An interesting story has recent come out about research at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory has been making the rounds.   It seems some studies relating to the cellular-level effects of ionizing radiation have found the effect is….. GASP…. not linear and directly proportional to dose level.

Via HealthCanal:

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I really hate to do this, and I realize that it’s a bit unprofessional to openly ask for help with editing a page that is not even officially up.  However, as readers here may know, I’m not the best speller in the world, although I may well be the worst.

I am about to launch a website for my bid for the US Congress.   However, I’m sure it has spelling errors in it and I can’t find them alone.   Paying for editing would be expensive and likely delay things even more.   That’s why I am asking to crowd source it from anyone kind enough to point them out.  I can be e-mailed or you can just point them out in the comments here.

The website (which is still not up as the main page) can be found at http://www.packard2012.org/test/

Once I am pretty sure there are no horribly embarrassing spelling errors I’ll move it to being the main page of the site.

I know that there are also parts of it that are lacking.   It does not have a full photo gallery yet, the donations service is still pending on having the account finalized.  The “policies” section needs a few additional ones added.  I’m aware of that and working to add them.  Right now what I need help with is spelling.

Thanks to anyone who will help out.

SSRI’s or Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor’s are used as anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs. They’re often regarded as about the safest drugs we have, since it’s almost impossible to overdose on them and the negative long term health effects seem to be negligible. However, there has been some concern expressed about their safety during pregnancy.

A number of studies have been conducted on the use of various SSRI drugs during various stages of pregnancy and breast feeding. The majority of the studies done have not found any harmful effects of the use of SSRI’s on developing fetuses or infants who breastfeed. While these drugs do pass through the placenta, the concentration of exposure is at least two thirds less for the developing fetus than for the mother.

However, one study, done in 2007, did find a slight increase in a few birth defects in mothers who received relatively high doses of certain SSRI medications during the first trimester of their pregnancy. The study did not find any significant increase in overall odds of most birth defects, but did find an increase in a few birth defects, such as certain cardiac defects. Still, the total risk remains tiny with or without SSRI’s, and while the increase was greater than the statistical error of the study, confounding factors cannot be ruled out, such as the possibility that depressed mothers might have less healthy babies for a variety of reasons.

You can read the entire study here.

The reception of the study in the medical community was generally more one of reassurance than concern. While it indicated that there was at least a possibility that a few narrow birth defects might possibly be associated with SSRI’s, the overall risk is very low. Interestingly, the study did not find that these risks increased for all types of SSRI drugs. Zoloft and Paxil did appear to produce slight increases in some birth defects, but Prozac, Lexapro and other antidepressants did not produce any detectable increase in any birth defects.

Given that the risks are not completely proven and appear to be extremely low, the Mayo Clinic says the following about the use of antidepressants during pregnancy:

Overall, the risk of birth defects and other problems for babies of mothers who take antidepressants during pregnancy is low. Still, few medications have been proved safe without question during pregnancy and some types of antidepressants have been associated with health problems in babies.

It should also be noted that these slight increases in risk have been speculated about since before the 2007 study, and most women who received the drugs during pregnancy would have been told (or should have been told) by their doctor that the possibility existed that there could be a small increase in some birth defects.

Now enter the lawyers. Lets say, you happen to have had a child with a common and minor birth defect, like a cleft lip or a club foot, both of which are fairly common and correctable. You might have just put your child’s foot in a brace or taken them for minor plastic surgery and then thought nothing of it. Well, if you happen to have been taking an anti-depressent, there are lawyers out there who want to be sure you don’t just go on with your life without giving them a crack at the drug companies. And they’re paying for advertising to make sure you know.

I am very very saddened to say that Christopher Hitchens has lost his battle with cancer.   He was 62 years old.   He was diagnosed more than a year ago, and while there was at least a slim hope of beating the cancer, we all have known for some time that this day was likely to be soon upon us.

Hitchens was an illuminating, if controversial force who contributed much to the world, especially in the areas of ethical and religious debate.   Despite his deteriorating health, he managed to continue his irreverent and pointed public commentary almost to the very end.

