Science In Action Index and Data

It's an interesting book, but do you have to own it?

2011-07-02T22:49:00.002Z

Sure this book mentioned in one of my blogs is interesting, and probably well worth reading. But do you have to own it? Do you need more stuff? Why not get it from your local library? Find your local library using this search tool.

Of maybe you could look for a used copy? Just Google the name of the book and several sources for new or used copied will be listed.

Here are some of the books referred to in past posts, pre-Googled:

You don't need more stuff.

Guinness "Evolution" ad

2007-09-08T07:17:00.001Z

Index Of "Science In Action" Articles

2005-11-26T19:15:00.004Z

Science In Action Posts By Topic

Topic	Post
Astronomy and Space Exploration	NASA's New Moon Program
	Where On Earth Did The Moon Come From?
	What's Up? Space Probes! (Dec. '04)
	Is Life on Mars More Likely?
	Eid Mubarak 1425--Islamic Astronomy
	News From Titan and Mars (Nov. '04)
Biology	Plants Unhappy About Global Warming
	Is Sex Necessary? Part 1
	What Are Flowers For?
	Why Is Urine Yellow?
	What Are Viruses?
	Left Handedness And Breast Cancer
	Spicy Foods
	Stem Cells From The Nose
	What Species Is Best?
	Are Human Beings Still Evolving?
	Reading Life's Blueprints--Genomes Sequenced (Dec. '04)
	Sneeze Science
	Left-Handedness
	About Sponges
	Turkey Evolution
	Are Human Beings Weeds?
Chemistry	Spicy Foods
	How Do Batteries Work?
	Virgin Mary on a Grilled Cheese Sandwich? (Maillard reaction)
Computing	Grid Computing
Economics	Don't Sign If You Can't Do The Math
	What is Currency "Inflation"?
	Spicy Foods
	Does Recycling Make Sense?
	Physicists Model Shopping
Environment and Earth Sciences	Climate Change--What We Know and What's Uncertain
	What Is The "Greenhouse" Effect?
	Latent Heat--Sweat, Storms and Cooling Towers
	Plants Unhappy About Global Warming
	Is There Scientific Consensus on Climate Change?
	Oil Spill Math: How Much Risk for How Much Oil?
	Know Your Spills--Confusing Names and Oil Quantity Equivalents
	A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
	Do Cow Farts Cause Global Warming?
	Hurricane Numbers Up With Sea Surface Warming
	Fire Alarm: Global Warming and Wildfires
	The Great Lisbon Earthquake
	Hurricane Katrina and Global Warming
	Does Recycling Make Sense?
Evolution	Is Sex Necessary? Part 1
	What Does "Survival of the Fittest" Mean?
	Evolution In A Nutshell
	What Species Is Best?
	Are Human Beings Still Evolving?
	Reading Life's Blueprints--Genomes Sequenced (Dec. '04)
	Turkey Evolution
Medicine	Why Is Urine Yellow?
	World AIDS Day, 2005
	Epidemics, Pandemics, and Bird Flu
	What Are Viruses?
	Breast Cancer And Left Handedness
	Spicy Foods
	Brain Freeze Headaches
	Stem Cells From The Nose
	World AIDS Day 2004--Focus on Women
	Medical Errors
	Targeting Drugs by Race
Physics	What Is The "Greenhouse" Effect?
	Latent Heat--Sweat, Storms and Cooling Towers
	Why Is The Sky Blue?
Science In General	Carl Sagen "Sings" of Science (with Dawkins, Hawking, et al.)
	Is There Scientific Consensus on Climate Change?
	Weird Science Words
	Science on the Small Screen
	Top 10 Science Discoveries . . . Ever!
	Cool Science Sites II
	Keys To A Great Science Project
	Will U.S. Cede Science Leadership?
	Project Steve -- Scientists Support Natural Selection
	Cool Science Sites
	Day In The Life Of A Scientist
	Is "Intelligent Design" Science?
	Virgin Mary on a Grilled Cheese Sandwich?
	Why "Science In Action"?
	Undergrad Field Trip Find Makes Student Famous
	Science In The Movies
	Why Don't We Teach Science?
	Doesn't President Bush Understand Science?
Statistics, Probability and Decision-Making	Don't Sign If You Can't Do The Math
	Probability and Profiling
	Why Statistics Matter
	Bush Poll Numbers -- Margin of Error
	What Is Randomness?
	Bayes' Theorem And Why It Matters
	Systems Failures
	Mathematical Models: Shopping
	Election Math
	Predicting the Election Outcome
	Misinterpretation of Polls

