Smithsonian.com

Since it’s Monday and none of us really wants to settle in and work yet, I thought I’d share some of my favorite science-themed (and science-ish) computer games with you:

The Eyeballing Game: How well do you perceive shapes? Can you find the center of a circle or complete a parallelogram? The better you are, the lower your score.

Killer Flu: In this game, from the U.K. Clinical Virology Network, you work to spread the flu virus from the countryside to the city, and from town to town. The goal is to infect as many people as possible. It’s a nice demonstration of some of the factors that promote the spread of the flu virus (transportation, schools, offices).

The Great Flu: The goal here is the opposite of that in Killer Flu. A new flu virus has emerged. You’ll need to manage health services worldwide to control the spread of the virus and prevent a pandemic.

Global Protection Squad Game: As project manager for an experiment intended to slow global warming, you’ll travel between the lab, project site and Congress balancing money, influence and science.

Galaxy Zoo 2: It’s not exactly a game, but it’s highly addictive. By classifying real pictures of real galaxies (something done better by humans than computers), you’re helping scientists learn about the universe. Launched in 2007, the project has already had a few discoveries, including a strange blue object called the Voorwerp.

Foldit: This is the only game that you’ll need to download, but it’s worth the effort, both for your own enjoyment and for science. The researchers behind Foldit are trying to figure out if humans fold proteins any better than computers. I haven’t made it out of the training section yet, so for me the answer is probably “no,” but the “game” has me hooked, nonetheless.

And I can’t end this without mentioning PhysicsGames.net, which had dozens of addictive little games, like Assembler:

On May 29, 2006, hot mud began to erupt within the city of Sidoarjo, in eastern Java, Indonesia. The mud volcano (also known as the Lapindo mud flow, or Lusi) hasn’t stopped since then, spewing thousands of cubic feet of material every day. Nearly 2,000 acres of land have been covered with mud, burying roads, homes and factories and displacing almost 60,000 people so far. In the image above, you can see the mud contained by levees built to hold back the flow. (In this false-color image, vegetation appears red and mud is colored gray.)

Lusi’s origin was debated at first, and geologists wondered if an earthquake two days earlier 155 miles away might have triggered the event. But they determined that the eruption was actually triggered by oil and gas drilling just 650 feet from where the mud began to flow. The Indonesians, however, have ruled the incident a natural disaster and halted their criminal probe earlier this month.

NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data from NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and the U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team.

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Venice flooding may not end with floodgates (courtesy of flickr user gwenael.piaser)

Yes, I’m being a bit melodramatic in the headline, but every time that I read about the bad things that are predicted to happen—or already are happening—due to climate change, I worry. (And if you’re about to leave a comment saying that climate change isn’t real, please read this post about weather and climate first.) In the last month, I’ve come across half a dozen stories that give me pause:

The people of Venice thought that they would have their flooding problem fixed with a new floodgate system, but they might have breathed their sighs of relief too soon. A new study in the Journal of Climate Dynamics predicts that by the end of the century, the city’s subsidence (i.e., sinking) combined with rising sea levels from climate change could increase the number of floods from four per year to between 20 and 250 per year. The floodgates alone may not be enough to protect the city, and even if they are, closing off the city from the sea would mean that pollution and untreated sewage would not be able to be flushed out as frequently. Ew.

City dwellers here in the United States have reason to worry, too. A new report from Physicians for Social Responsibility and the National Wildlife Federation warns that rising summer temperatures in urban areas (which will mean more frequent heat waves) could be particularly dangerous to children, the elderly and African-Americans, who are more likely to live in urban areas and be poor. Extreme heat can not only lead to death through heat stroke, but it also may exacerbate other problems, such as asthma.

The situation isn’t any better down on the farm. Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University and Michael Roberts of North Carolina State University in Raleigh looked at weather patterns and crop yields from 1950 to 2005 to predict how warmer temperatures might affect corn, cotton and soybeans. They found that the amount of time spent about 84 degrees F correlated with drops in yield. Based on current climate models, corn yields could decrease by 82 percent by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions continue apace.

Then there’s the New York Times article about the threat of climate change to national security. “The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.” Eek.

