Perfect pitch: you got it or you don't

This story caught my eye - so I am giving you a few details because a Scientific American story reports that you don't have to be Mozart to correctly identify a tone as A-sharp or D-flat. In fact, says a new report, perfect pitch may be genetic.

Says reporter Nikhil Swaminathan, "In the midst of recruiting subjects for a genetic study on perfect (absolute) pitch—the ability to discern a note from nearly any sort of sound without a reference tone—scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, discovered several interesting patterns among people who have the skill.

"Among the findings of the study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA : 'Either you've got it or you don't," says senior report author Jane Gitschier, a professor of medicine and pediatrics at U.C.S.F. She says that data collected from more than 2,000 people aged eight to 70 years old during the study indicates that there is likely a genetic basis to perfect pitch—one she believes is activated by early music training "Absolute pitch almost certainly requires exposure to music at a young age," Gitschier notes. "You need to have some idea of the nomenclature.'"

Facebook shares photos from the unborn

I was taken with this story, so I am sharing it - let's say social networking, new technology and communications makes it right for WendSight.

Says FOX News, "It already has its own Facebook page and more than 100 people want to be its friend — but Bubba Waring, described by its mother as "the world's most famous fetus," hasn't actually been born yet. Sydney couple Claire Gillis and Luke Waring, who are expecting their first child in three months, initially turned to the social networking site to keep their family and friends updated on the pregnancy. But instead of creating a profile under her own name, Gillis said she thought it would be better to do it from her unborn child's perspective.

Global warming - come on people wake up!

Back to the same ol' same ol' - does global warming exist - you would think we were talking about extraterrestrial life or ET sightings.

SCIAM OBSERVATIONS Opinions, arguments and analyses from the editors of Scientific American: Newsweek denies the existence of global warming covers this this week.

Maybe it's because I don't have the faith in people that I should, but I find this Newsweek cover really irresponsible. Actually, it's due to the polls cited in the article--and those I have seen elsewhere--that suggest that the American public thinks, among other things, that scientists are still trying to determine if global warming is for real and that it's a major issue in the upcoming Presidential election.

Sure, the cover is provocative and gripping, but it also may be doing a disservice to the general public and the people working hard to develop new ways to combat what is realistically the greatest threat to our livelihood: climate change. In fact, global warming isn't just a threat. Combating it will require us to dramatically change the way we live. (But, you've heard this all before.)

Anyway, as a journalist and magazine junkie, I spend a lot of time combing newsstands for new reads, eye-catching designs and little bites of information that can be gleaned from a cover line, a headline or a quick turn through a publication. So, if I am scanning a magazine rack--assuming I am not a science writer--what am I going to think when I see this Newsweek cover.

Probably not much. The Internet hasn't killed all journalism, but it certainly has deeply wounded news-weeklies like Time, US News and Newsweek. Am I going to take the time to read what the asterisk is referencing? Maybe. Another plausible scenario could be: I just read the big print, forget about it and then three weeks later--while I am talking to someone about politics or energy policy or compact fluorescent light bulbs--blurt out, "I read somewhere that global warming is a hoax."

I know I am being a little dramatic, but I think this cover would better serve readers (or, more importantly, casual observers), if it said something like: "Minority Report: The Global Warming Deniers".

Hat tip to Charlie Petit over at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker for bringing this to my attention.

Science reporter seeks solar bomb experts

Sometimes you just have to read a story because of its headline: "Does anyone know how to restart the sun with a bomb?"

On July 20, reporter Philip Yam of Scientific American said: Last month, I caught a preview screening of Sunshine, Danny Boyle's sci-fi psycho thriller flick that opens today. After watching the film, I couldn't help but wonder about the premise. The sun's about to die--but not the way conventional astronomy dictates, in which the sun consumes its supply of hydrogen in its core, swells out as a red giant (and boils away the earth's atmosphere), blows off its outer layer and turns into a white dwarf. Sunshine makes no attempt to say how the bomb would restart the sun's thermonuclear engine.

So I pose this question to all you who know more astrophysics than I: can you envision just how the sun's output might start declining suddenly and precipitously? And how a "solar bomb" might actually work to restart it? The moviemakers do say that the bomb has the mass of Manhattan, but I don't know if that helps or hurts.

Reading minds - scientists get closer

You may have seen the movie Minority Report - think about the special people that the police used to read their minds about past experiences and memories. With today's science closing in on witnessing memories and reading the minds of mice, maybe we are not so far away from this becoming a reality - and you won't need special powers.