That Ol' Trigeminal Nerve

2005-07-22T02:30:00.000Z

Since the Trigeminal Nerve has come up in a couple of Science In Action posts, here is a little more about it:

The "trigeminal nerve" is really a complex tangle of motor nerves (to the jaw muscles) and sensory nerves (associated with the face, nose, mouth, eyes, and ears). This "wiring harness" of nerves conveys information to and from the brain. One type of information it carries comes from cold stimuli on the palate. (the palate is the roof of your mouth, back to the uvula (that fleshy piece hanging down in the back of your mouth -- a source of many jokes. If you can say "It's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht," you are using your uvula.) Wikipedia article ulvula.

Here is a drawing of the inside of a skull with some more info on this nerve.

More nice pictures.

Drawing not good enough? Here is more than you probably wanted to know, with gross pictures.

This page provides background information for posts on Science In Action.

More On Movie Categories

2005-06-16T20:59:00.001Z

Movie Classification

These thumbnails expand on the category definitions mentioned in this post about classification at Science In Action
I got thinking about such a classification because some movies which are different in some ways are obviously exactly the same in other ways. Is there a way to classify movies that recognizes these underlying similarities and treats the differences as superficial? Examples:

Seven Samuai = The Magnificent Seven
High Noon = Outland
Earthquake = Volcano

10 Little Indians
Who is the killer in the group? Usually isolated from outside help. Is anyone whom they seem?

Lifeboat
The Sleeping Car Murders
Clue
The Usual Suspects
Identity

Adventure
Who will survive? No monster or killer on the loose. "Grand Hotel" goes down in flames.

The Poseidon Adventure
Stagecoach
The Towering Inferno

Beat the Clock
Can they stop him in time? (Is this different enough from "thriller"?)

The Manchurian Candidate
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Biopic
Triumph or tragedy of one character. What made him/her tick?

The Birdman of Alcatraz
Lawrence of Arabia
Patton
The Song of Bernadette

Buddy Movie
They start out hating each other, but end up best friends.

It Happened One Night
The Rookie
48 Hours

Coming of Age
The protagonist must find reserves of inner strength to overcome the intolerable situation. The protagonist changes, and must do it (more or less) on his or her own.

Napoleon Dynamite
Cast Away
Brazil
Soldier of Orange
Sergeant York
Labyrinth (quest + coming of age?)
The Pianist

Hero
A lone protagonist must defeat overwhelming odds. If possible, save the world (or at least avert unimaginable tragedy). And must do it without (much) outside help. Sometimes close to "Beat the Clock"?

Outland
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Any James Bond film
The Long Kiss Goodnight
Twelve Monkeys
The Lord of the Rings

Hill of Beans
A love triangle is embedded in some bigger situation. Who will get whom? Who really loves whom?

House of Flying Daggers
Manhattan (?)

Monster
"Listen. And understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead." "(bang! . . .bang!). . . Bullets have no effect on it!!" Can they stop it? Will anyone survive? (Not isolated in an old house or equivalent.) (Is this different enough from "adventure"?)

Them!
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Outbreak
The Blob

Old House
Things jumping out while the pool of victims is drained one by one. One or two will survive. Different from 10 Little Indians in that the threat is clearly from the outside. Different from Monster because the protagonists are isolated . . . and things keep jumping out at them!

Alien
Slasher Films
Pitch Black
The Thing From Another World

Road Movie / Quest
This has a classic episodic structure. Often uses a quest to motivate the action. The central protagonists encounter diverse characters, incidents and situations as they move through the story. Does it actually have to involve travel from one place to another?

