Month: August 2016

Enlarge / Path of totality for the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. (credit: Wikimedia)

For many cultures a total solar eclipse represents a time when either a demon or animal consumes the Sun. For example, the Vikings saw a pair of sky wolves chasing the Sun, and when one caught it, the wolf would eat it. In Vietnam, either a frog or toad consumed the Sun. For the Kwakiutl tribe on the western coast of Canada, it was the mouth of heaven.

Soon, the United States will have a chance to see an eclipse of our own (and assign cultural value as we please). Mark your calendars: the next total solar eclipse comes to the USA one year from today, on August 21, 2017.

Modern Americans probably don't know exactly what to make of a total solar eclipse—because most of them have never seen one. The last total solar eclipse in the contiguous United States, 37 years ago, only clipped the northwestern United States, mostly rural areas of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and North Dakota. According to Eclipse2017.org, the day of Feb. 28, 1979, was cold and dreary in the Northwest, and most people in the path of totality did not see the eclipse due to clouds and rain. The last eclipse to traverse much of the United States came all the way back in 1918, on June 8.

Enlarge / Like this, but one-dimensional and only trapping sound. (credit: NASA)

One of the common descriptions of black holes is that their gravitational pull is so strong, not even light can escape it. Stephen Hawking is famous for (among other things) showing that this isn't actually true. The Hawking radiation that bears his name allows matter to escape from the grip of a black hole. In fact, Hawking's work suggests that an isolated black hole would slowly evaporate away and cease to exist.

But his work remains entirely theoretical. Hawking radiation is expected to be so diffuse that we could only detect it if we could somehow find or create a black hole isolated from all other matter. But Jeff Steinhauer of Israel's Technion has been on a sometimes single-handed quest to develop a system that can accurately model a black hole's behavior. And, in a recent paper in Nature Physics, Dr. Steinhauer describes how his model system generates what appears to be Hawking radiation.

Searching for the horizon

A feature called the event horizon plays a central role in both Hawking radiation and the new model system. At a real black hole, the space-time outside the event horizon may be distorted by the intense gravity, but the distortion is relatively limited. Inside the event horizon, however, space-time is stretched at a rate that's faster than the speed of light. Photons can't escape because the space-time they occupy is getting stretched away from the event horizon faster than the photon can move.

(credit: http://www.colorado.feb.gov/index.php?content=17&page=Alternative%20Dispute%20Resolution)

Working collaboratively in small groups is one of the primary ways that modern humans accomplish anything. But what explains whether a group succeeds? Previous research on group dynamics has considered things like the demographic and psychological characteristics of individual group members. But a recent study published in PNAS indicates that their biology matters, too. Groups with collectively high testosterone and low cortisol (a stress hormone) show the highest performance in group tasks.

To examine the effects of hormones on group performance, the researchers collected saliva samples from 370 MBA students, then assigned them into groups of three to six members. The groups were then given a group decision-making task, and their performance was evaluated in light of the testosterone and cortisol levels in their saliva samples.

The decision-making task was a computerized exercise that asked the group to manage a fictional computerized laboratory for seven days, with the goal of maximizing profitability. The groups competed against each other to devise the most profitable management scheme. Since the lab required 24-hour monitoring and was too complicated for one person to manage on their own, the task required members to be interdependent and rely on each other to maximize their performance. However, team members were allowed to use any decision-making process they preferred to complete the task.

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  Since this is a cocktail conference, every seminar needs a tasting. This riff on an Old Fashioned was inspired by Comet Lovejoy, "which is effectively a massive Old Fashioned—alcohol and sugar—slinging itself along the universe," said bartender Tristan Stephenson. [credit: Nathan Mattise ]

NEW ORLEANS—"Half a century ago, this was an essential part of spaceman culture," said Jeffrey Kluger, senior writer at Time and author of the book that inspired Apollo 13. Presenting at the world's best alcohol event, Kluger wasn't referring to old astronaut traditions like military experience or crew cuts. "Test pilots were male, under 6-feet tall, and had to be a tough and tireless drinker."

Tales of the Cocktail 2016 continued the conference's trend of sneaking science into a series of bar industry seminars. Food scientists from Bacardi discussed internal testing on carbonation in liquor, and alcohol alchemist Camper English unveiled his tireless research on the compounds and combinations that can be lethal (or at least really, really bad) when unleashed in our cocktails. But this year's schedule also featured what seemed like a peculiarity—a panel titled "Cosmic Cocktails: The Final Frontier" that outlined the informal history of NASA and drinking.

According to Kluger, the intertwining of highballs and high altitudes was inescapable—a natural evolution of the downtime imbibing of previous military generations. For many of the US' early space pioneers, this part of training took place outside Southern California's Edwards Air Force Base at a vast and communal pub in the Mojave Desert called the Happy Bottom Riding Club (fittingly considering its clientele, the bar was created by Pancho Barnes, a pioneering female pilot who had bested Amelia Earhart's air speed record at age 29).

(credit: Mayor McGinn)

The First Amendment has been good, really good to the online classified ads portal Backpage.com. In 2015, the US Constitution helped Backpage dodge a lawsuit from victims of sex trafficking. What's more, a federal judge invoked the First Amendment and crucified an Illinois sheriff—who labeled Backpage a "sex trafficking industry profiteer"—because the sheriff coerced Visa and Mastercard to refrain from processing payments to the site. The judge said Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart's anti-Backpage lobbying amounted to "an informal extralegal prior restraint of speech" because Dart's actions were threatening the site's financial survival.

But the legal troubles didn't end there for Backpage, which The New York Times had labeled "the leading site for trafficking of women and girls in the United States."

Thirteen months ago, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is examining sex trafficking on the Internet, subpoenaed (PDF) Carl Ferrer, Backpage's chief executive officer. But Ferrer, citing the First Amendment, has largely refused to comply with the subpoena—which essentially demands to know everything about the company's business model and profits, including how it screens ads. That screening aspect of the subpoena are similar to the one Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood issued to Google about its polices of policing third-party content. In July, however, Hood and Google settled their dispute about the subpoena, which read like a page from the anti-piracy playbook of the Motion Picture Association of America.