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This Explains A Lot About My High-School Love Life

Just in time for Valentine's Day, CNN reports on an anthropological study that explains why Homo Erectus had such a thick skull:

After studying fossils in a region called Dragon Bone Hill in China, anthropologist Russell Ciochon of the University of Iowa concluded males of the species were clubbing one another over the head, probably to win females.

Those with thicker skulls who survived these bloody confrontations would pass that trait to offspring, Ciochon said.

If you're male and you've been through high school, you should be very familiar with the mating-selection process that seems to favor aggressive, thick-skulled candidates who had no problem beating the others on the heads with clubs ... and books, and hoses, and rocks, and really almost anything else on hand, including the hand. The process is not limited to high school, either; you can observe the same results at nightclubs and other places where the younger crowd socializes. In fact, I observed this almost throughout the entirety of my single life, until I met the First Mate, who professed a distaste for head-butting as a romantic gesture.

Perhaps this article should be required reading for adolescent women, with the caveat, "If you make these kinds of choices, you'll wind up with thick-headed offspring." I know that would make millions of male chess-playing marching-band members very, very happy.

Bush To Issue New Lunar Challenge

George Bush intends on challenging America to return to the moon, this time to establish a permanent presence:

President Bush will announce plans next week to send Americans to Mars and back to the moon and to establish a long-term human presence on the moon, senior administration officials said Thursday night. ... Three senior officials said Bush wants to aggressively reinvigorate the space program, which has been demoralized by a series of setbacks, including the space shuttle disaster last February that killed seven astronauts.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush's announcement would come in the middle of next week.

As someone who grew up with the space program, with a father who worked on the Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle programs, the prospect of another bold new goal in space travel excites me. It will be interesting to see if it excites many others, as times have certainly changed. No longer are we locked in an ideological contest with another superpower for technological prowess or reputation, and that sense of mission very clearly motivated the entire nation during our first lunar mission. A lunar base makes sense if we plan on doing any further manned exploration of our solar system, but will be very expensive to staff and maintain. It will certainly require another type of launch vehicle to take astronauts out of earth's atmosphere, let alone transit back and forth to the moon.

Bush hasn't been content this month to coast to the election. He is sketching policy goals in broad, bold strokes, giving him a dimension I don't think he had before 9/11. It seems to me that he is trying to build a visionary approach to America, extending the notion of American exceptionalism to a greater historical degree than ever. In 2000, he only seemed exciting when compared to Al Gore. In 2004, no Democrat has had the courage to paint a vision like Bush, nor will they be able to now.

To the moon! And Power Line is also pretty excited.

UPDATE: Not eveyone is excited, including Rand Simberg. He's got some good points to ponder.

The Universe Is Male

AP Headline: Universe Lifeless After Big Bang

I'm linking this back to Electric Venom: the Letter of the Day is T!

Danish, Anyone?

The Danes, descendants of the mighty Vikings, are trying to conquer the world again ... only in a slightly different manner than their first-millenium strategy:

Danes are spreading their genes around the world faster than ever aided by exports from local firm Cryos International, the world's biggest sperm bank. Each year Danish men donate sperm that contributes to around 1,000 pregnancies, and with increasing demand from Americans, Cryos has opened its first New York office -- on Broadway. ... Cryos, which has currently accepts only Danish donators, exports to 40 countries.

Well, it's certainly one way to achieve world domination with as little exertion as possible. Don't need those uncomfortable long boats, either.

Bad Medicine at NIH?

The Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that several key people at the National Institutes of Health have received consultatation payments from pharmaceutical companies that call their impartiality and integrity into question:

"Subject No. 4" died at 1:44 a.m. on June 14, 1999, in the immense federal research clinic of the National Institutes of Health. The cause of death was clear: a complication from an experimental treatment for kidney inflammation using a drug made by a German company, Schering AG.

Among the first to be notified was Dr. Stephen I. Katz, the senior NIH official whose institute conducted the study. Unbeknown to the participants, Katz also was a paid consultant to Schering AG.