Scientific American says: Researchers are closing in on the rules that the brain uses to lay down memories. Discovery of this memory code could lead to the design of smarter computers and robots and even to new ways to peer into the human mind. For decades, neuroscientists have attempted to unravel how the brain makes memories. Now, by combining a set of novel experiments with powerful mathematical analyses and an ability to record simultaneously the activity of more than 200 neurons in awake mice researchers have the basic mechanism the brain uses to draw vital information from experiences and turn that information into memories.

Okay so far this sounds fine. Now think about this: Such understanding could allow investigators to develop more seamless brain-machine interfaces, design a whole new generation of smart computers and robots, and perhaps even assemble a codebook of the mind that would make it possible to decipher--by monitoring neural activity--what someone remembers and thinks.

Read more at Scientific American.

Capillary image opens computer system

From the TechDirt blog - this is interesting so I am pointing you to the web site:

In brief: TechDirt says it's becoming less unusual for devices like laptops, and even mobile phones, to feature fingerprint scanners for secure access.

The idea is that only the owner's fingerprint can unlock the device, so if it's stolen, it will be useless to a thief. This tends to help with most of your garden-variety theft, but as anybody who's watched a few action movies knows, fingerprint-based systems don't pose a problem for the really motivated thief, who can simply cut off their victim's finger and use it to access the device or secret lair or whatever.

Sony has a system that doesn't use fingerprints, but rather an image of the capillaries (via Network Computing) beneath the skin of a person's finger. The pattern in the image can only be captured when blood is pumping through the finger in question, so severing it from the rest of the victim would render it useless.

Scientific American's Best Photos

I am a big fan of the Scientific American web site - check out the photo gallery there for the most awesome photos! The message at the bottom of the page says I cannot provide the photo here - so go to the link and check it out!!

Scientific American looks at baseball

In a Q&A by SA:

Does the length of a baseball player's arm affect the distance of his throw? If so, how?

Mike Marshall, the 1974 National League Cy Young Award winner and an associate professor of physical education, most recently at West Texas A&M University, winds up and delivers an answer to this one.

When baseball pitchers with various length pitching arms apply the same amount of force, the ones with shorter arms actually achieve higher release velocities. The muscles of players with shorter pitching arms apply their force with greater leverage—so, in order for pitchers with longer arms to achieve the same release velocity, they have to apply a greater force.

To understand how this happens requires knowledge of how muscles move the bones to which they are attached.

As with any human movement, an athlete creates a desired motion by first using some muscles to stabilize the position of one of the bones involved in the action. Then when muscles contract, he or she moves the bone, which is to be put in motion, closer to the one that is stabilized in relation to the body.

In baseball pitching, to achieve their maximum release velocity, a baseball pitcher "locks"—or, stabilizes—the bone in his upper pitching arm (the humerus) to the bones in his shoulder. Then, after rotating his hips, shoulders and upper pitching arm as far as possible toward home plate, he contracts the muscles that move the bones in his pitching forearm, wrist, hand and fingers straight toward home as powerfully as he can.

How fast these bones move toward home plate then determines the release velocity of the baseball. Because shorter forearm, wrist, hand and finger bones have less inertia to overcome, a baseball pitcher can move them faster through release. As a result, with the same amount of force applied, a baseball pitcher with shorter bones in his lower pitching arm can achieve higher release velocities.

Bats in flight - two vortices

I have always been facinated with bats ever since I saw a large gray bat hanging on a stone wall next to my grandparents' house in Harrodsburg, Ky. This is very interesting from Scientific American:

Bats seem to be adapted for slow speed and high maneuverability in the same way as hummingbirds whereas most flying birds are optimized for high speed. As birds swing their wings upward, the feathers separate like window blinds to let air through, which prevents the lift-reducing currents that the bats experienced. The two creatures also leave different wakes: A bat's stretchy wings churn up two separate vortices—one behind each wing—but a pair of relatively rigid bird wings produces one vortex for the whole bird.

Scientists are advising people who build small flying machines to see if the wind tunnel results can help out, giving detailed information about how a small autonomous flying system works. More here.

Experiemental Biology 2007 - Final Coverage

This is my last update from Experimental Biology 2007 - a meeting too vast to cover all, but here are some last snippets getting news coverage:

* Dr. Martha Payne reported as part of the American Society for Nutritionthat elderly men and women who consumed higher levels of calcium and vitamin D are significantly more likely to have greater volumes of brain lesions, regions of damage that can increase risk of cognitive impairment, dementia, depression and stroke.

