21, 2010 ~ Have your say...

Celebrity Ghost Stories: Television Has Reached A New Low

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Recently, I was watching the Biography Channel and saw an ad for a show called Celebrity Ghost Stories.  This is a show, where Class A celebrities, like the bald guy who was Carrie's friend in the show Sex and The City (his actual name is Willie Garson), relieve their terrifying experiences. 


More specifically, the show's tagline describes it succingtly: "Featuring personal, first-person accounts by notable actors, musicians and models, Celebrity Ghost Stories delivers a compelling, surprising and downright chilling look into the world of the paranormal by those who believe they have experienced the other side."

Putting aside the whole "ghosts" thing for a moment, I take reservation with the statement that there are "notable" actors on the show.  I think the show's writers have the same raised eyebrow.  Look at the description for some of the celebrities (I did not make this up):

Marissa J Winokur:  best known as TV actress and voiceover talent
Billy Baldwin:  best known as Actor, one of the Baldwin brothers
Donna D'Erricco:  best known as Playboy playmate and starring in Baywatch
Tracey Gold:  best known as Carol Seaver on Growing Pains
Haylie Duff:  best known as Singer, actress, sister of Hilary
Eric Balfour:  best known for appearances in 24 and Six Feet Under

Back in 2003, I was an extra in the movie, Resident Evil 2.  In fact, I had a full second of screen time (I was the Umbrella Corporation trooper scanning people as they tried to leave the city).  One time, when I was just a child, I was really scared when I was left alone in my parent's farm house... OVER NIGHT.  Thankfully, I survived, unscathed - pellet gun under my bed, dog lying next to me.  He woke up and barked a few times during the night.  It was probably a ghost, because it was also a bit chilly that night, which was weird, because it was summer.  I should be on Celebrity Ghost Stories.

Sound ridiculous? Well, if you had a budget to edit the story with freaky animations and a killer soundtrack, you could probably make that story pretty scary.

The fact of the matter is, none of the "ghost" shows on television ever find ghosts.  Haunted History, Ghostly Encounters, Ghost Hunters, and Paranormal State, included.


The fact that celebrities are now telling their stories (an obvious appeal to the argument of authority) is even worse.  In the voice of Will Ferrell on Saturday Night Live as Alex Trebek, "... and we've reached a new low.".  


Benjamin Radford, at the Centre for Inquiry, says it best in his blog entry (reprinted with permission) below:



"Having dealt with (and read the reports of "ghost investigations" by) amateur ghost hunting groups from across the country, I have noticed an interesting logical sleight of hand that allows them to frame their investigations as successful even when they fail. Many, of course, take their cues from TV shows like Ghost Hunters and Paranormal State , featuring ordinary folks (plumbers, college students, musicians, housewives, etc.) who have little or no training in science, investigation, logic, or critical thinking. Thus it's not surprising that their "investigations" invariably fail to find any real proof of ghosts, and have little to do with science or skepticism-- no matter how often they refer to themselves as "skeptics."


Ghost hunters will wander around a reputedly haunted location with cameras, voice recorders, and other gadgets, looking for any "anomaly." There are three possible outcomes of this sort of pseudoinvestigation: 1) The ghost hunters will effectively debunk a particular phenomenon or claim (such as finding that a "mysterious" cold spot in a room is due to an unseen air conditioning vent); 2) The ghost hunters will not find any evidence of anything unusual at all (no "orbs" in photos, no "cold spots," no "anomalous" readings or faint ghost voices, etc.); or 3) The ghost hunters will find one or more phenomena that they cannot explain or understand (such as a strange sound, an EVP "voice," an orb or blur in a photograph, etc.). On the surface, there doesn't seem to be any problem with this methodology--- except that it's logically and scientifically unsound, and leads to false-positive "evidence" for ghosts.

One of the hallmarks of good scientific methodology is that a claim, proposition, or hypothesis must be falsifiable; that is, there must be some way to determine whether an event occurred or it didn't, a phenomenon exists or it doesn't. If I claim that an invisible, undetectable polar bear is living in my garage, that may be true but is not a testable, falsifiable claim, because if an investigator searches for evidence and finds none at all, I can just say, "Of course you couldn't find evidence for it, the polar bear is undetectable." Thus it is an untestable, scientifically worthless claim.