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (with a nod to The Odyssey, the classic road tale)
Quest for Fire
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The Muppet Movie

Thriller
I have trouble with this one. The idea is that there is a good guy and a bad guy, and a lady in jeopardy (genders are fungible). It involves a duel, perhaps a duel of wits. Will the bad guy get away with it? Doesn't involve saving the world, just finding the truth and saving the "girl". Many of the best involve an ordinary guy being put in a threatening situation--he has to save himself (The 39 Steps, North by Northwest, Kill Bill?).

The 39 Steps
Laura
Grosse Pointe Blank
Dial M for Murder
The Big Hit
L.A. Confidential
The Crying Game
Memento — But who is the lady in jeopardy? Maybe this isn't a required element. Or is this a "Trip"?

War Movie
Here's another where I hijack the name for a narrower use. Men (or women, or men and women) are thrown together and bond into a team to do what has to be done. It's about the unit, not the enemy. The enemy will not be permanently defeated, but the unit will survive.

Starship Troopers
A Midnight Clear
Hell Is For Heroes
The Untouchables
Seven Samurai
Glory
The Big Red One

Western
A "western", in this classification, is a contest between opposing economic or political systems (farmer/rancher, computer/human or empire/rebel), which are cast by the filmmaker as good vs. evil. Naturally heroes on each side are pitted against each other. Generally violence is involved.

Star Wars
Shane
Silverado
The Matrix
The Return of the King
Blazing Saddles

If it is just a contest between good and evil individuals, I might not call it a western.

Gladiator — ". . . And I will have my revenge."

The term "western" does not refer to the locations. Nor are Titanic and The Poseidon Adventure "sea stories". Likewise a movie set in The West, involving horses, doesn't have to be a "western" in this sense.

The Searchers — a road movie, with Ethan Edwards coming of age?
Stagecoach — an adventure. The Indians aren't evil, just a force of nature. Who will survive? Poseidon Adventure on wheels.

A contest where one side isn't portrayed as good, and the other as evil, wouldn't qualify as a western.

West Side Story
Hell in the Pacific

And What About . . .
A straight love story? Will they sleep together? (Or will they get back together?) Then what? No shootings. No car chases.

A Man and A Woman
The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain
Edward Scissorhands
Does It Happened One Night go here? (Gable does chase a car, but on foot.)
Philadelphia Story
Manhattan

A "Trip"? It seems like a sane story, but turns out to have all been a dream, or otherwise gets resolved without resolution. Is this a category of its own?

Donnie Darko
Waking Life

An epic, with lots of stars and lots of intertwined stories?

The Longest Day
The Battle of the Bulge
Grand Hotel

Obviously any kind of movie can be rendered in any location, period, or style, with or without musical numbers. For example:

Bugsy Malone — musical western set in 20s with kids playing gangsters
Outland — High Noon on a moon of Jupiter
Team America World Police — parody musical western war movie
The Muppet Movie — comedy musical road movie
Shoot The Piano Player — noir thriller set in France
El Mariachi — thriller set in Mexico
Star Wars — western in outer space with hero elements

The Test

Ideally this classification system should be able to categorize any movie. Some of the best, of course, incorporate several elements.

Where would you put these?:

The Godfather (coming of age of Michael Corleone?)
Pulp Fiction
Kill Bill (thriller + quest?)
Psycho
Amélie
Chinatown
Some Like It Hot
The Princess Bride
South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut — do we need a category for a straight musical, or are musicals just another type with musical numbers?
The Muppets Take Manhattan — ("Big city, hmm? Live. Work, huh? But. Only peoples. Peoples is peoples. No is buildings. Is tomatoes, huh? Is peoples, is dancing, is music, is potatoes. So, peoples is peoples. Okay?")

Second Cornell Study on Antimicrobial Spices

2005-06-14T02:45:00.000Z

In 2001, Paul W. Sherman and Geoffrey A. Hash continued the examination of spices in human diet with a study entitled "Why Vegetable Recipes Are Not Very Spicy," published in Evolution and Human Behavior. They compiled information from 2,129 vegetable-only recipes from 107 traditional cookbooks of 36 countries. Then they examined the history of the spice trade and discovered that for thousands of years spices have been traded all over the world, resulting in their availability in most world cuisines. The most traded spices are black pepper and chile pepper, in that order.

