Science Odds and Ends

TPP wrote: [/size][/b]So why I really came here was to ask:[/b][/size]
Ever ask yourself “Who’s paying for this “Research?”

Scientists reveal secret of a cat's lap

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/11/5449974-scientists-reveal-secret-of-a-cats-lap

How science measures up cats and dogs
As 'Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore' opens, the real poop on our pets
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38433950/

In war of dogs vs. cats, the winner is clear
AP poll finds that 74 percent of people like dogs, while 41 percent like cats
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/34746139

I know SC, some are personal grants, and some are from taxpayers, BUT in these cases, WHY. I picture some dude/dudettes sitting around stoned one day and saying "Why are dogs so messywhen they drink and cats don't make a mess at all. Let's get a grant and find out why."

WTH?
How about asking "Why can't water run a car?", "How can we make a lamp that can provide the same light and energy, without the HIGHLY toxic mercury?"
Why use is know why dogs are messy & cats aren't?
How will these help mankind at all, beside decided what pet you want?

TPP, the greatest leaps forward stem from an understanding of the basic principles of physics - things that are elucidated by observing and studying more closely everyday basic occurances like how cats lap water. With the knowledge gleaned from this study, engineers and biophysicists can incorporate it into other fluid dynamics applications.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... o-cats-lap

One morning a few years back Roman Stocker was watching his cat, Cutta Cutta, drink, and began to wonder about the mechanism by which cats lap fluid into their mouths.

For Stocker, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the thought was not an idle one. "There is an increase in interest in taking inspiration from nature to look for solutions to physical problems," Stocker says. Watching Cutta Cutta lap, he says, made him realize "there was probably an interesting biomechanical problem there."

Here's the actual paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/ ... 5421v1.pdf

The functional diversity and high compliance of these structures continue to inspire the design of soft robots (29) and a fundamental understanding of their functionality can lead to new design concepts and is essential to inform biomechanical models (29, 30).

As for funding, each country is different, but the majority for U.S. academic research (not biotech/pharmaceutical/etc) funding (through 2008) comes from industry (looking to cash in on patentable applications from basic research), next from local, state, and federally funded grants (taxpayer dollars), and finally from private donations - either individuals, or associations/non-profit/foundations/charities groups that focus on specific diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimers, breast cancer, etc.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/303/2/137
Funding of US Biomedical Research, 2003-2008
E. Ray Dorsey, MD, MBA; Jason de Roulet, MD; Joel P. Thompson, MPH; Jason I. Reminick, MS; Ashley Thai, BS; Zachary White-Stellato; Christopher A. Beck, PhD; Benjamin P. George, BS; Hamilton Moses III, MD
JAMA. 2010;303(2):137-143.

Context With the exception of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, funding support for biomedical research in the United States has slowed after a decade of doubling. However, the extent and scope of slowing are largely unknown.

Objective To quantify funding of biomedical research in the United States from 2003 to 2008.

Design Publicly available data were used to quantify funding from government (federal, state, and local), private, and industry sources. Regression models were used to compare financial trends between 1994-2003 and 2003-2007. The numbers of new drug and device approvals by the US Food and Drug Administration over the same period were also evaluated.

Article about it: http://writedit.wordpress.com/2010/01/1 ... ng-trends/

National Science Foundation Funding 2004-2011
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf10327/
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/fedbudget/

If you'd like to search for yourself: http://search.engrant.com/

enGrant Scientific is the world's most comprehensive source of information on scientific research grants, research activity and funding trends. We've assembled the largest and most comprehensive database of research activity in existence. In a single place, you have complete and current access to all major sources of scientific research funding including the NIH, NSF, FDA, CDC and dozens of other public and private funding sources. The enGrant Search Engine gives you direct access to a database of over 2 million scientific research grants funding the work of 300,000 primary investigators.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/f ... type=HWCIT
Policy Forum
RESEARCH FUNDING:
Politics and Funding in the U.S. Public Biomedical R&D System
Deepak Hegde and David C. Mowery
Science 19 December 2008:
Vol. 322. no. 5909, pp. 1797 - 1798
DOI: 10.1126/science.1158562

How do congressional appropriations committee members influence the allocation of federal funding for biomedical research? We investigated this question by studying congressional appropriations bills and appropriations committee meeting reports covering the 20 fiscal years between 1984 and 2003.
Political oversight of NIH funding decisions provides an important mechanism for public input into scientific judgments concerning health-research needs. Nevertheless, the exercise of such influence clearly mediates the effects of rigorous peer review. Moreover, the channels through which such influence operates may be more complex than directives contained in appropriations bills. We hope that our findings will spark a clearer debate over the extent and effects of political involvement in the resource allocations of the largest single source of federal civilian R&D spending.

