Friday Science Apothecary, April 5, 2013

Congratulations, you are a winner!

You have won a fabulous showcase of science stories sure to please even the most demanding critic! These gifts come straight from the manufacturer and are provided for promotional consideration. Note that some portions of this broadcast were taped in advance, and it has been edited for broadcast. Remember, log on to our website and get your ScienceIDTM and then tune in every day to see if you too could be a winner of your choice of $5,000 or a ball of rare earth magnets the size of your head.

And now, on with the show!

Our lovely assistant Janice is pointing to the first item in our science showcase, an article that starts with an amazing question : Can you smell obesity?

OK, let me get this out at the beginning : as an obese person, I find this question extraordinarily offensive. We fat people have enough problems with people assuming we are all disgusting slobs without you substandard science writers putting ideas in their heads.

And here’s the kicker : the answer is “no”. The article is about the sort of differences in gut bacteria that I talked about last week, and the differences in breath constituents would only be comprised of methane, which is odorless.

But the thing that really gets me is what possibly need is there for a breath test for obesity? Obesity is the easiest diagnosis in history. You can diagnose obesity from across the street during heavy traffic. You need no special equipment to diagnose obesity. You only need eyes.

So from all possible angles, it is a stupid and offensive question. Screw you, CNN!

OK, what silly metaphor am I using this week? Oh right, game shows.

Next up, behind that curtain you will find a fabulous… story about a computer program that is using a Kinect to diagnose depression!

And so much more. The program understands facial expressions and body language to a degree I would not thought possible. Check out this video :

The amount of sophisticated understanding of human behaviour this program shows is very impressive. It understands gaze aversion, facial expressions, leaning forward and backward, and tons of other stuff.

It is, in essence, using a lot of the same cues that we use when we are trying to understand what another person is feeling. Human beings have extremely sophisticated hardware in our brains that let us understand what other people are feeling, and to a certain extent, feel the same things ourselves.

The degree to which the program is going to put people at ease is highly questionable. Don’t get me wrong, it does amazingly well and is leagues ahead of any similar program I have ever seen.

But it is still creepy and unnatural. Because human beings’ hardware for doing the same job is so powerful, it takes a lot more than what they have done here to ‘fool’ it.

So as research and development, this is an extraordinary achievement. But practical? I don’t think so.

Coming up on our turntable, you will find this rare and exotic story about recent progress towards solving the mystery of dark matter.

(Warning : as that link goes to a CERN press release, it’s an uphill read for us amateurs. )

From what I can gather from the article, a rather neato device called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (or AMS to its homies) was installed in the International Space Station (ISS, formally speaking) in order to figure out just how much excess (as in, more than predicted by current theory… we don’t have too many) positrons it can detect in the background cosmic radiation of space (BCROS to nobody).

This had to be a space station kind of thing because trying to get precise readings on Earth would be like trying to see the stars through heavy clouds. That pesky atmosphere of ours would distort the effect we are looking for. So to space the AMS had to go.

The reason positrons are so important is that one theory of how we can detect dark matter and figure out what the heck is going on is that when two particles of dark matter collide, a positron is emitted.

If this is true, then we might be able to use these excess positrons as a clue towards solving the mystery of just what most of the universe is MADE OF.

Because honestly, we have no freaking clue. Isn’t that marvelous?

And speaking of things we don’t know, our last prize in this incredible showcase is a wonderful three day and ten night vacation to this story about near death experiences.

The headline is “Near Death Experiences More Vivid Than Real Life”, and when I read it, I immediately said “Well of course they are!”.

Being a fairly committed materialist who does not believe in life after death, the explanation that I endorse for the nature of Near Death Experiences (NDEs to their Moms) is that when some people are dying, the lack of oxygen to the brain triggers a frontal lobe seizure much like those experienced by various holy folk in the various religiouns of the world.

And one of the most reliable and indelible effects of a frontal lobe seizure is the feeling that what you are experiencing is incredibly real, realer than anything you have ever experienced before.

That is because one of the most important functions of our frontal lobes is to tell us what is real and what is not, specifically, what is internally generated and what is happening outside our skulls.

When you have a frontal lobe seizure, the intense electrical activity in the frontal lobe causes the “real” switch to go to max and stay there, generating this feeling of super vivid reality that seems realer than real.

A similar (but less intense) effect sometimes happens when we dream.

No wonder so many faiths believe in a more-real world beyond this one. Without a modern scientific perspective, how else could you interpret experiences that seem far more real than everyday experiences?

It is truly frightening to think that your sense of what is real could fail you like that.

Thank goodness these experiences are rare!

See you next week, folks!

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