I first met Christopher Hitchens at Tam-5.  Sadly I never got a picture with him, but at least I shook his hand.  He was not able to make the next two Tam’s for various reasons and then he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which prevented him from attending many more conferences.

I’m sorry I did not get to know him better, though many of my close friends did.   We appreciate his contributions enormously and will miss him.

For those involved in skepticism, secularism and related areas, this is a sad day.

I realize I have been rather quiet about the run for the US Congress.  It turns out that it has taken a lot more time and effort just to do the basics and get things setup.  I just got the website hosting account setup a few days ago.  I hope to have the full website up soon, probably by the end of the week if things go according to plan.

In the meantime, I have a temporary page up that has little more than a logo, but just the same, if you’d like to bookmark it and admire the logo you can do so at:

packard2012.org

When nuclear fission was first discovered in the laboratory, in 1938, it was seen as a relatively strange reaction, resulting from humans taking a sample of the heaviest known element and shooting artificially-generated neutrons at it until some of the atoms absorbed a neutron and split.   While the experiment provided enormous insight into the nature of atoms and helped provide early confirmation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, by demonstrating the release of energy from an observable change in atomic mass, it was regarded as something that occurred in the laboratory.

Fission was recognized as a potential energy source after the possibility of a fission chain reaction was realized.  A chain reaction occurs when neutrons produced by nuclear fission strike other fissile nuclei, releasing more energy in a self-sustaining reaction.   In 1942, an experiment at the University of Chicago proved that nuclear fission could indeed produce such a chain reaction.   The first artificial fission reactor was created by piling large amounts of uranium together with ultra-pure graphite blocks.  The graphite slowed neutrons, making them easier to absorb by the uranium nuclei, resulting in the fission chain reaction.  In 1945, the first artificial fission chain reaction to occur without the aid of a moderator when the first nuclear weapon detonated in the Trinity test.  The Trinity device used plutonium as the fissile material, an element produced in nuclear reactors at the Hanford site.   Plutonium is too short-lived to be found in large quantities in nature.  Another bomb, fueled by uranium was the result of years of painstaking isotope separation, which increased the amount of fissile uranium-235 available to far beyond what is found in natural uranium samples.

For many years, it was believed that such fission reactions were always limited to these artificial circumstances.   Nuclear fission, it was thought, was the result of painstaking efforts by mankind to gather up the necessary materials, enrich beyond their natural concentrations and either bring them together rapidly in large quantities or place them in the special conditions inside a reactor, where neutron moderators make it possible to sustain nuclear fission.

In 1940, Russian scientists observed the phenomena of spontaneous fission, where heavy elements like uranium split on their own without the need for a neutron to cause the event.  It was also known that uranium atoms could split as the result of a neutron generated by cosmic rays.   However, such events are uncommon and produce little energy.   They are distinct from the chain reactions that had only been observed in human-created nuclear reactors.

All this changed in 1972, when an unusual discrepancy in the concentration of uranium-235 from a mine in Gabon Africa was detected.  Chemical analysis of a unique uranium deposit  indicated that the formation had sustained a fission chain reaction at one time.   The possibility of a natural nuclear reactor of this type had been suggested as early as 1956, but the Gabon discovery was the first time that such an event was confirmed to have happened.  Further investigation of the site identified at least sixteen regions of the deposit where the concentration of uranium and lighter elements clearly indicated that significant amounts of nuclear fission had occurred.

The reactor at Gabon operated about 1.7 billion years ago, producing chain reactions for at least hundreds of thousands of years.   It was remarkably similar to modern, artificial nuclear reactors.   Fission occurred when water seeped into cracks and pores in the deposits of extremely high grade uranium ore.   The water acted as a moderator, causing the chain reaction.   In modern times, water can only be used as a moderator in reactors where the uranium has been slightly enriched to contain more uranium-235 than found in nature, but because uranium-235 has a half-life of about seven hundred million years, there was a great deal more when the Gabon reactor was critical.