Many studies have proven the antibacterial properties of spices, the fact that spices are more prevalent in warm climates than cool climates, and that the concentrations of spices in recipes are sufficient to kill bacteria. It is true that cooking eliminates the antimicrobial properties of some spices, such as cumin, but has no effect on others, such as chiles.

The researchers compared the vegetable-only recipes to the previous study of meat recipes according to the spices found in the recipes and discovered that vegetable recipes used far fewer spices than meat recipes. They attributed this to the fact that bacteria "do not survive or proliferate as well in vegetables, so adding spices is not as necessary." Interestingly, the four most common spices in both the meat and vegetable recipes were onion, black pepper, garlic, and chile peppers. Onion appeared in more than 60 percent of both types of recipes; black pepper in about 60 percent of the meat recipes and 48 percent of the vegetable recipes; garlic in 35 percent of the meat recipes and 20 percent of the vegetable recipes; and chile peppers in 22 percent of the meat recipes and 18 percent of the vegetable recipes.

Within countries, vegetable-based recipes called for fewer spices than meat recipes in all 36 countries. The countries using the most spices in both vegetable and meat recipes were, in order from the most used: India, Vietnam, Kenya, Morocco, Mexico, Korea, and The Philippines. Following were France, Israel, and South Africa.

In their second study, the researchers concluded: "By every measure, vegetable-based recipes were significant less spicy than meat-based recipes. Results thus strongly support the antimicrobial hypothesis."

Link to their earlier press release

Return to Science In Action article

Antimicrobial Spices - - Research at Cornell

2005-06-14T02:39:00.000Z

Link to original press release

ITHACA, N.Y. March 1998-- Fans of hot, spicy cuisine can thank nasty bacteria and other foodborne pathogens for the recipes that come -- not so coincidentally -- from countries with hot climates. Humans' use of antimicrobial spices developed in parallel with food-spoilage microorganisms, Cornell University biologists have demonstrated in a international survey of spice use in cooking.

The same chemical compounds that protect the spiciest spice plants from their natural enemies are at work today in foods from parts of the world where -- before refrigeration -- food-spoilage microbes were an even more serious threat to human health and survival than they are today, Jennifer Billing and Paul W. Sherman report in the March 1998 issue of the journal Quarterly Review of Biology.

"The proximate reason for spice use obviously is to enhance food palatability," says Sherman, an evolutionary biologist and professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell. "But why do spices taste good? Traits that are beneficial are transmitted both culturally and genetically, and that includes taste receptors in our mouths and our taste for certain flavors. People who enjoyed food with antibacterial spices probably were healthier, especially in hot climates. They lived longer and left more offspring. And they taught their offspring and others: 'This is how to cook a mastodon.' We believe the ultimate reason for using spices is to kill food-borne bacteria and fungi."

Sherman credits Billing, a Cornell undergraduate student of biology at the time of the research, with compiling many of the data required to make the microbe-spice connection: More than 4,570 recipes from 93 cookbooks representing traditional, meat-based cuisines of 36 countries; the temperature and precipitation levels of each country; the horticultural ranges of 43 spice plants; and the antibacterial properties of each spice.

Garlic, onion, allspice and oregano, for example, were found to be the best all-around bacteria killers (they kill everything), followed by thyme, cinnamon, tarragon and cumin (any of which kill up to 80 percent of bacteria). Capsicums, including chilies and other hot peppers, are in the middle of the antimicrobial pack (killing or inhibiting up to 75 percent of bacteria), while pepper of the white or black variety inhibits 25 percent of bacteria, as do ginger, anise seed, celery seed and the juices of lemons and limes. The Cornell researchers report in the article, "Countries with hotter climates used spices more frequently than countries with cooler climates. Indeed, in hot countries nearly every meat-based recipe calls for at least one spice, and most include many spices, especially the potent spices, whereas in cooler counties substantial fractions of dishes are prepared without spices, or with just a few." As a result, the estimated fraction of food-spoilage bacteria inhibited by the spices in each recipe is greater in hot than in cold climates.

Accordingly, countries like Thailand, the Philippines, India and Malaysia are at the top of the hot climate-hot food list, while Sweden, Finland and Norway are at the bottom. The United States and China are somewhere in the middle, although the Cornell researchers studied these two countries' cuisines by region and found significant latitude-related correlations. Which helps explain why crawfish etoufŽe is spicier than New England clam chowder.