Dr. Payne and her co-investigators from Duke and the University of North Carolina examined magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans from 232 men and women (79 men, 153 women) between the ages of 60 and 86 (average age 71). All the subjects had at least some brain lesions of varying sizes, including the extremely miniscule ones often seen in even healthy older persons, but those who reported consuming more calcium and vitamin D were markedly more likely to have higher total volume of brain lesions as measured across numerous MRI scans.

“At this point,” says Dr. Payne, “we do not know if high calcium and vitamin D intake are involved with the causation of brain lesions, but the study provides support to the growing number of researchers who are concerned about the effects of too much calcium, particularly among older adults, given the current emphasis on promoting high intakes of calcium and vitamin D.”

* By giving ordinary adult mice a drug - a synthetic designed to mimic fat - Salk Institute scientist Dr. Ronald M. Evans is now able to chemically switch on PPAR-d, the master regulator that controls the ability of cells to burn fat. Even when the mice are not active, turning on the chemical switch activates the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise. The resulting shift in energy balance (calories in, calories burned) makes the mice resistant to weight gain on a high fat diet.

The hope is that such metabolic trickery will lead to a new approach to new treatment and prevention of human metabolic syndrome. Sometimes called syndrome X, this consists of obesity and the often dire health consequences of obesity: high blood pressure, high levels of fat in the blood, heart disease, and resistance to insulin and diabetes. Dr. Evan’s presentation was part of the scientific program of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

* Being obese increases the risk of breast cancer in post-menopausal women, shortens the time between return of the disease and lowers overall survival rates. Researchers now report evidence on how leptin, a hormone found in fat cells, significantly influences breast cancer development and progression in mice. This new understanding, says Dr. Sebastiano Ando, establishes a new mechanism for the link between obesity and breast cancer and suggests new targets for drugs that could intervene in that mechanism.

Dr. Ando’s presentation was part of the scientific program of the American Society of Investigative Pathology.

* Recent findings that the widely-used herbal supplement Saint John’s wort could dramatically affect the absorption and metabolism of many prescription and non-prescription drugs raised concerns that other popular herbal supplements might cause similar changes, thus significantly altering drugs’ therapeutic or toxic effects. What, for example, about ginseng and ginkgo biloba, two of the most widely used herbal supplements in this and other countries?

Speaking at Experimental Biology 2007 in Washington, DC, Dr. Gregory Reed reported a study that found daily use of ginseng or ginkgo biloba supplements at the recommended doses, or the combination of both supplements, are unlikely to alter the pharmacokinetics - by which drugs are absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and eliminated by the body - of the majority of prescription or over-the counter drugs. Dr. Reed’s presentation was part of the scientific program of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Smelling for the first time

Experimental Biology 2007 update:

New discoveries about the biochemical basis of the majority of cases of the congenital inability to smell any odor, no matter how strong, have enabled their discoverer, Dr. Robert I. Henkin, director of The Taste and Smell Clinic in Washington, DC, to treat such patients, enabling them to smell something for the first time in their lives.

These patients respond with amazement, Dr. Henkin told fellow scientists .

“Until the treatment began to take effect, they had never experienced the olfactory world that surrounds us all, and it is with excitement that they quickly begin to learn what different things smell like and to relate those odors to objects they have known all their lives,” says Dr. Henkin.

His study is the first to characterize the biochemical abnormalities in these patients and the first to successfully treat patients using this new understanding. Dr. Henkin’s presentationwas part of The American Physiological Society.

In the United States alone, there are about 400,000 people who have never smelled anything in their lives. This does not include those who lose their once normal smell function because of illness or accident. A relatively small percentage - 12 percent - of individuals with congenital smell loss have multiple anatomical abnormalities of the brain and other organs. The vast majority - 88 percent - of individuals with congenital smell loss, however, do not have any such obvious organ abnormalities and their olfactory nerves and the brain regions that process olfactory information are intact.

Why, then, have they never been able to smell?

After determining the family of enzymes to which the growth and death factors belong and defining the biochemical pathway responsible for these factors, Dr. Henkin was able to treat these patients with PDE inhibitors that increase the concentration of growth factors and inhibit the secretion o death factors in nasal mucus. The treatment has been successful in restoring smell function in some of these patients, with the higher the dose and longer the use having the greatest effect.