Katz and his institute staff could have responded to the death by stopping the study immediately. They also could have moved swiftly to warn doctors outside the NIH who were prescribing the drug for similar disorders. Either step might have threatened the market potential for Schering AG's drug. They did neither.

This has been going on since rules were changed in the mid-90s.

While pharmaceutical companies routinely do their own valid research, the co-opting of NIH scientists seems troubling to me. the NIH is supposed to be impartial. As the story says later, NIH scientists are among the highest-paid government employees, so it isn't like these researchers can claim poverty. Now two members of Congress would like some answers:

Two congressional leaders on Monday called upon the director of the National Institutes of Health to account for all payments that drug companies have made to researchers at the federal agency over the past four years.

The leaders — Reps. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) and James C. Greenwood (R-Pa.) — said that their letter was in response to articles in Sunday editions of the Los Angeles Times detailing millions of dollars in consulting fees and stock options paid by companies to NIH employees.

Read the whole stories.

Just A Spoonful of Cinnamon Helps The Sugar Go Away

A big thank you to reader Tom Scott of Anchorage, who referred me to an article in New Scientist magazine that explains newly-discovered benefits of cinnamon for diabetics:

Just half a teaspoon of cinnamon a day significantly reduces blood sugar levels in diabetics, a new study has found. The effect, which can be produced even by soaking a cinnamon stick your tea, could also benefit millions of non-diabetics who have blood sugar problem but are unaware of it.

Like a lot of interesting scientific discoveries, this one was found by accident, originally by the Human Nutrition Research Center, a project in the US Dept. of Agriculture. They even know the molecular mechanism involved:

The active ingredient in cinnamon turned out to be a water-soluble polyphenol compound called MHCP. In test tube experiments, MHCP mimics insulin, activates its receptor, and works synergistically with insulin in cells.

My wife was surprised to hear this, although she's not a big fan of cinnamon. She eats oatmeal every morning, and sometimes I do as well. I always dump a big heap of cinnamon on it, but she says she just likes it plain, with some fruit on top. Maybe the cinnamon sticks in the tea would be a good idea instead. We'll try working it into her diet and see how it works out. She's been having some trouble controlling her glucose levels recently. Hopefully, this will make a difference.

Thanks again, Tom!

New Diabetic Testing Technology Eliminates Blood Draws

This is outstanding news -- a new diabetes meter will be introduced in January which will eliminate the need for finger sticks and test strips, eliminated a major quality-of-life issue for diabetics. My wife, who has been diabetic for 40 years, told me about this a few minutes ago, and I found this incomplete site on the Internet:

The first TRULY Non-invasive Glucose Monitor.

* Pain Free
* Blood Free
* Strip Free

Easy to use, SugarTrac IX3000 is a glucose monitoring system that, with no discomfort and no sensation, uses light waves to measure glucose levels.

A one step process involves using a small, lightweight earpiece attached by a cord to a monitor. When the earpiece is simply placed on the earlobe, and the "TEST" button is pushed, the monitor screen displays the glucose result in 30 seconds or less... without blood or fluid of any kind.

Here's a picture of the meter:

Note that all links on this site are non-functional; the site will be made operational in January. However, the Fall 2003 edition of The Voice of the Diabetic, which my wife gets on tape, has this to say about the new meter:

In FDA Phase III clinicals, the device appeared acceptably accurate: 88 percent of standard (80 percent is required minimum accuracy), and the prototype has held up well in a hospital environment. ... Big news: LifeTrac intends to include speech capability in this meter. A company representative said the speech chip had already been chosen, and would be present in version 2 of the SugarTrac -- which would appear three to six months after the initial production. This machine will talk, they promise.

The speech function is very, very welcome (my wife is blind). Most meter manufacturers don't integrate voice capabilities into their meters; they rely on third-party technology to allow blind diabetics to self-test. This gets pretty expensive for everyone and never works very well. The First Mate's current meter system often has timing problems between the meter and the voice module. Beyond that, the issue of getting the blood properly on the strip will be eliminated by this system, which is another chronic issue for blind diabetics. Also, no more messy used blood strips to get all over the place!