Climate change and polar bears don't mix well (courtesy of flickr user Just Being Myself)

Those poor bears. A new analysis in the Journal of Zoology of polar bear skulls collected from 1892 to 2002 finds that the bears have shrunk by about nine percent over that time. The researchers say that stress from increased pollution and disappearing sea ice is the likely cause. As the sea ice shrinks, the bears have to spend more and more time searching for food.

And finally, the weirdest of possible outcomes from climate change: the tilt of the Earth could shift. As we learned in school, the Earth is tilted 23.5 degrees from vertical; this is why we have seasons. But that tilt can change over time. As ice melts, warmer water expands and water in general moves from one place to another—as is expected with climate change—the motion of that water an effect on the planet’s tilt. It’s a small effect—only about 1.5 centimeters per year—but combine that with the knowledge that the redistribution of the water’s mass will have an effect on the Earth’s spin. I find it a little scary that humans, through fossil fuels, can affect the world in such a way.

Swine flu won't be the end of the world (courtesy of flickr user Dr Craig)

On Monday, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology released a report assessing the U.S. preparations for the H1N1 flu virus (a.k.a. swine flu), which is expected to soon make a resurgence in this country. But despite the conclusion that the nation is on track in this area (”The preparations are the best ever for an influenza pandemic,” PCAST co-chair Eric Lander said), media reports are focusing on the worst case scenario outlined in the report:

Infected: 150 million
Symptomatic: 120 million
Needing medical attention: 90 million
Needing hospital care: 1.8 million
Needing intensive care unit facilities: 300,000
Deaths: 90,000

However, this is only one scenario, and the flu season could end up being no worse than usual (the low-end estimate is about 30,000 deaths, which is an average flu season). And H1N1 is not expected to bring anything like the 1918-1919 flu pandemic that killed 50 million to 100 million people worldwide.

The H1N1 virus, though, is unlike the regular flu viruses we have been infected with lately, and few people will have any immunity against it. And this means that there is some reason to worry, especially if the virus spreads quickly in September before vaccination can take place (the vaccination program is not expected to begin until mid-October). “This potential mismatch in timing could significantly diminish the usefulness of vaccination for mitigating the epidemic and could place many at risk of serious disease,” PCAST wrote. Thus, one of their main recommendations in the report is to accelerate production of the initial batch of the vaccine and quickly vaccinate 40 million of the most vulnerable Americans (based on age and disease).

Behavior will also matter, the report notes. Individuals should, of course, be certain to wash their hands frequently and stay home when sick. And workplaces could be encouraged to liberalize their rules to make it easier for people to stay home.

I hope that when the swine flu reappears in the coming weeks we will avoid the panic that occurred earlier this year when it first came about. There’s no need, for the moment, to run to the store and buy face masks, and certainly no reason to avoid eating pork or to lock up Afghanistan’s sole pig, again.

In the meantime, here are a couple trusted flu resources:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

World Health Organization

Someone is always predicting the end of the world, it seems. The latest popular theory says that the world will end on December 21, 2012, when the Mayan calendar will reach the end of its 5,126 year cycle. That alone is fairly nuts, as USAToday wrote two years ago:

“For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle,” says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Fla. To render Dec. 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.”

But the theory has gotten even crazier since then, as astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson notes in the video clip above. There are tales of an alignment between the Earth, Sun and the galaxy that will end in great catastrophe. There is Nibiru, a.k.a. Planet X, which will supposedly come close enough to Earth to knock the planet off its axis, with resulting calamity. (NASA has a great page debunking Nibiru.) And there’s even more.

I had thought that end-of-the-world predictions and cults were a 20th-century invention until I read recently about some dating to the early 1800s. It doesn’t matter that prediction of the future is impossible in an Einsteinian universe (that would be the one we live in). There will be people crazy enough to make this stuff up and others gullible enough to believe it. Don’t be one of them.

So, when 12/21/12 comes along, don’t despair. Instead, let’s celebrate the end of the Mayan calendar cycle. Who’s bringing the beer?

Death from the Skies!

How will the world end? When Hollywood answers that question, the result is often terrifying but completely unrealistic. But the realms of reality can be even scarier than fiction, as astronomer Phil Plait deftly illustrates in Death from the Skies!, which comes out in paperback this week.