Runners change faulty gait to reduce shock

Experimental Biology 2007 update:

More than seven out of 10 runners will sustain an injury over the course of a year, many of these injuries preventable without any adverse effects on running distance or performance, according to Dr. Irene Davis, director of the Running Injury Lab at the University of Delaware, and director of Research for Drayer Physical Therapy Institute.

In earlier studies, Dr. Davis identified the specific gait mechanics associated with common injuries. Now, in a study reported at the Experimental Biology meeting in Washington, DC, she explains how she successfully retrained runners to change their faulty gaits in eight half hour sessions, reducing leg shock by 50 percent and completely eliminating pain under the kneecap.

Her Experimental Biology presentation on April 30 is part of the scientific program of the American Association of Anatomists.

In the laboratory, Dr. Davis uses sophisticated biofeedback devices and monitors, but she says she does similar - and also effective - retraining in the physical therapy clinic at the University of Delaware using basic mechanical information, mirrors and advice to listen to the sound of one’s own feet hitting the ground.

The two studies underway in Dr. Davis' laboratory now are with runners who were selected for the study because they were experiencing or had been identified as high risk for one of the two most common running-related injuries: tibial stress fractures (microfractures of the lower leg bone) and patellofemoral pain syndrome (pain under the kneecap).

Coffee linked to risk reduction in some diseases

Today's update from Experimental Biology 2007:

Coffee is among the most widely consumed beverages in the world, and a scientist at the EB meeting says that the preponderance of scientific evidence - some by the panelists - suggests that moderate coffee consumption (3-5 cups per day) may be associated with reduced risk of certain disease conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease. The American Society for Nutrition’s popular “controversy session” was presented at the meeting.

Some research in neuropharamacology suggests that one cup of coffee can halve the risk of Parkinson’s disease. Other studies have found it reduces the risk of Alzheimer's disease, kidney stones, gallstones, depression and even suicide.

A second scientist discussed the link between diet and the development of type 2 diabetes. Worldwide, an estimated 171 million persons have diabetes, mostly type 2 diabetes, and an alarming increase to 366 million persons is expected for the year 2030. While increased physical activity and restriction of energy intake can substantially reduce risk of type 2 diabetes, he believes insight into the role of other lifestyle factors may contribute to additional prevention strategies for type 2 diabetes.

Free weight training helps rotator cuff injuries

News from Experimental Biology 2007:

Resistance training, some of it job-specific, was successful in getting 90 percent of workers with severe rotator cuff injuries back to work, the majority (75 percent) at their previous job, after traditional physical therapy had failed to do so. Furthermore, all but one of the 42 employees in the study (98 percent) reported satisfaction with the resistance-training program and its outcome.

Dr. Jamie Stark described this and five related studies of workers suffering work-related rotator cuff and lumbar fusion injuries April 29. His presentations were part of the scientific program of The American Physiological Society.

Participants in the rotator cuff study represent a class of “worse-case-scenarios” of work-related injuries. Rotator cuff injuries involve those muscles and tendons that stabilize the shoulder and can be caused by pulling the arm out of place, by falls and other accidents. All 42 of the employees had been through surgery to repair their torn muscles or ligaments. All had already gone through weeks of traditional rehabilitation and physical therapy. Even so, none had been judged capable of going back to work and thus were eligible for disability and workmen’s compensation settlements.

Dr. Stark says, “We are at a new era in which we can develop standardized exercise prescriptions that produce desired, achievable functional goals.”

Experimental Biology 2007 Underway

More than 12,000 biological and biomedical scientists will gather for the Experimental Biology 2007 meeting at the Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC, April 28 through May 2.

This annual meeting brings together scientists from dozens of different disciplines, from laboratory to translational to clinical research, from throughout the United States and the world.

Through thousands of lectures, symposia, research presentations, and exhibits, Experimental Biology provides scientists and clinicians an unparalleled opportunity to step outside the boundaries of their own fields and share information with colleagues looking at similar biomedical problems through the lens of different disciplines. The meeting also offers a wide spectrum of professional development for scientists, as listed below.

The theme of this year’s meeting, “Today’s Research: Tomorrow’s Health,” speaks to Experimental Biology’s mission to share the newest scientific concepts and research findings shaping future and current clinical advances.

The six sponsoring societies for Experimental Biology 2007 are: American Association of Anatomists (AAA); American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB); American Society for Nutrition, Inc. (ASN); American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP); American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET); and The American Physiological Society (APS). Experimental Biology includes the annual meetings of all sponsoring societies.