The biologists did consider several alternative explanations for spice use and discounted all but one. The problem with the "eat-to-sweat" hypothesis -- that people in steamy places eat spicy food to cool down with perspiration -- is that not all spices make people sweat, Sherman says, "and there are better ways to cool down -- like moving into the shade." The idea that people use spices to disguise the taste of spoiled food, he says, "ignores the health dangers of ingesting spoiled food." And people probably aren't eating spices for their nutritive value, the biologist says, because the same macronutrients are available in similar amounts in common vegetables, which are eaten in much greater quantities.

However the micronutrient hypothesis -- that spices provide trace amounts of anti-oxidants or other chemicals to aid digestion -- could be true and still not exclude the antimicrobial explanation, Sherman says. However, this hypothesis does not explain why people in hot climates need more micro-nutrients, he adds. The antimicrobial hypothesis does explain this.

The study of Darwinian gastronomy is a bit of a stretch for an evolutionary biologist like Sherman, who normally focuses his research on the role of natural selection in animal social behavior and is best known for his studies of one of nature's most social (and unusual-looking) creatures, the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) of Africa. But eating is definitely one of the more social behavior of Homo sapienss, he maintains, and it's a good way to see the interaction between cultural evolution and biological function. "I believe that recipes are a record of the history of the coevolutionary race between us and our parasites. The microbes are competing with us for the same food," Sherman says. "Everything we do with food -- drying, cooking, smoking, salting or adding spices -- is an attempt to keep from being poisoned by our microscopic competitors. They're constantly mutating and evolving to stay ahead of us. One way we reduce food-borne illnesses is to add another spice to the recipe. Of course that makes the food taste different, and the people who learn to like the new taste are healthier for it."

For biology student Billing, the spice research for a senior honors thesis took her to an unfamiliar field, food science, and to the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, where the library contains one of the world's largest collections of cookbooks. Now that the bacteria-spice connection is revealed, librarians everywhere may want to cross-index cookbooks under "food safety." And spice racks may start appearing in pharmacies.

link to report of further research

Return to Science In Action article.

Taxicab Example of Bayesian Thinking

2005-03-30T23:09:00.001Z

Suppose there has been a hit-and-run accident. A person was struck by a taxicab last night. There are two cab companies in town, Blue Cab and Green Cab. The only witness, who was some distance away, believes it was a blue vehicle he saw cause the accident. Which cab company is guilty? How much do we know?

How would it affect your conclusion if you also knew:

Green Cab Company had 90 cabs on the street at the time of the accident, while Blue Cab Company had only 10 cabs out.

Given the lighting and visibility at the time of the accident, a person could correctly distinguish a blue from a green cab correctly about 80% of the time, at the distance the witness said he was from the accident. (One can always tell if it was a taxicab or not.)

Now we have a "prior probability" that the cab was blue: 10%. (This is the probability that the cab was blue even if there were no further color information from witnesses.)

We can also estimate the quality of the evidence from the witness: If it was a blue cab, the witness should have been able to identify the color correctly with 80% probability. If it was actually a green cab, the witness would have said it was blue with 20% probability (the probability of a witness making an error in color identification).

The calculated probability cab was blue, given testimony it was blue = (probability the witness would testify the cab was blue, given that it actually was blue (80%) × prior probability cab was blue (10%)) ÷ probability the testimony would be that the cab was blue (26%).

(The witness would testify the cab was blue 80% of the time if it was blue (of which there is 10% chance) and 20% of the time if it was green (of which there is a 90% chance) = 26% of the time overall.)

So what is the calculated probability the cab actually was from Blue Cab Company, given all of this information, and using Bayes' Theorem? Just 30%!

Given this testimony and these facts, there is a much higher probability that the cab involved in the accident was actually from Green Cab Company (70%)!

Why, you may ask, is any of this Bayesian stuff relevant?