Very exciting! We'll be looking for the meter next month, and we'll get the voice one later on and use the first as the "traveling" meter. (We do the same thing now.) I'll post later on as more news comes in.

Oh Yeah, That's Useful

One of my favorite blogs, Second Nature, has a post on what may be the weirdest idea in agriculture (from the Sun-Times):

An Oregon scientist inspired by Homer Simpson has successfully created "tomacco" -- a tomato plant that contains nicotine.

I remember that episode! But, ah, I think Matt Groening was joking around, dude.

Baur grew the plants again, this time hollowing a portion of each out and grafting them together. The plant took form, and after weeks of pruning, he now has a large tobacco root that has sprouted a tomato branch. The branch has yielded one ripe fruit, and tests have shown the leaves contain nicotine -- the fruit will be tested for nicotine today. The scientist says he expects the fruit will contain much higher levels of the addictive ingredient. ... But Baur is having a Dr. Frankenstein moment, noting that nicotine, when ingested orally, can be fatal to humans at levels higher than 150 milligrams. He fears his tomacco plant contains "multiple fatal doses."

"I grew this thing, and then I thought, 'Now what am I going to do with it?'"

Perhaps it would have been better to have thought of that before spending four years attempting to develop the long-awaited "Tomacco", or perhaps better, "Homer's Folly". Steve at Second Nature has a suggestion, but you'll have to check his blog out to see it.

Deuling Dodos

German environmentalists face a difficult choice -- can you sacrifice one species to save another?

A protected species of bird is devouring rare fish in the German state of Bavaria and creating a dilemma for local officials who now want federal permission to kill birds that once appeared headed for extinction. ... "The problem is that a protected bird is eating protected fish," a spokesman for the Bavarian environment ministry said this week. Eager to save the fish from extinction in the wild, Bavaria has asked the federal government for permission to reduce the bird population, for example by shooting them or taking their eggs.

It's fairly obvious that one of these endangered critters is going to have to be scaled back, either through intervention (the birds) or through inaction (the fish). Careful management of the cormorant population may save the fish. Is that approach likely to be followed? Well ...

But some say the government action is misguided. "Their plan will not get us anywhere," said Andreas von Lindeiner of the Bavarian bird protection group. "We cannot destroy the bird colonies," he said.

This may come down to which species has the most fans. What a wonderful way to manage endangered species! Does there exist no middle ground? Because if a compromise can't be reached, the fish are going to disappear completely.

Oil as an Unlimited Resource?

This may be world-changing.

A company named Changing World Technologies claims that it can produce oil and natural gas by recycling any carbon-based waste, with an energy efficiency of 85%, and scalable to almost any size. Almost any size. That means, in Samizdata's words,

If you live in the middle of the Australian outback, you can chuck your shite and animal carcasses into the hopper on one end... and fill up the old diesel RV from the other fifteen minutes later.

Scalable energy production was the hope of the hydrogen fuel-cell crowd (myself included), but hydrogen distribution remained a difficult obstacle for practical use. In this case, the fuel would be mostly inert waste products already in abundant supply at almost every level of scale you can imagine. And the biggest benefit -- energy indepence for not only the US but everyone -- will almost pale in comparison to the long-term benefit of severly reducing our landfill and sewage levels as these materials are consumed in energy production. Politically, energy independence will allow us to deal honestly with the Arab kleptocracies, and will also reduce their one natural resource to a curiosity, a third- or fourth-option backup source. That will severely impact funding to terrorists as well.

If this technology is proven, it's time to throw massive resources into licensing and producing these refineries. Let's roll, people. (via QandO)

UPDATE: There is a fair amount of skepticism in Samizdata's comments section; be sure to read through them. As one post says, "I hope this isn't the 2003 version of Cold fusion."