Many ghost hunters have managed to frame their "investigations" in exactly the same unscientific, untestable way. In the curious world of ghost hunting, the fact that the teams of ghost hunters cannot explain phenomenon is taken as a sign of their expertise. That is, they will confidently proclaim a location haunted if they could not find an explanation for some (apparently) strange phenomenon or other; they couldn’t figure it out, couldn’t solve the mystery.

The ghost hunters set up an interesting no-lose situation for themselves. If they are able to debunk or find ordinary explanations for ghostly phenomenon, then that shows what excellent investigators they are because they cleverly figured it out. On the other hand, if they can’t figure out an explanation for some phenomenon, then that also demonstrates what fantastic investigators they are, because they claim it is evidence of ghosts! And if they don't find any evidence of ghosts, that of course does not prove that ghosts don't exist, it can just be interpreted to mean that there were no ghosts active there at the time the ghost hunters were there; the door is left wide open for later investigations. Follow-up investigations are likely to find some "anomaly" or other (especially given the lax standards of evidence, since all that is needed to create evidence for ghosts is for one person to say, "I don't really understand this"), thus virtually guaranteeing that many "haunted locations" will be deemed to have some "unexplained" activity, whether ghosts reside there or not.

Imagine if other investigative professions operated the same way, claiming success when they were unable to solve a problem: Police detectives unable to solve crimes would be promoted; doctors unable to correctly diagnose diseases would be congratulated and receive awards; mechanics who couldn't explain and fix automotive problems would be successful. Usually, inability to accomplish a goal (such as explaining a mystery) is seen as an obvious failure; for ghost hunters, it's a proud badge of success! If the purpose of investigation is to collect good scientific evidence for ghosts, the ghost hunter groups have completely failed." []  



At least I can take solace in the fact that there's only 32 people who "Like" Celebrity Ghost Stories.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 ~ Have your say...

Whooping Cough Makes a Comeback in California

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It still astonishes me when I hear that nearly eradicated diseases are making a comeback in industrialized nations where the diseases and their symptoms can be almost entirely avoided.  Whooping cough, featured in a previous article, is one of those diseases.  It is particularly dangerous because it affects infants who are too young to be vaccinated.

Christopher Wanjek recently wrote an article outlining a recent trend with respect to whooping cough.  The trend is disturbing:  the anti vaccination movement is having an effect on the number of whooping cough cases in the United States... they are increasing.  And people are suffering for no logical reason.  It's so bad, in fact, that in the state of California, they have declared a whooping cough epidemic.

A summary of the article is outline below.

cwanjek-columnist-153x65.jpgWhooping Cough Makes Whopping Comeback

By Christopher Wanjek, LiveScience's Bad Medicine Columnist

Whooping cough, named for the high-pitched "whoop" a person makes when inhaling, has made a comeback, with an incidence rate up by a whopping 2,300 percent since 1976, the year when fear of the vaccine began to take hold and vaccination rates started to plummet. In 1976 there were only about 1,000 reported cases; in 2005, the most recent peak, there were nearly 27,000 reported cases (and likely over 1 million unreported cases), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With outbreaks that cycle every three to five years, the respiratory tract infection might peak again this year, and the CDC recommends you get a booster shot soon.

In June, California declared a whooping cough epidemic after the death of five infants. So far there have been nearly 3,000 reported cases across six states, according to the CDC, a sevenfold increase compared with this time last year. Whooping cough season doesn't really kick in until the fall.

A reversing trend

Whooping cough, known in the medical trade by its more conservative name, pertussis, is nearly completely preventable through vaccination. Pertussis was once a leading cause of infant death, with over a quarter million cases and about 8,000 total deaths annually in the United States during the peak years in the 1930s, just before the advent of the vaccine in the 1940s, according to CDC statistics.

By the 1970s, through vaccinations, whooping cough was as endangered as the whooping crane, with only about 0.000005 percent of the population infected. Unfortunately, fears that the DPT vaccine (a combo for diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus) could cause brain damage in rare cases — not entirely unfounded — gave rise to the anti-DPT movement in many industrialized countries.