Try substituting "black person" for "Blue Cab", "white person" for "Green Cab", "mugging" for "accident", and "I think I saw a black person running away" for the testimony of the witness, and then imagine yourself on the jury. Any jury member would thoughtfully consider how accurate the witness's testimony was likely to be, considering the conditions and other factors. But now you know how important it is to also consider the prior probability that the assailant was black, in the absence of any evidence one way or the other.

Interestingly, some courts have held that juries don't have to consider Bayesian probabilities, but can just use their (so often mistaken) intuition.

If you are interested in how judges have tried to understand Bayes' Theorem, check these sites:

http://www.law.umich.edu/thayer/redmay.htm

http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~vignaux/docs/logicalJuries.html

Remember, one of the reasons those judges went into law in the first place is that they heard they wouldn't have to do any math.

This page supports an article on Bayes' Theorem at the main Science In Action site. Click here to return to that article, and here to go to the Science in Action home page.

What are "Externalities"?

2005-03-25T19:08:00.004Z

This information supports the post "Does Recycling Make Sense" at Science in Action.Click here to return to the article.

This is a term used by economists to refer to effects of a transaction or economic decision that affect others beyond the immediate parties to the transaction.

Either there are external benefits received for free by some outside the transaction (positive externalities), or
There are costs or negative effects borne involuntarily by people not party to the transaction (negative externalities).

Examples:

Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gasses which (probably) contribute to global warming. This warming will have expensive negative impacts on many other people around the world. Those other people will either have their quality of life reduced, or will have to pay to mitigate the effects of warming. The cost of this mitigation, caused by someone else's initial decision to burn fossil fuels, will not be charged back to those making that initial decision. Those costs are negative externalities of the decision to use fossil fuels.

If you own a house that is run down, and you decide to paint it and fix it up, you bear all the costs of those improvements. The value of your property increases. But the value of your neighbors' properties may also increase, since you have made the whole neighborhood more attractive. They didn't have to pay anything for that benefit. That is a positive externality of your decision to paint your house.

Thus externalities are sometimes called "neighborhood effects", although the neighborhood may be global.

Whenever an economic decision forces others, who didn't directly benefit from the decision, to bear additional costs, or gives others costless benefits, an externality is associated with that decision.

The reason externalities are important is that they can lead to inefficiencies in markets. If people don't bear the full cost of using a product (e.g. fossil fuel), they will tend to buy more of it than they otherwise would. So they impose more external costs. On the other hand, if some of the benefit of a transaction goes to people who bear none of its cost, fewer people may decide to make that transaction. Thus nobody gets any of the benefit.

This information supports the post "Does Recycling Make Sense" at Science in Action. Click here to return to the article.

Recycling Facts and Figures

2005-03-25T18:03:00.000Z

These data support the post "Does Recycling Make Sense" at Science in Action. Click here to return to the article.

Americans generated 229 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2001 (see EPA report from which these figures were drawn.) Of that 229 million tons of trash, 51.4 million tons (22.4%) was recovered for recycling.

What's In Trash, USA, 2001

Type of Trash	% of Total Trash	% Recovered
containers and packaging	32%	38.3%
nondurable goods (including newspapers)	26.4%	17.5%
durable goods	16.4%	27.1%
other materials (yard waste, food scraps)	25%	0% (some composted)

Composition and Recycling of Municipal Solid Waste, USA, 2001

Material	% of Trash	% Recovered	Million Tons Recovered
Paper	36%	45%	37
Plastic	11%	5.5%	1.4
Metals	8%	35%	6.3
Glass	5.5%	19%	2.4
Other Materials	39.5%

Breakdown of Recovered Materials, USA, 2001

Segment	Million Tons	Percent of Total Recovered Trash
paper & paperboard	36.7	71.4%
steel	4.6	8.9%
glass	2.4	4.7%
plastic	1.4	2.7%
aluminum	0.8	1.5%
other materials	5.5	10.7%
Total	51.4	100%

These data support the post "Does Recycling Make Sense" at Science in Action. Click here to return to the article.

What Are Electrons?

