Obesity Promotes Global Warming...?

As if those of us who are overweight needed another reason to feel bad about that fact, it seems that we're also helping cause global warming. How?

According to an article quoted by John Tierney over at the New York Times the obese population consumes 18% more calories than the general population. And because we weigh more, it takes more energy to transport us in vehicles. Thus global warming.

That's all I'm going to write about that for now. I have to go do some sit-ups....

Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Breast Cancer Risk

From the L.A. Times and Mount Sinai Hospital comes a report that breast cancer patients who had below-normal levels of vitamin D when diagnosed were a staggering 94% more likely to have their cancer metastasize, and 73% more likely to die within 10 years of diagnosis.

These results are preliminary and it is far too early for doctors to begin advising women to take vitamin D to help combat cancer. That said, striving for 100% of the daily recommended amount would be wise anyway. Vitamin D has a number of beneficial effects on the body, although taking too much can also cause problems. The best form of vitamin D, D₃, is produced naturally in the body due to exposure to sunlight, and is considered the most useful form.

So spending more time in the sunlight may have beneficial effects for helping fight breast cancer or preventing its spread. But be careful not to get skin cancer from over-exposure!

Robotic Exoskeletons

From CNN comes news of a robotic exoskeleton being developed for the military. This isn't the first time I've seen reports about the military's plans for this sort of thing, but it is the first time I've seen an advanced demonstration and up-to-date information.

Technology like this could go a long way toward keeping our soldiers alive in dangerous situations, but it could also do more. Imagine if a group of a hundred or a thousand relief workers equipped with this technology could be deployed following a major disaster, such as the recent earthquake in China. Combing through the rubble in a powered exoskeleton would be much faster, and could save a large number of lives by getting to trapped people sooner.

Happy Birthday, Laser

Forty-eight years ago today, Theodore Maiman used a synthetic ruby to create the world's first laser. Maiman didn't invent the theory, but he did build the first working laser.

A number of brilliant minds have worked on laser technology over the past half-century, and without them we wouldn't have such things as DVD players, laser eye surgery, laser range-finders, laser welding, or optical computer mice. Sometimes it still amazes me how a single scientific or technological advance can lead to such great advances in our understanding of the universe and our quality of life.

Blog Purpose

When I first launched this blog a couple of years ago, I began by compiling daily science/tech/future/space/medical news and summarizing them here. Then I discovered that there were other blogs that were doing the same thing, often better. So I shifted the focus of this blog to have fewer, higher-quality (in my mind) posts of original, often educational, content.

But over the past several months, a couple of the blogs that were aggregating the latest cool news seem to have disappeared. I keep waiting for them to come back, but they haven't. So I'm wondering, should I start doing that again, or is that a service that's even in demand? Is it beneficial to you to go to a blog that aggregates that kind of stuff so you don't have to go look for it in a hundred places yourself?

Please let me know your opinion as to what you think this blog should focus on going forward.

WorldWide Telescope

In case you missed it, Microsoft released its WorldWide Telescope software for free yesterday. This is an application that combines their Photosynth technology with astronomy images and data to create an interactive view of the universe around us.

It's a pretty cool application, and even cooler that they released it for free. Check it out.

Answering Fermi

In a post last year, I talked about the Drake Equation (for predicting the number of intelligent species in the galaxy). In that post, I also mentioned the Fermi paradox, which begs the question, if there are as many intelligent species in the galaxy as the Drake Equation seems to predict, then where are they all?

Theoretical answers to the question have been proposed and, in many cases, explored through science fiction, and I'm going to discuss them further here. Really, the possible answers to the Fermi paradox fall into one of two categories:

1. There is no other intelligent life in the universe
2. They're out there, but we haven't found them yet

Each of these two categories has several sub-examples that might be applicable. In the first case, the most obvious answer might be that we are, in fact, the only intelligent life in the universe. Scientifically this answer is both unplausible and unpalatable. We know that conditions in our universe are right for the formation of life, and for that life to reach intelligence. After all, we exist (though some might argue about our "intelligence"). The scale of the universe is so incredibly vast that it's impossible to believe that intelligent life would form in one and only one location.

But maybe intelligent life develops and doesn't flourish, for one reason or another. Perhaps it gets wiped out by some natural catastrophe, such as asteroid impacts, gamma ray bursts, supernovae, or other natural disaster. Or maybe it wipes itself out through catastrophic climate change, nuclear war, engineered pathogens, self-replicating nano-machines, or through other means we haven't been clever enough to come up with yet ourselves.

Maybe they are out there, though, and we just haven't found them yet. Maybe they have such advanced technology that they could be watching us silently right now. Or maybe we're so beneath their notice that they don't attempt to communicate with us anymore than we attempt to communicate with cockroaches. It's likely that they're communication systems are so advanced that we would not detect their signals.

The final possibility I'm going to mention falls under the first category, but I saved it for last: maybe the first intelligent species to expand out into the universe has gone on a rampage and destroyed every other species that has attempted to expand off its home planet. This possibility has been thoroughly explored in science fiction, from swarms of self-replicating nanites to ginormous robotic destroyers to swarms of human-eating critters. And maybe they just haven't gotten here yet, or maybe they sweep through each sector of space every ten thousand years or so, and they'll be returning soon.

Which of these do I believe? Lacking any scientific evidence, I have to remain skeptical. The one that seems most likely to me is that they're out there, but we're not smart enough to notice. Maybe they're waiting for us to find them.

What do you think?