Honorable Mentions: December 2013

Well as I mentioned in my last post, I have been quite busy both at work and with family over the holidays, and because of this, I have not had hardly any time to write.  Subsequently, The honorable mentions for December 2013 are all the interesting articles I found throughout the month.  There was some very interesting things that happened in science in December, much of which came in the field or astronomy.  In addition, there was some interesting news regarding more revelations in the Edward Snowden / NSA spying scandal that was also a bit tech related.  Let's hope that I get the chance to write about more of the interesting news I find in January.

Second Planetary System Like Ours Discovered

Astronomers have discovered another solar system that is, so far, the closest resemblance to our own ever found.  The system, orbiting star KOI-351, contains seven planets, three gas giants and four rocky planets, and orbit in the same basic configuration as our solar system.  One planet even orbits within the Goldilocks Zone of KOI-351, though overall the system is much more compact than ours.  In fact, all seven planets detected so far orbit within 1 Astronomical Unit, or within Earth's orbit around the sun.

Comet ISON Is No More, NASA Says

Last year when it was discovered, comet ISON was predicted by many media outlets to become as bright as the moon when it passed by the Earth this year.  Well, comets, especially ones we have never seen before, are very hard to predict, and when it passed by the sun in November, the comet fell apart and burned up.  It is unfortunate, because seeing a comet hovering in the sky is quite the sight if you have ever seen one, but perhaps we will see another great comet like comet Hale-Bopp that passed by us in 1997.

Astronomers detect water in atmosphere of distant exoplanets

Light emission spectrum of some common elements.

In some more cool astronomy news, astronomers have detected water in the atmosphere of five exoplanets for the first time ever.  These planets are all hot Jupiters, meaning they are large gas giants that orbit very close to their host star, but the detection of water on these planets is validation that we can in fact detect atmospheric composition of distant planets.  For those who are baffled as to how this is even possible, the method involves systems where the planet passes directly between Earth and the star, and the observation of the color of the starlight as it passes though the planet's atmosphere.  Since each element absorbs and emits a very specific range of light wavelengths (colors), analyzing those colors can produce a list of elements in the planet's atmosphere.

How I published a fake paper, and why it is the fault of our education system

A university professor has done a bit of investigative journalism into the world of science conferences and found that at least one of these conferences does not perform adequate peer review on the papers students submit to them.  Sounds innocuous enough, except that these papers were written specifically to get caught by the reviewers; one was complete nonsense, another was nonsense interspersed with movie quotes and other ridiculous statements.  One paper in particular was published in the conference proceedings, even though, as the author says,

"Paragraph #2 of the introduction, on the first page itself, says: You should read any paragraph that starts with the first 4 words in bold and italics – those have been written by the author in painstaking detail. However, if a paragraph does not start with bold and italics, feel free to skip it because it is gibberish auto-generated by the good folks at SCIGen.

One section of the paper consists entirely of dialogues from the movie “My Cousin Vinny.”

And the conclusion section of the paper actually has this: And we’ve managed to reference Hilbert, HHGTTG, Sholay, My Cousin Vinny, Jeff Naughton, the Wisconsin Database Performance Paper, Xeno’s paradox, Meeta Kabra and the wogma.com website, and we even referenced the Sokal Affair in the heading of the paper (actually in the name of the institute that the authors are from, but you get what I mean, right?) proving once and for all that nobody has read this paper."

We need to talk about TED

This is an interesting read on one person's opinion of TED talks, and how he feels they are not worth what many people feel they are, and that they are actually damaging science as a whole.  If you have ever heard a TED talk, they can be quite amazing and promote some remarkable revolutions in science, but the author points out that most of the science discussed in TED talks is oversimplified and never produces the results shown during the talk.

The NSA Reportedly Has Total Access To The Apple iPhone

In another Edward Snowden revelation, it appears that the NSA has complete, or nearly complete access to all iPhones within the United States.  It is really remarkable the news that keeps coming out from the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, and even more remarkable that all this spying was completely unknown to the public until earlier in 2013.  I am amazed people haven't begun wielding pitchforks and marching on Washington yet.

Federal Judge: ACLU Can’t Sue NSA Because It Never Should Have Known Anyway

This next one is not STEM related, but is just infuriating, so it gets on the list.  After much back and forth with the ACLU and their lawsuit against the federal government over the NSA spying programs against American citizens, a federal judge has thrown out the case on the grounds that Congress never intended for people to find out about the programs, therefore they cannot sue over it.  This is on the same level as a burglar stealing items from your house, but when he is caught says you cannot arrest him because he never intended for the homeowner to find out about it.  Were a criminal to try this argument, he would be laughed out of court, but when it comes to the government, the rules obviously don't apply.

Animal Loses Head But Remembers Everything

This is a really fascinating article about planarians, a small worm about an inch long.  Scientists are studying this worm because of its incredible ability to regenerate.  Cut it in half, and the two halves regrow to form two complete worms.  What is really interesting about it is during an experiment scientists removed the head of one of the worms, allowed the body to regrow the head, and tested to see if the new head could remember what the old head knew.  As it turns out it, the memories transferred to the new head.