Eighteen U.S. and international guest societies further broaden the scope of the meeting, adding expertise in biomedical engineering, behavioral pharmacology, veterinary pathology, biological chemistry, informatics and other areas of investigation.

Bioscrypt's 3D Device Recognizes Your Face

A blog called Notes from the Digital Frontier says: "Bioscrypt, a Toronto-based company who has pioneered the field of visual recognition and authentication, has developed a new product to use a users’ face as the access control tool.

This new webcam-type device utilizes 3D face recognition technology to authenticate users. So in order to access someone else’s computer, I simply need to make a rubber mask of their face, right?

Maybe it’s not quite that easy. Bioscrypt has developed their system to use 40,000 points of recognition in a 3D mesh. It will also accommodate varying head positions and a wide range of lighting conditions. But just how accurate can this technology be?

I have doubts that this technology could recognize my face on a fairly consistent basis without telling me that I am not an authorized user. And what happens if I my facial expression is different from uninterested and mundane expression that has been recorded in the database? Will the system be able to tell the difference?"

Read more.

Physicist Quantifies Poker Tournament

I enjoy looking at the intersection of physics and everyday matters, such as this story in Scientific American by Christopher Mims:

Clément Sire isn't just a statistical physicist -he's also a champion bridge player. Combining his love of physics and games, he has created a model of the poker variant Texas hold 'em that enables him to do everything from predicting the length of a tournament to figuring out his ranking simply by assessing the average size of his opponents' fortunes.

It may seem like an odd way to spend his time. After all, isn't physics supposed to be about particle colliders and superconductivity? "Physicists," Sire explains, "are now more than ever involved in the study of complex systems that do not belong to the traditional realm of their science."

Poker is an especially attractive subject, because it's one of the few truly isolated systems. Unlike, say, the stock market, which is often governed by factors such as politics, war and weather, poker tournaments are not affected by external phenomena. As a result, even Sire's simplified model of Texas hold 'em appears to mathematically express many features of the game that experienced players would recognize.

It turns out that the distribution of the "stack," or fortune, of the chip leaders across tournaments mirrors the pattern found in the distribution of maximum temperatures during every August in history or countless other natural phenomena where physicists have attempted to predict the nature of extreme values. This pattern, called the Gumbel distribution, means that the frequency with which chip leaders accrue fortunes of any given size is, in a way, a natural phenomenon that arises as much from the characteristics of the game being played as from the dispositions and abilities of those playing it.

Read more.

Memories, past lives and recollection

I like to check out Scientific American every week - it has the most interesting and innovative coverage of science and medicine, and the best writing.

Today's list of stories includes one on memories, so I have pulled the first of it and you can read the whole story at Scientific American.

Says SciAm: Do you sometimes have memories of a mysterious past life? Recall odd experiences such as being abducted by aliens? Wonder where these memories come from and if, in fact, you were really once whisked off in a flying saucer by ETs?

Seems the answer may be simpler than you think—or remember. A new study shows that people with memories of past lives are more likely than others to misremember the source of any given piece of information.

Study author Maarten Peters of Maastricht University in the Netherlands tested patients of "reincarnation therapists," who use hypnosis to help their patients remember "past lives," which the clients believe are at the root of their current problems.

"Once familiarity of an event is achieved, this can relatively easily be converted into a belief that the event did take place," Peters says. "A next possible step is that individuals interpret their thoughts and fantasies about the fictitious event as real memories."

Happiness and the Search

Check out continuing coverage about "happiness" in Scientific American. This is by Marina Krakovsky.

An experimental psychologist investigating the possibility of lasting happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky understands far better than most of us the folly of pinning our hopes on a new car--or on any good fortune that comes our way. We tend to adapt, quickly returning to our usual level of happiness.

The classic example of such "hedonic adaptation" comes from a 1970s study of lottery winners, who a year after their windfall ended up no happier than nonwinners. Hedonic adaptation helps to explain why even changes in major life circumstances--such as income, marriage, physical health and where we live--do so little to boost our overall happiness. Not only that, but studies of twins and adoptees have shown that about 50 percent of each person's happiness is determined from birth.

This "genetic set point" alone makes the happiness glass look half empty, because any upward swing in happiness seems doomed to fall back to near your baseline.

Graffiti's beauty - flickr gives us a look

A day for WendSight to look at graffiti on flickr. Thank you Brian from The Curse of Brian.