Making Science More Better For You on 12/27/07

Headline of the day
Man, 28, dies after marathon lap dance session at strip club
Nine times out of ten, when you see the word marathon in a headline it’s bad news.


More tips from the Brooklyn Better Science Club: Keeping the over-educated employed

When in doubt, release a policy paper full of vague responses to a complex social issue. Extra credit if the suggestions imply government intervention. Working groups and public forums designed to create more dialogue are always winners. They probably won’t change things, but they might get your name about and make you more employable.


Psychologists Explore Public Policy And Effects Of Media Violence On Children

ScienceDaily (Dec. 27, 2007) — Although hundreds of studies link media violence to aggression in children and adolescents, most public policy attempts to reduce children's media violence exposure in the U.S. have failed. Efforts to restrict children's access to violent video games have been struck down by the courts as infringing on children's First Amendment rights.

Three Iowa State University psychologists have authored a new study that reviews the literature on children's exposure to media violence and assesses the lack of effective public policy response to curb the risks. They also recommend more effective public policy strategies in the future.

ISU Assistant Professor of Psychology Douglas Gentile, Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson, and psychology graduate student Muniba Saleem collaborated on the paper published in the Journal of Social Issues and Policy Review.

"There are far more public policy options available than have yet been explored," said Gentile. "Public policy isn't just about legislation. We typically only think about writing laws, but many other opportunities exist for effective policy. A large part of the motivation for this article is to try to make it clear that more can be done than has previously been tried, particularly in these political times when many presidential candidates are talking about possible public policy options."

Identifying reasons for past failures

The ISU researchers identified four reasons why past public policy efforts to curb children's exposure to media violence have failed:

* An apparent gap between what scientific findings suggest and what the U.S. courts and society understand, partially due to different conceptions of causality used by scientists and the legal system.
* Confusion about scientific findings in court, party due to opposing "expert" testimony -- such as video game industry "experts" who would not be considered by the scientific community as real experts on media violence.
* Different standards of causality applied by courts than by most medical and behavioral scientists, and these standards change depending on the type of legal issue. In particular, U.S. courts are appropriately conservative about regulating freedom of speech because it is at the core of democracy.
* Lack of precedent. Legislation to restrict access is unlikely to survive First Amendment challenges, because courts rely on precedent. They are unlikely to rule differently until enough time has passed for new research to be conducted and new evidence presented.

There are also reasons why the public hasn't called for more preventative measures.

"One reason is what's called 'the third-person effect' -- that it's a lot easier to notice these types of effects on other people rather than in ourselves and those closest to us. So most parents don't think media violence affects their kids," Gentile said. "That's partly because media violence effects accumulate slowly and people aren't good at detecting small changes -- even though those changes could be big by the end.

"Another reason is that the news media primarily focus on violent media effects in terms of atrocities like Columbine," Anderson said. "This confusion about equating media violence with extreme atrocities allows people to think that there are no effects on them because we all know that we've watched lots of media violence and never gone on a shooting rampage, but that's not where we should look for the effects. The effects are more subtle. In order to do something seriously violent, one must have multiple risk factors for aggression -- media violence is only one risk factor, and it's not the largest one. It's also not the smallest."

According to Gentile, much public policy action has been taken on media violence in reaction to such major tragedies. "That's a knee-jerk reaction in terms of public policy," he said. "And that's probably not how we should make public policy because it only focuses on part of the puzzle."

Suggesting the alternatives

The authors suggest several public policy alternatives. The first is to provide a public forum for research to be discussed and potential solutions debated to provide legislators an avenue for translating scientific research into publicly accessible language. It may also prompt legislators to regulate better the information provided to parents through media ratings.

They report several serious problems with the U.S. ratings systems as they currently exist, with multiple studies suggesting that the ratings are neither reliable nor valid.

"Perhaps the single most effective policy that could be created to help parents manage children's media would be to mandate the creation of one universal rating system that could be used for all media, including TV, movies, video games, and recorded music," they wrote.

The ISU researchers recommend that helpful policy initiatives could be instituted at the school, district, state, or federal levels for implementing a set of media literacy standards for children.

They demonstrate how public policy regarding children's media could be successfully implemented below the federal level, and by non-governmental entities. For example, they suggest that the national or state chapters of the American Academy of Pediatrics could create policies that require pediatricians to be trained about the research about positive and negative media effects, and to provide parents with that information during well-child visits.

Their paper also reports how a growing number of foreign countries are implementing policies in a manner known as "co-regulation" -- incorporating both public (government) regulation and self-regulation in a combined, cooperative manner.

“An apparent gap between what scientific findings suggest and what the U.S. courts and society understand, partially due to different conceptions of causality used by scientists and the legal system.” We knew it, more fuzzy definitions of causality.

Why would you want to turn off the media set when you could have a policy response to call your own?