Rockdoc Franz wrote:

Joe wrote: The mobile emissions program sounds like an experiment to me. But its really a no lose deal, if you pass you can skip the drive thru test. I am skeptical of the accuracy of measuring a herd of moving cars on a cold morning. Not exactly a controlled lab environment. It is interesting technology, laser based, not a sniffer. Also the test has "tighter limits" to pass I read on their web site.

The vehicle then passes through the infrared and ultraviolet beams of the emissions analyzer. A laser light source directs the beams across the road, where they are bounced off mirrors and directed back to a detector module. As the light beams are broken by the vehicle’s exhaust plume, the detector module measures the levels of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen in the plume.

When a vehicle is either accelerating too heavily or not accelerating at all , the emissions it releases are not truly representative. This is why the RapidScreen test also measures a vehicle’s speed and acceleration. These measurements need to be within the ideal range for the test to be validated.

http://www.aircarecolorado.com/rapidscreen/how.html

Precisely. THis is one reason I try never to poor the coals to my truck when passing through there. Coasting is what I practice most often.

If you're only coasting, then the emissions won't be representative and can't be used. You need to be accelerating at a smooth, even pace (I found this out at a seminar at DU, where some of the researchers instrumental for developing this technology, work).

To ensure accurate, uncontaminated readings, RapidScreen testing vans do not operate during rain, snow, high winds or other adverse weather conditions. RapidScreen also holds to stricter emissions limits than those of a standard tailpipe emissions test.

Temperature will be a factor in how quickly emissions particles move, but that data will be captured by the sensor, plus I'm sure they correlate their data with temperature at time of reading.
In case you missed it in my previous post, here's a paper on it: http://cires.colorado.edu/~jjose/Papers ... _JAWMA.pdf

residenttroll wrote: Just a cost and time saving measure. There is no way I am going to trust a hour wait and fifty dollars to some white van parked on the side of road.

What if you educate yourself on the technology behind the mobile vehicle emissions test - would it be easier to accept then, and let you skip the hour wait and testing fee?

I often wonder why ICE is not at the Emission facilities just waiting for all the late model vehicles that illegals own.

But that's an assumption: what cars do most illegals own? Do they tend to more often own older model cars, are those kinds of cars more likely to fail emissions tests? My 2006 Lexus failed the test the last time because they were having trouble with their equipment and I ended up spending an additional 45 minutes waiting while they pulled it back around in line to another station behind other cars that had shown up after me and re-tested it - that could happen to anybody. Considering the number of people who get their car tested every day, and who fail the test, is it economically feasible to have an ICE agent at EVERY emission monitoring location in EVERY state that requires such things?

Last post! lol
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/330/6006/932
A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind
Matthew A. Killingsworth* and Daniel T. Gilbert
Science 12 November 2010:
Vol. 330. no. 6006, p. 932
DOI: 10.1126/science.1192439

Unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all. Indeed, "stimulus-independent thought" or "mind wandering" appears to be the brain’s default mode of operation (1–3). Although this ability is a remarkable evolutionary achievement that allows people to learn, reason, and plan, it may have an emotional cost. Many philosophical and religious traditions teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and practitioners are trained to resist mind wandering and "to be here now." These traditions suggest that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Are they right?

We solved this problem by developing a Web application for the iPhone (Apple Incorporated, Cupertino, California), which we used to create an unusually large database of real-time reports of thoughts, feelings, and actions of a broad range of people as they went about their daily activities. The application contacts participants through their iPhones at random moments during their waking hours, presents them with questions, and records their answers to a database at [url=http://www.trackyourhappiness.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;]www.trackyourhappiness.org[/url]. The database currently contains nearly a quarter of a million samples from about 5000 people from 83 different countries who range in age from 18 to 88 and who collectively represent every one of 86 major occupational categories. Mind wandering occurred in 46.9% of the samples and in at least 30% of the samples taken during every activity except making love.

what people were thinking was a better predictor of their happiness than was what they were doing. The nature of people’s activities explained 4.6% of the within-person variance in happiness and 3.2% of the between-person variance in happiness, but mind wandering explained 10.8% of within-person variance in happiness and 17.7% of between-person variance in happiness. The variance explained by mind wandering was largely independent of the variance explained by the nature of activities, suggesting that the two were independent influences on happiness.

In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.