Exactly how long the Gabon reactor was critical or how much energy was released is not known.   Scientists have estimated that it probably generated about 100 kW of power and likely operated intermittently due to the buildup of neutron poisons and variations in the water levels in the rock.   It also generated some amount of plutonium-239 and other heavy isotopes, which would have added to the available fissile fuel.

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Even as the US Mars Science Laboratory was sent on its way to the red planet, another ambitious mars mission died in orbit this week.

The Russian Phobos-Grunt mission was to be the first sample-return mission to the mars system.   The probe was not intended to land on mars.  Instead, it would include a lander bound for the martian moon Phobos and an orbiter.   The lander would include a series of scientific experiments along with a soil-collection system, capable of recovering 200 grams of material for return to earth.   Taking soil from Phobos is a bit easier than from mars, since the moon has less gravity and thus lifting off for the return to earth would be much easier. While Phobos may not be mars, it would still be an amazing achievement to bring back material from the vicinity of mars and a step toward conducting sample return missions on other moons in the solar system and eventually on mars itself.

Although Russian-lead, the probe was an international effort.  It carried an independent mars orbiter, Yinghuo-1 from the Chinese Space Agency.  It was to be the first Chinese interplanetary spacecraft.   It also carried a privately-funded experiment by the Planetary Society, which was aimed at proving whether bacteria could survive the trip between planets.  The European Space Agency also contributed to the program and provided assistance in the telemetry and ground-segment of the mission.

The probe lifted off successfully on November 9 and entered “parking orbit” around the earth.  From there it was supposed to preform systems tests and then fire a rocket engine to send it out of earth orbit and onto mars.  Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, the probe did not respond to commands.   Initially it sent back a series of weak signals which appeared to show it had entered safe mode, indicating some kind of systems failure or disrupting event.   Attempts by Russian controllers to send commands to the spacecraft failed to elicit a response and only a few weak signals were detected by ground receivers.

Additional efforts by Russian and European agencies to reestablish communications with the spacecraft have now officially ended.  Last week, ground stations in Australia did manage to pick up a weak signal from the spacecraft, but since then it has been completely silent.   It may be some sort of power systems problem which has resulted in the probe failing to obtain the necessary electricity to run systems from the solar panels, leaving it only the remaining energy in on board batteries.   Right now, it’s not certain what caused the mission to be lost.

The probe will likely return to earth some time in the next few months, as its orbit degrades.   Some concern has been expressed about the toxic hydrazine propellant onboard, but that’s unlikely to reach the ground.  In all likelihood, the tanks of the spacecraft will be breached up and the hydrazine burned up before it gets anywhere near the surface of earth.

The Soviet and now Russian space program has a long history of successful unmanned planetary probes, including some very impressive missions to Venus as well as lunar probes and missions to comets.  Yet it has suffered some extremely bad luck when it comes to mars.  Of the nineteen Russian missions to mars, dating back to 1960, not a single one has been entirely successful, with many exploding on launch or failing to successfully reach martian orbit.

There’s something a little ironic about the Soviet Union never being able to get to the red planet.

CRAP THIS WAS ACTUALLY AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE  OOPS!

Some news stories you really can’t make up.   Perhaps it’s a little bit off color to chuckle at a story about someone who is very likely mentally ill, but in some cases it’s hard not to.

For that matter, I suppose we could also at least consider that this might be true.

Apparently, a man from the future has come back to the present day (or so he says) to stop the LHC from discovering the Higgs boson, which would lead to some as yet unknown source of limitless energy for humanity.  While this sounds like a good thing, he explained that this ultimately was the undoing of society and therefore he was there to stop it.   Tragically, he made the mistake of forgetting to fill the tanks on his time machine with whatever fuel it uses, and it now seems he might be trapped in the present, which to him, is the past.

Via Cnet:

Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he’s from the future

A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.

The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment’s vending machines. He also claimed responsibility for the infamous baguette sabotage in November last year.

Mr Cole was seized by Swiss police after CERN security guards spotted him rooting around in bins. He explained that he was looking for fuel for his ‘time machine power unit’, a device that resembled a kitchen blender.

Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin. “Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I’m here to stop it ever happening.”

This isn’t the first time time-travel has been blamed for mishaps at the LHC. Last year, the Japanese physicist Masao Ninomiya and Danish string-theory pioneer Holger Bech Nielsen put forward the hypothesis that the Higgs boson was so “abhorrent” that it somehow caused a ripple in time that prevented its own discovery.

Professor Brian Cox, a CERN physicist and full-time rock’n'roll TV scientist, was sympathetic to Mr Cole. “Bless him, he sounds harmless enough. At least he didn’t mention bloody black holes.”

Mr Cole was taken to a secure mental health facility in Geneva but later disappeared from his cell. Police are baffled, but not that bothered.

Unfortunately Mr. Cole apparently did not take into consideration some important factors that really all time travelers should consider.

1. Always bring enough fuel. (Although I thought he was from a future of limitless energy.. oh well). In fact, you should bring more fuel than you think you’ll need, because you never know when you’ll make a wrong turn or you’ll have to go back to the past yet again, because for all you know, Biff Tannen might have stolen the sports almanac and stopped your parents from falling in love at the dance, and then what are you to do? You can’t just rely on an opportune bolt of lightning, because lightning doesn’t even provide a huge amount of energy, contrary to popular belief.

Remember to bring both kinds of fuel that you will need. Sure, the time circuits may be electric, but what about the internal combustion engine? That runs on regular unleaded and always has. You can’t always find that.

Also keep in mind that 1.21 gigawatts is not actually an amount of energy at all.  It’s an amount of power, which means a reasonably large capacitor bank can provide it, but only for a brief period of time.   If you need it for longer, it’s still not impossibly high.  Any large power plant should be able to output it.    I never really figured out the whole “1.21 gigawatt” thing, but the best I can think of is it might be the amount of power continuously needed to travel a given amount of time.   For example, time traveling a year means you need 1.21 gigawatts times one year for the total energy.   That would seem to work, but then again, a lightning bolt would still never be enough.

So in any case, choose your fuel well and bring plenty of it.   You don’t want to rely on lightning or hijacked locomotives.

2. To be perfectly honest, don’t expect to return to the future you left and have it look anything like you expected or have a place for you. If you change anything, even slightly, those changes will propagate. If that happens your great great grandparents may not meet or may not marry and procreate. And just having your parents meet is not good enough. You can’t just set them back up if you mess up their meeting. Everything has to be identical, which it never will be. If they mate at a slightly different time or if the temperature is different by a fraction of a degree or anything like that, a different sperm will fertilize the egg and the resulting offspring won’t be you. This goes for all generations all the way back to where you have traveled.

So in all likelihood, just stepping into the past will result in a different time stream that you will return to in which you never existed.   You could go back to 1890, for example, and just by swatting a fly, you end up stopping World War I and World War II from happening.  That might seem like a good idea, until you realize that it prevents a guy from dying who then goes on to marry your grandmother, thus avoiding the marriage of her and your grandfather and now you don’t exist.

Or even if you did exist, you will find that you had not traveled back in time because you had no reason to, thus when you return, you will find yourself and have a real identity crisis.

You might be better off not going back but sending some kind of terminator unit.   The terminator could be made of living tissue around a metallic framework or out of some kind of shape-shifting metal.  It’s up to you.   The only problem is it probably won’t change your present because it gets inserted into an alternate reality.   Really, you just can’t win at this.

3.   You have all the time in the world.   Plan well.   Don’t just show up at the LHC with no idea how to stop it.  Bring weapons or something.  Flesh out a response plan and run it by a couple of your friends for input.  Consider what could go wrong.  Take the tools you might need.  Brush up on your period lingo and customs in case you had to blend in.   Just be sure not to mess up.

You only get one shot at this… well, actually, I suppose you can do it as many times as you want, but then you really start to make things messy and complicated.  You can encounter yourself on one of your aborted missions, for example.   It’s just best to avoid such problems.