More headlines of the day

Tiny Monkey Dies After Being Smuggled Into NYC Under Owner's Hat (Fox News.com)

Priests brawl at Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus



You say animal, I say it's the dude who lost

Where And Why Humans Made Skates Out Of Animal Bones

ScienceDaily (Dec. 26, 2007) — Archaeological evidence shows that bone skates (skates made of animal bones) are the oldest human powered means of transport, dating back to 3000 BC. Why people started skating on ice and where is not as clear, since ancient remains were found in several locations spread across Central and

In a recent paper, published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Dr Formenti and Professor Minetti show substantial evidence supporting the hypothesis that the birth of ice skating took place in Southern Finland, where the number of lakes within 100 square kilometres is the highest in the world.

"In Central and Northern Europe, five thousand years ago people struggled to survive the severe winter conditions and it seems unlikely that ice skating developed as a hobby" says Dr Formenti. "As happened later for skis and bicycles, I am convinced that we first made ice skates in order to limit the energy required for our daily journeys".

Formenti and Minetti did their experiments on an ice rink by the Alps, where they measured the energy consumption of people skating on bones. Through mathematical models and computer simulations of 240 ten-kilometre journeys, their research study shows that in winter the use of bone skates would have limited the energy requirements of Finnish people by 10%. On the other hand, the advantage given by the use of skates in other North European countries would be only about 1%.

Subsequent studies performed by Formenti and Minetti have shown how fast and how far people could skate in past epochs, from 3000BC to date.


It’s probably the place where they make Red Bull. Or a meth lab. Either way, there will soon be a policy study that says these things should be regulated. We’re sure Star Fleet command would be glad to enforce any intergalactic regulations.

Mysterious Cosmic Powerhouses Explored

ScienceDaily (Dec. 25, 2007) — By working in synergy with a ground-based telescope array, the joint Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/NASA Suzaku X-ray observatory is shedding new light on some of the most energetic objects in our galaxy, but objects that remain shrouded in mystery.

These cosmic powerhouses pour out vast amounts of energy, and they accelerate particles to almost the speed of light. But very little is known about these sources because they were discovered only recently. "Understanding these objects is one of the most intriguing problems in astrophysics," says Takayasu Anada of the Institute for Space and Astronautical Science in Kanagawa, Japan. Anada is lead author of a paper presented last week at a Suzaku science conference in San Diego, Calif.

These mysterious objects have been discovered in just the last few years by an array of four European-built telescopes named the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), located in the African nation of Namibia. H.E.S.S. indirectly detects very-high-energy gamma rays from outer space. These gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light ever detected from beyond Earth, so H.E.S.S. and other similar arrays have opened up a new branch of astronomy.

The gamma rays themselves are absorbed by gases high up in Earth’s atmosphere. But as the gamma rays interact with air molecules, they produce subatomic particles that radiate a blue-colored light known as Cherenkov radiation. H.E.S.S. detects this blue light, whose intensity and direction reveals the energy and position of the gamma-ray source.

The H.E.S.S. observations were groundbreaking, but the array’s images aren’t sharp enough to reveal the exact location where particles are being accelerated or how the particles are being accelerated. To solve this problem, several teams aimed Suzaku in the direction of some of these H.E.S.S. sources. Any object capable of emitting high-energy gamma rays will also produce X-rays, and Suzaku is particularly sensitive to high-energy (hard) X-rays.

When Anada and his colleagues pointed Suzaku at a source known as HESS J1837-069 (the numerals express the object’s sky coordinates), the X-ray spectrum closely resembled X-ray spectra of pulsar wind nebulae — gaseous clouds that are sculpted by winds blown off by collapsed stars known as pulsars. Pulsar wind nebulae emit hard X-rays, and their X-ray output remains relatively constant over long timescales. "The origin of the gamma-ray emission from HESS J1837-069 remains unclear, but we suspect that this source is a pulsar wind nebula from the Suzaku observation," says Anada.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory have revealed that other H.E.S.S. sources are also pulsar wind nebulae. These combined gamma-ray and X-ray observations are revealing that pulsar wind nebulae are more common and more energetic than astronomers had expected.

Another group, led by Hironori Matsumoto of the University of Kyoto in Japan, targeted Suzaku on HESS J1614-518. This source belongs to a class of objects known as "dark particle accelerators" because their ultrahigh energies suggest they are accelerating particles to near-light speed, turning them into cosmic rays. But what are these objects, and what kinds of particles are being accelerated?

Although the nature of these objects remains a mystery, Suzaku’s observations do reveal the identity of the particles. When electrons are accelerated to high speeds, they spiral around magnetic field lines that permeate space, generating copious X-rays. But since protons are 2,000 times more massive than electrons, they emit few X-rays. Matsumoto and his colleagues reported at the conference that HESS J1614-518 is a very weak X-ray emitter. "This result strongly suggests that high-energy protons are being produced in this object," says Matsumoto.

Suzaku also observed two other H.E.S.S. dark particle accelerators, but found no obvious X-ray counterparts at the H.E.S.S. positions. These sources must also be weak X-ray emitters, indicating they are accelerating mostly protons. As Matsumoto says, "Using the high sensitivity of the Suzaku satellite, we can find strong candidates for the origin of cosmic rays."

Launched in 2005, Suzaku is the fifth in a series of Japanese satellites devoted to studying celestial X-ray sources. Managed by JAXA, this mission is a collaborative effort between Japanese universities and institutions and NASA Goddard.