At issue was the "whole-cell pertussis" element of the vaccine, since replaced in most countries, including the United States, with an "acellular" formulation (which includes purified proteins from the Bordetella pertussis bacteria), indicated by the "a" in DTaP, a common abbreviation for the vaccine these days. While never conclusively associated with brain damage, the original formulation was tied to other serious albeit rare side effects, such as allergic reactions and seizures.

Hype and consequences

The impact of the anti-vaccine movement was dramatic. In Great Britain, immunization rates for whooping cough dropped from over 80 percent to 33 percent (and in some regions to less than 10 percent) from 1974 to 1977. Then the epidemic hit. In 1979 there were over 100,000 cases and 36 deaths worldwide. In Japan in 1975, amidst public worry, the government suspended mandatory pertussis vaccines for infants; the 1979 epidemic killed over 40 children there. The same scene repeated itself in other countries, as well.

In June 2009 researchers reported in the journal Pediatrics that children who didn't receive the whooping cough vaccine were 23 times more likely to contract pertussis. In the June 2010 issue of Pediatrics, researchers found no connection between the vaccine and seizures.

Herd mentality

The recent upsurge of whooping cough cases is not entirely the fault of the anti-vaccine movement. For the pertussis incidence rates to remain low — even among the vaccinated, because the vaccine isn't 100-percent effective — there needs to be herd protection, in this case over 90 percent of the entire population immunized, to minimize the number of carriers.
Fewer than 85 percent of children are fully immunized against pertussis, according to the CDC. Some parents simply forget to keep up the multi-shot schedule. And for adults, vaccinated as children, the strength of the immunization has waned.

To curb the epidemic, the CDC is recommending that adults get a booster shot. Most adults have never received one and have never been told to get one.

Going natural is perhaps not the best bet. While pertussis is rarely deadly for otherwise healthy adults, struggling through the aptly named "100-day cough" isn't particularly pleasant, with its uncontrollable fits of violent coughing around the clock.

Also, in the August 2010 edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases, James Cherry of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA addresses a common myth that living through a bout of pertussis offers lifetime immunity. Not so. Protection from the vaccine and booster lasts longer, although no more than 10 years.

One limiting factor for a fully immunized population could be the fact that, for adults, the booster shot might not be covered by medical insurance.


*  Update..................................................................


After researching this topic much deeper, it appears that there is no clear evidence that the antivax movement is responsible for this particular epidemic (source below).  Even skeptics can get caught up in hype!  I do apologize and have modified the title of this article.  Many thanks to those who posted for pointing this out!  

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=6570  


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Wednesday, September 1, 2010 ~ Have your say...

How Do The Seasons Work?


What makes the seasons change and how do they work?  With September upon us, the days are getting noticeably shorter, the nights cooler, and winter is only three short months away.

A common misconception is that we are closest to the Sun in the summer... but this is actually the opposite.  The Earth is at it's farthest from the Sun on the first day of summer.  So why is it warmer in the summer then?

The elliptical orbit of the Earth around the Sun has little effect on the seasons. Instead, it is the 23.45-degree tilt of the planet's rotational axis that causes us to have our seasons. This tilt, combined with the Earth's rotation around the Sun, produces two effects:

1)  A variation in the amount of daylight each hemisphere receives
2)  Seasonal weather (colder in winter, warmer in summer)

Variation in the Amount of Daylight:

By looking at how sunlight is landing on the planet in the diagram below, you will notice two things:
  • In the winter, the Southern Hemisphere is getting more sunlight than the Northern Hemisphere.
  • In the winter, the North Pole is getting zero sunlight, which is why it experiences 24 hours of darkness in January.
Image Credit:  Roy Flookes and Dave Donkin

If the Earth was at right angles to the Sun, day and night would always be equal length, and there
would only be one season throughout the whole year. 

Seasonal Weather:

That huge difference in the amount of sunlight reaching the ground in the different hemispheres also causes the seasonal weather.  Note that in the winter, the same amount of sunlight is being delivered by the sun, but it is spread out across a much greater surface, thus having less of a warming effect.  The diagram below illustrates this effect.

NASA provides an animation which shows the changing seasons and the effect of seasonal temperatures on the entire Earth: 
For additional information, Riverside Scientific Inc. has produced an interactive application which allows students to easily visualize how the seasons work and why they change.  The application, RSI Seasons, is available as a trial on their website.



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