4.  Consider *when* you want to go back to.   Is this really the best time?  Why wait until the LHC is constructed and operational?   You can go back a little further and it might be easier to stop it during construction.  Perhaps you could somehow disrupt the funding for it or sabotage the construction.  OR, you could try to stop an earlier accelerator from being built, which would stop the discoveries that would lead to the creation of the LHC.

5.  Remember there are alternate possibilities.  Don’t focus too much on one issue when it will likely spawn others.  Sure, you could shut down the LHC, but what will that do?  Some other accelerator will eventually be built and make the horrible discovery.  You need to think big and stop all particle physics.

6.  If you are going to resort to telling people not to do it, make sure you are believable.   It’s not a terribly bad plan to just be honest and tell the world that you are from the future and stopping a horrible mistake.   If you can get the governments of the world to listen, that might be the best way of actually stopping the project, but you really need to make it clear you are from the future, so bring some future stuff to show everyone.   Since you will be coming from the future, you’ll be able to choose the most opportune time to make a big splash.  You might want to pick a time when the news cycle is slow and when you can grab some media attention to warn the world before the government tries to stop you.

Of course, as long as you’re well prepared, the government shouldn’t be a problem.   They’ll have no way of stopping you with the crazy ray guns and telliportation devices you’ll have on you, so be sure to be well equipped to prove you’re from the future and that you are serious.

7.   Why not mix business with personal time travel?   We don’t get many visitors from the future, so it’s obviously fairly expensive or difficult to do, so use the trip wisely.   Once you’ve stopped the LHC, why not invest some money in a stock that you know is going through the roof or at least put it in an interest-bearing account.   Stop by some of the scenes of the past before they’re gone and enjoy the quaintness of 21st century culture.   Maybe grab a few interesting photos, like giving the future president of the world a wedgie while he’s still eight years old.   Now that’d be something cool to show your friends!

8.  Consider doing something nice.   After all, you’re messing up the time stream as is, so you may as well stop 9/11 or warn the Japanese about the 2011 earthquake or the Indian Ocean region about the 2004 tsunami.   At the very least look up some people who died of cancer and tell them they have it while it’s still treatable.

You don’t have to do this, but since you’re messing up the time stream, it just seems like you’d be a dick not to.

It could also help with your image, which might be hurt pretty badly if you happen to do something like destroy the LHC.   If you destroy the LHC, you’ll go down in history as the guy who destroyed the LHC, and when you return to your day and age they might not think you’re a hero, because they won’t be aware of the problems the LHC caused.

On the other hand, if you evacuate the Indian coast before the Tsunami and then destroy the LHC, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be remembered well just the same.

The big Atlas rocket has rolled out of the Vertical Integration Facility and is now on the launch pad, payload checked and stowed and systems being checked.  Tomorrow (the 26th of November) it will lift off with the Mars Science Laboratory, a new rover bound for the red planet with plans to land on the red planet in August of 2012.

This is truly one of the most exciting unmanned space missions in a long time, and perhaps the most exciting to visit mars since exploration of the planet’s surface began in 1978 with Viking 1.   The probe is a rover, somewhat similar in design to the rovers Spirit and Opportunity which proved to be astoundingly long-lived and robust machines.

It’s build on the success of the previous rover missions, but is far more bold and ambitious.  The rover will be physically much larger than the previous rovers and will have considerably greater scientific instrumentation and on board computing power.   The rover will carry extensive analytical instruments.  Like previous rovers it will have an alpha-particle x-ray spectrometer, but will also have a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy system, along with a host of other scientific instruments for analyzing soil and rock, examining samples and detecting environmental variables like particle radiation, temperature, pressure and light levels.   The rover will have the best camera systems yet taken to mars and will be able to take full motion video, even capturing ten frames per second of high definition video.   With two gigabytes of radiation-hardened storage it will be able to cache thousands of pictures and volumes of scientific data for transmission back to earth.

