Itchy The Killer

Atul Gawande's latest article in the New Yorker sounds like an awesome horror story. Phantom limbs, the nervous system and the science of pyschotic, compulsive and self-mutilating itching:

For M., the itching was so torturous, and the area so numb, that her scratching began to go through the skin. At a later office visit, her doctor found a silver-dollar-size patch of scalp where skin had been replaced by scab. M. tried bandaging her head, wearing caps to bed. But her fingernails would always find a way to her flesh, especially while she slept.

One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, "this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid." She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.'s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night--and all the way into her brain.

WoooOOOOOaaaaahhhh!

[via Jonah Lehrer, a bastard who isn't linking to the New Yorker article]

"Solar Cells Via Inkjet Printing!? Like My Epson Stylus Pro 4880!"

It can be hard to stomach pop science journalism sometimes, especially when it thinks it has a catchy hook for the public. Take, for example, this Popular Mechanics headline: Startup Makes Cheap Solar Film Cells ... With an Inkjet Printer

"Zoinks! I just printed out Google Maps directions to Kevin's house on one of those. I could have a start-up! (This story really speaks to me.)"

To be fair there are some similarities between the FUJIFILM Dimatix materials deposition printer and your average home and office printer. Both have the ability to deposit biological fluids including cell patterning, DNA arrays, and proteomics; both restrict the printing process to a temperature-controlled vacuum theta platen; and both have "drop-watch" fiducial camera systems that allow "manipulation of the electronic pulses to the piezo-jetting device for optimization of the drop characteristics as it is ejected from the nozzle." No? Oh, yeah. Sorry that's only the Dimatix.

[Link to FUJIFILM's press release celebrating Konarka's use of their printer for organic solar cells. Note: Organic solar cells are grown without pesticides by farmers who respect Nature's bounty.]

Carbon Dioxide: Let's Put It Under Stuff!

With nearly carbon-negative alternatives, like GreenFuel's Emissions-to-Biofuels technology, it's slightly painful to see well-meaning scientists and organizations like Bruce Yardley and the Natural Resources Defense Council still arguing in favor of "carbon capture and storage (CCS)," a process by which carbon dioxide is "caught" from coal- or natural gas-fired power plants and then "stored" in (wait for it...) caves.

Since Yousif Kharaka's study (.pdf file) for the U.S. Geological Survey revealed that leaking CO₂ from CCS could acidify surrounding water, leach metals, and endanger both wildlife and public health—all before escaping back into the atmosphere anyway—there really isn't too much to recommend this new research. From Discover:

[A] British geologist’s study suggests sandstone could rapidly absorb [CO₂] potentially providing a safe, leakproof reservoir. Last year, Bruce Yardley, a professor at the University of Leeds in England, was monitoring oil extraction at a BP oil field in the North Sea. To speed the oil’s flow to the surface, seawater had been pumped to the bottom of the wells. When Yardley analyzed a sample of the injected water, he found it rich in silica. That signaled that the water and minerals in the surrounding sandstone had reached a chemical equilibrium with the injected seawater far more quickly than anticipated—in two years rather than a century.

Past studies had shown that when carbon dioxide is injected into sandstone, it dissolves common carbonates in the rock, changing the chemistry of sitting water and making a carbonic acid that eats holes in the rock. This can lead to CO₂ leakage. Based on the speed of the silicates’ reaction with seawater, Yardley believes that when CO₂ is injected into high-silicate minerals like feldspar, it too will quickly react, making clays and carbonates that clog the pores of the rock and trap the gas.

This, incidentally, is basically a radically less energy-intensive version of mineral storage techniques, which is good. However, you don't get biofuels out of it, so WGAF?

[Link to the Discover magazine article; Related a neat MSNBC video of MIT's Isaac Berzin who came up with GreenFuel's method for making both ethanol and biodiesel from CO₂-fed algae]

The Art of the Soundbite: Topically Applied Topical Metaphors

Check out this quote from Cliff Spiegelman, a Texas A&M statistics professor and an expert in bullet-lead analysis, on his recent JFK assassination study:

"We're not saying there was a conspiracy. All we're saying is the evidence that was presented as a slam dunk for a single shooter is not a slam dunk," said Spiegelman, a Texas A&M statistics professor and an expert in bullet-lead analysis.

This is pretty much the definitive way to get your quirky, left-field news story reported on CNN or probably any other major news outlet. Give them a cute opportunity to allude to something that's actually (in the) news. (In this case, George Tenet's dumbass basketball metaphor for the WMD intel. Imagine if it had been Baseball. "The intelligence is a standing double with a man on third!")

Basically Spiegelman has gotten his hands some ultra rare Western-Winchester Cartridge Co. Mannlicher-Carcano bullets and fired them all over the place to see if the claims of the late Warren commission forensic chemist, Vincent Guinn, hold any water. He says no.
[Link to paper published in "Annals of Applied Statistics"]
[Link to CNN article]