Here we are again, my beloved readers, in the magical land of knowledge and wonder known as “science news”, where once a week, I share with you the most neato keen science stories that I have come across during the week.

First, let’s take care of old business. This story has been kicking around my browser for a couple of weeks and I figure I had better use it or lose it.

Turns out that half of the world’s heat actually comes from radioactive decay.

Scientists at the KamLAND detector in Japan recently did a highly exhaustive study of the Earth’s radioactive output via measuring anti-neutrinos for six years. (It takes that long to get enough anti-neutrinos to produce a result. )

From this, they were able to deduce that around half of the heat that the Earth radiates into the universe comes from the decay of various radioactive elements like uranium, thorium, and so on.

For some reason, this result freaks me out, kinda, and not just because it leaves us wondering where the hell the rest of our 20 terawatts of output comes from. ^[1]

I guess I just had no idea there was quite that much radioactive stuff in the Earth. Like a lot of modern people, I am a little superstitious when it comes to radioactivity, and the thought of all that radiation coming from the Earth all the time makes me kind of wish I lived on the top floor of a really tall building.

Silly, I know, but I can’t get it out of my mind.

Next up, we have some very interesting news from the world of medicine, specifically research into social disorders like autism and Asperger’s.

Researchers at Standford University have been able to use a cutting-edge technology called optogenetics on mice in order to test a previously untested theory of the neurological origin of autism et al.

The theory is a fairly simple one. The idea is that in people within the autism spectrum of disorders, there is either an excess of excitory nerve response or a deficit in inhibitory nerve response (or both) as compared to the response levels of neurotypical people, resulting in a person who is overstimulated by what is a perfectly normal and acceptable stimulus level for healthy people outside the spectrum.

In other words, autism spectrum people find the world to be an overstimulating place, whether you are talking sensory stimulation or social stimulation, and this accounts for their problems with dealing with modern everyday life.

This is a fairly obvious theory based on the many problems autism spectrum disorder people have with, for instance, situations which are loud, or when too many people are talking at the same time. This experiment, however, was the first to be able to test it empirically.

Through optogenetics, they were able to increase the excitability of certain nerves in the brains of mice, and almost instantly, the mice became antisocial and started to display the distinctive brain wave patterns of autism spectrum disorders.

I have been wondering what role over-stimulation played in a variety of disorders. What I would like to know now is if the over-excitable mice can be treated via some form of targeted inhibitory drug, or desensitizing therapy.

Finally, on a lighter note, scientists have identified the saddest movie ever.

The article does not explain their methodology in detail, but seeing as they have been working on the problem since 1988, I can only imagine that it involves a lot of movies and a whole lot of Kleenex. (All paid for with grant money, I assume. )

So just in case you want to know, according to these fellows, the saddest movie of all time is the 1979 weeper, The Champ, starring John Voight as a washed-up boxer who has to go into the ring and fight one last time in order to get custody of his son, a very young Ricky Shroeder. In the movie, the boxer actually dies during the big fight, leaving his son pleading for him to “Wake up!”.

I am not surprised that this movie came from 1979, as that would have been right in the thick of the rise of the tearjerker. People suddenly discovered the therapeutic qualities of a good cry in the late 70s and early 80s. Television shows, movies, even music was suddenly going for the big cry.

Personally, I agree with Roger Ebert : these scientists obviously never saw the Japanese animated feature Grave of the Fireflies.