Each chapter begins with a movie script-ready scenario of Armageddon. Before delving into the topics of solar flares and coronal mass ejections, for example, there comes the story of a cold winter made worse when an event—prefaced by sunspots but not yet named—knocks out power for half the planet. Without heat, thousands die, and entire countries are driven bankrupt by the catastrophe. Having hooked his reader thusly, Plait then goes on to describe in easy-to-understand language what had caused the disaster, including how we know that such things happen and whether or not we should be scared.

Topics include gamma-ray bursts, black holes and even alien attacks. And a chart near the back of the book handily sums up the risk of each event, level of damage and whether or not we could prevent such things from happening. The most likely scenario is being hit by an asteroid, though we might one day be able to prevent these strikes. Near impossible in our time, thankfully, are the deaths of the sun or the universe. Most worrisome, though, might be the supernovae, which if one occurred close enough to Earth could lead to a mass extinction.

This book should be on the shelf of every disaster flick screenwriter. Perhaps we would then get movies with plots that are even more terrifying for the possibility that they could really happen.

“The Universe is vast beyond imagining, and wields mighty forces,” Plait writes. And for the events in his book, “it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.” Scary, indeed.

Before Venice, there was Altinum. During its heydey in the first century A.D., Altinum was a great Roman coastal city, home to as many as 20,000 people, where traders would come to do business from across the Mediterranean. But in the fifth to seventh centuries, the people left Altinum, driven by barbarian invasions to the islands that would eventually become Venice. Stones and bricks from Altinum would be used in building Venice, but Altinum would eventually become overgrown. Some parts became submerged beneath the Lagoon of Venice and others are now covered with farm fields.

A drought in 2007 presented a unique opportunity to learn more about the site without having to dig. A group of Italian scientists took the near-infrared aerial photograph above (their study appears in the July 31 issue of Science). Because the landscape was so dry, the scientists could “see” what was buried beneath the crops reflected in the health of the plants. Stones, bricks and compacted soil appear in lighter blue, and depressed features like pits and canals show up in the darker red. With the image, the researchers built a map of the city (below). With this map, they were able to confirm that the city had been partially surrounded by water, just as the ancient Greek geographer Strabo had described in the first century B.C.

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Without landmarks, we easily walk in circles (courtesy of flickr user helter-skelter)

In the movies, when hikers get lost in the woods, you know that they are well and truly lost by the third time or so that they pass by that big rock or funny-looking tree. And you just know that that would never happen to you. If you set out on a straight line, you would never double back without intending to do so.

Well, you’d be wrong.

People do walk in circular paths when they are lost, according to a study published online today by Current Biology. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany started their experimentations by first letting a few volunteers loose in a large, flat German forest and tracking them by GPS. Those who wandered on a sunny day kept to a nearly straight path while participants who trekked on a cloudy day walked in circles. Three of the cloudy day walkers even repeatedly crossed their own paths and without ever realizing what they were doing.

The scientists repeated their experiment in the Sahara Desert in Tunisia. Two people who walked during the day veered a bit off course (not too shocking when every direction looks similar) but the participant who walked at night managed to keep to a straight line only until the moon became covered by clouds.

In another experiment, the scientists blindfolded their subjects, who were then told to walk a straight line. But without anything to guide their paths, they walked in circles.

Throughout the experiments, though, the participants did not favor any one direction. Sometimes they would veer left, at other times, right. This rules out the idea that we walk in circles because we favor one leg over the other due to leg length or strength. Instead, the scientists say, without something like the sun or a mountain around to help us calibrate “straight,” the “noise” in our sensorimotor system sends us off track. However, the scientists note:

In emergency situations, where one’s life depends on the ability to navigate through unfamiliar terrain and reach safety, emotional state (panic) and social factors (group dynamics) may cause these cues and more cognitive navigation strategies to be disregarded, making people walk in circles even in the presence of reliable directional cues.

In the researchers’ next experiment, they will have participants walk through a virtual reality environment on a treadmill that lets a person walk in any direction (video below) to better determine the factors that help a person to walk straight or sets them into circles.