What makes this all possible and what makes the MSL so much more capable than previous rovers is the source of power.   Spirit and Opportunity were designed to be solar powered.  As we all know, solar cells don’t provide a huge amount of energy on earth, but on mars it’s even less.  Under ideal conditions, the Exploration Rovers could gather .6 kilowatt hours of energy each day from their solar panels.   However, conditions were rarely so good and dust on the panels made the amount of energy the panels provided in a day even less.  This is a severely limiting factor, forcing the rovers to spend considerably more time sitting idle and charging their batteries and making it a necessity that energy be used as frugally as possible.

The Mars Science Laboratory has its own nuclear power source, providing vastly more power, day or night.   It’s not a reactor but a radio thermal generator, powered by the decay of plutonium-238.  The power source will deliver a constant supply of more than 100 watts to the spacecraft.  By mars probe standards, that’s a real lot, especially because it’s continuous.  With a half life of 88 years, it’s likely that the mission will end due to equipment failure before any noticeable reduction in power output occurs as a result of the decay of the plutonium-238 heat source.

Getting enough plutonium-238 to power future missions could be a problem due to lack of capacity to produce it in the US and tightening supplies from Russian producers, but that’s another story.

Despite the astounding science that is provided by interplanetary missions, the use of anything “nuclear” for any purpose is sure to draw some protests.   (Don’t even get me started on how stupid it is to complain about polluting outer space with radiation)  Some of the opponents claim that the material is so dangerous it could cause catastrophe if the rocket exploded or the probe crashed back to earth.  Of course, both because of the design of the RTG and the material used, dispersal is unlikely even in that event, and the worst case would result in only minimal exposure to anyone.  Still, some have tried to stop the launch or at least protest it.

But not many seem to really be buying into it anymore.  In fact, the protests have dwindled down to almost nothing…

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There are two primary types of smoke detectors: ionization and photoelectric.  Ionization smoke detectors are the most common type and have been around the longest.   Photoelectric detectors have not been commonplace until more recently and are still generally less common than ionization detectors.

Ionization detectors use a tiny amount of radioactive material, usually amercium-241, to ionize air in a small chamber in the detector.  When smoke particles from a fire enter the detector, they interrupt the ion potential of the air in the chamber, thus tripping the detector.

Photoelectric detectors work by using a tiny light emitting diode, usually infrared and a light detector.  A small gap between the light and the detector allows air to pass between the two.  When smoke particles enter the detector, they obscure the light beam and this triggers the detector.

Recent Opposition to Ionization Detectors:

In recent years there have been some groups that have sprung up claiming that ionization detectors are entirely unreliable and that the use of ionization detectors puts lives in danger due to their failure to adequately detect and warn of fire.   This is often accompanied with claims of some kind of conspiracy between authorities and smoke detector manufacturers to keep this information from the public.   The issue of radioactivity and claims of corruption by the nuclear industry as also been a fixture in the argument.

It may not be that surprising, in the end.  Given the rampant radiophobia that has gripped the world, even the humble smoke detector had to eventually become the subject of fear.

These arguments were used as the basis for an Australian documentary and advocacy project with the absurdly dramatic name “Stop the Children Burning.”

Here is a clip from the film:

In reality, there’s no danger posed by the tiny amount of Am-241 in smoke detectors.  Am-241 produces some low energy gamma rays, but is primarily an alpha emitter.  The material is present in microscopic quantities and is in a form that is non-soluble, chemically stable and not easily absorbed.  It can resist all but the most extreme temperatures, and if the temperature was that high, you’d have worse things to worry about than inhaling a tiny amount of Americium liberated from the detector.  In most cases, the Am-241 is in the form of an oxide or ceramic and is embedded in gold foil that is affixed to a steel disk, usually recessed.   It is specifically designed to make release of the material unlikely.

There is no requirement for special disposal of smoke detectors nor do they require a license to own or sell.  The total radiation exposure during normal operations is negligible and even in the most extreme cases of a release of the embedded material would still be too small for much concern. It has not been “declared fifteen times more dangerous than plutonium.” It is technically about fifteen times more radioactive per unit of mass because the half-life is shorter, but that also means a much smaller amount is needed to produce the same ionization effect than would be needed if plutonium were used.

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