Measuring neural activity using surface plasmons

Posted on May 12, 2008 by skullsinthestars

ResearchBlogging.org In the May 1st issue of Optics Letters, a Korean research group has demonstrated another interesting application of surface plasmon resonances: the optical measurement of neural activity. Though I’m not sure how useful this technique will be in the long run, it shows that surface excitations can be used in sensors in many situations when an ordinary optical wave is not sensitive enough. A description after the fold…

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Posted in Optics, Physics | Leave a comment

A shout-out to Valancourt Books!

Posted on May 10, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Have I mentioned how much I like Valancourt Books?  A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed their reprint of a rare Gothic classic, The Animated Skeleton, and even got a nice comment from the publisher/editor of Valancourt.  I vowed to look into more of Valancourt’s publications, but didn’t even realize that I already had!  In addition to publishing a line of classic Gothic literature, they’ve been printing classics of the 1890s, including a number of books by suspense/weird fiction writer Richard Marsh.  This is a real treat; as I’ve noted before in my discussion of Marsh’s book The Beetle, he was an extremely popular author of his time (even outselling Dracula for a while).  I’ve been looking into buying more of Marsh’s work, and had purchased Marsh’s The Joss: A Reversion and The Seen and the Unseen without realizing they were also Valancourt editions!

I’ll eventually get to commenting more on Marsh’s work on this blog, but I thought I’d mention that Valancourt is doing an excellent job reprinting these classic ‘lost’ works.  The book quality is excellent, and an added treat is that the covers are reproductions of the original editions.

Fans of classic horror, suspense, and mysteries would be well-advised to give these editions a look.  In addition, there’s currently a sale on a number of Valancourt’s titles, including some of Marsh’s work; check them out!

There were whispers on the message boards at Valancourt that they may produce a new edition of The Beetle, in which case I’ll be replacing my rather flimsy current copy…

Posted in Horror | Leave a comment

H.P. Lovecraft on Superstition

Posted on May 9, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I’m in between blog major blog posts right now, but I thought I’d highlight another very timely essay of H.P. Lovecraft’s, in which he discusses superstition in times of trouble.  This can be found in the excellent collection of Lovecraft’s philosophical essays, and excerpts appear below the fold.  The essay appeared in the magazine Conservative 4, No. 1 (July 1918), pp. 4-5.

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Posted in Lovecraft | Leave a comment

Another unintentionally funny news title

Posted on May 8, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I went to work out a little while ago and turned on Headline News to catch up.  Violence has unfortunately flared in Lebanon again, and a CNN news crew is caught in the middle.

CNN likes to update the caption of their ‘breaking news’ frame with background information.  By the time I had tuned in, the caption read:

BREAKING NEWS:  Political instability has existed in Lebanon for months

I guess it depends on your definition of ‘breaking’…

Posted in ... the Hell? | 2 Comments

Waiting for the ILL…

Posted on May 8, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I feel like a kid again.

When I was young, I scrupulously saved my ‘proof-of-purchase’ from all my Star Wars figures so that I could get the precious Boba Fett action figure, which could only be purchased through mail order. Oddly, as I recall, this was before The Empire Strikes Back came out, so nobody actually knew who Boba Fett was, but I didn’t care: he looked cool. The challenge was waiting the 6-8 weeks for delivery, which made me think, as Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes once said, “I’ll be OLD then!”

I’ve got that feeling again, but now it isn’t action figures I’m waiting for (I swear I just heard a huge sigh of relief from the fiancée), but articles ordered through InterLibrary Loan. I’ve been having so much fun reading and researching old scientific papers that I’ve put in about a dozen requests over the past couple of weeks, all for papers which are circa 1900 and extremely out of date. (The librarians have to be wondering what on Earth is going through my head.) Now I find myself compulsively checking the library web page, just like I checked the mailbox as a kid, and impatiently shaking my fist at the screen.

On the bright side, the articles I’ve gotten so far are utterly fascinating, and once I’ve got them all together I’ll have a really neat post. Stay tuned!

(Hooray! As I was writing this, an email arrived, telling me that another ILL arrived!)

Posted in Personal | 7 Comments

How high can you fall from?

Posted on May 7, 2008 by skullsinthestars

My friend Personal Demon tipped me off to a potentially historic skydiving event that will be happening in roughly 17 days; Michel Fournier of France will attempt to break the record for the highest freefall.  Ascending in a pressurized capsule attached to a high-altitude balloon, Fournier will dive from 130,000 feet (25 miles) over the plains of Saskatchewan, Canada.

The previous record goes back to Joseph Kittinger, Air Force pilot and all-around Übermensch.  In 1960, he participated in Project Excelsior, which was implemented to study the effects of high-altitude bailout on pilots.  Kittinger left a balloon at 102,800 feet, and fell for 4 minutes and 36 seconds reaching a maximum speed of 614 mph!  (Kittinger is less-known for being one of the few pilots who had to bail out of his jet in a thunderstorm.  The storms kept him aloft under parachute for 20 minutes before dumping him to the ground.)

Fournier’s group claims that their event is being done for similar medical and technological reasons, but it will at the very least be a very cool human accomplishment.  I’m staying tuned…

Posted in Sports | 1 Comment

Update on my “challenge” to science bloggers

Posted on May 7, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Now that I’ve actually written my “classic science” blog post, I realized I didn’t plan any way to compile all the entries in the end! If you accept the “challenge” (I keep putting the word in quotes because I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to be confrontational), and post an entry, send me an email! I’ve put together a permanent page to compile all the entries together in one easy to find spot.

(I think I didn’t plan ahead because I didn’t think anyone was actually reading my blog!) 🙂

One final note:  Just to have an end date associated with the challenge, let’s mark the end of May as the official end date; I’ll do a summary post at the end about everyone’s entries.

Posted in General science | 1 Comment

Dean Koontz: Subtle patterns in the darkness

Posted on May 5, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I haven’t done a “Horror Masters” post for a while, and it’s long past due!

Even if you’ve never read a Dean Koontz novel, you’re familiar with his work.  Airport bookstores are constantly stocked with his books; finding a horror author whose last name doesn’t start with “K” can be quite a challenge when traveling (King, of course, being the other one).

Broadly speaking, it is easy at first glance to dismiss Koontz as a “pop” horror author of no serious depth.  Many of his novels, especially his early work, follow a certain well-defined plot structure: boy/girl hero meets girl/boy love interest, both are threatened by some mysterious entity, they flee, they have a final confrontation with said entity in some isolated location and live happily ever after.  Furthermore, his short stories, such as those compiled in Strange Highways, often seem clumsy and somehow ‘inefficient’.

It would be easy to dismiss Koontz as another pop horror author showering the shelves with forgettable drek (I’m lookin’ at you, Preston and Child!), except for one important, undeniable, unavoidable reality:

Dean Koontz’s story ideas are incredibly, almost maddeningly, clever – and they’re executed brilliantly.

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Posted in Horror, Horror Masters | 3 Comments

Even airlines get it: slowing down saves fuel!

Posted on May 5, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I just saw this article on CNN the other day: Planes slow down to save fuel. Apparently airlines are finally starting to feel the pinch of higher gas prices, and are learning that going at a slightly slower speed can save significant money.

This isn’t a new observation: young folks today probably aren’t aware of the fact that the former national 55 mph speed limit was originally implemented in 1974 not for safety, but to conserve fuel in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.

The reality is that air resistance becomes a major limiting factor on fuel efficiency at high speeds.  Roughly speaking, the drag force increases as the square of the velocity at high speeds, which means that driving 100 mph results in 4 times the drag force that driving at 50 mph causes.

I drive a hybrid Civic, and the dynamic mpg gauge on the vehicle gives me significant insight into how air resistance kills fuel efficiency.  I typically find that, driving steady at 55 mph, I can get 40-50 mpg.  Once I push the car up past 70 mph, and into 80 mph, I’m lucky to get 35 mpg.  At low speeds, the car can ‘coast’ for appreciable distances without using fuel, but at high speeds, the engine must constantly work against the drag force.

These numbers, over long periods of time, add up: driving a little slower on a day-to-day basis can save you some significant money in the long run.

Posted in Politics, Science news | 12 Comments

Classic Science Paper: Otto Wiener’s experiment (1890)

Posted on May 4, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Update: In my haste to finish this “monster” post, I neglected to include an introduction to standing waves, an explanation which is crucial to understanding the experiment.  That oversight has been corrected.

A couple of weeks ago I issued a “challenge” to my fellow science bloggers: find, read, and blog about a classic, (preferably pre-WWII) scientific paper. There’s so much interesting historical context and methodological information hidden away that’s worth a second look.

For my part in the challenge, I chose an 1890 paper by Otto Wiener, “Stehende Lichtwellen und die Schwingungsrichtung polarisirten Lichtes,” Ann. Phys. Chem. 38 (1890), 203-243. Loosely translated, the title is, “Standing light waves and the oscillation direction of the polarization of light.”

The experiment that Wiener performed, as we will see, is conceptually simple and elegant. I foolishly thought that this would “translate” into a short, easy to cope with paper. As one can see from the citation above, no such luck: the paper is 40 pages of somewhat antiquated German! I accepted my fate, though, and soldiered on. A description begins below the fold…

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Posted in History of science, Optics, Physics | 19 Comments