2005-03-06T20:19:00.000Z

Electrons are very small "particles" (in fact they are infinitely small — they are thought to have no dimensions at all!) They have charge, mass, and spin. They form a quantum cloud around the nuclei of atoms. Since electrons are on the outside, the interaction among materials is really the interaction among electrons. All electrons carry negative charge, and since like charges repel each other, the little clouds of electrons are what are keeping your butt from sinking into your chair right now. Chemistry is mostly about electrons. Electricity is mostly about electrons. Beta particles resulting from beta decay of radioactive materials are also electrons. (For example, the decay of radioactive Carbon-14 into stable Nitrogen-14 is beta decay, and the basis for "carbon dating".) A museum site with some history Some more definitions about electron flow This page supports the article "How Batteries Work" at Science in Action.

Population Differences (supports Evolution of Adult Lactose Tolerance)

2005-01-01T20:41:00.000Z

Most people lose the ability to produce lactase in adulthood. Only in some populations is the ability to digest lactose widespread in adults. These figures represent various methods of assessing adult lactose tolerance. Also note that some of the populations (for example Australian Aborigines) may have received the adult-lactase-persistence form of the gene by recent interbreeding.

POPULATION	LACTOSE INTOLERANT ADULTS
U.S. & Mexico
European Americans	2-19%
Latinos	52%
African Americans	70-77%
Native Americans	95%
Asian Americans	95-100%
Mexico	83%
Europe
Sweden	4%
Switzerland	12%
Spain	15%
Finland	18%
Estonia	28%
England	32%
Hungary	37%
Greece	88%
Jordan	79%
Africa
Southern Sudan (cattle herders)	17%
Ibo and Yoruba (Nigeria)	99%
Masai, East Africa	60%
Bantu, Gabon	65%
Fulani	25%
Asia
Japan	90%
Thailand	99%
Australia (Aborigines)	85%

Sources: Robert D. McCracken, "Lactase Deficiency: An Example of Dietary Evolution," Current Anthropology 12 (Oct.-Dec. 1971, pp. 479-517), Norman Kretchner, "Lactose and Lactase," Scientific American 277 (Oct. 1972, pp. 71-78), and others. Largely lifted from this site.
This table is referred to in the post on Evolution of Adult Lactose Tolerance at Science in Action.

List of Sequenced Genomes (supports "Reading Life's Blueprints")

2004-12-31T17:51:00.000Z

Genus	Species	"Kingdom"	Phylum	Common Name
Anophyles	gambiae	Metazoa	Arthropoda	mosquito
Apis	mellifera	Metazoa	Arthropoda	honeybee
Arabidopsis	thaliana	Green Plants	Embryophyta / Streptophyta	rock cress
Ashbya	gossypii	Fungi	Ascomycota	mold
Caenorhabditis	briggsae	Metazoa	Nematoda	roundworm
Caenorhabditis	elegans	Metazoa	Nematoda	roundworm
Candida	glabrata	Fungi	Ascomycota	yeast
Canis	familiaris	Metazoa	Chordata	dog
Ciona	intestinalis	Metazoa	Chordata	sea squirt
Cryptosporidium	hominis	Alveolata	Apicomplexa	protozoan
Cryptosporidium	parvum	Alveolata	Apicomplexa	protozoan
Cyanidioschyzon	merolae	Rhodophyta		red alga
Debaryomyces	hansenii	Fungi	Ascomycota	yeast
Drosophila	melanogaster	Metazoa	Arthropoda	fruit fly
Encephalitozoon	cuniculi	Microsporidia		protozoan
Gallus	gallus	Metazoa	Chordata	chicken
Guillardia	theta	Protists Incertae Sedis		protozoan
Homo	sapiens	Metazoa	Chordata	human
Kluyveromyces	lactis	Fungi	Ascomycota	yeast
Kluyveromyces	waltii	Fungi	Ascomycota	yeast
Magnaporthe	grisea	Fungi	Ascomycota	mold
Mus	musculus	Metazoa	Chordata	mouse
Neurospora	crassa	Fungi	Ascomycota	mold
Oryza	sativa	Green Plants	Embryophyta / Streptophyta	rice
Pan	troglodytes	Metazoa	Chordata	chimpanzee
Phanerochaete	chrysosporium	Fungi	Basidiomycota	mold
Plasmodium	falciparum	Alveolata	Apicomplexa	protozoan
Plasmodium	yoelii yoelii	Alveolata	Apicomplexa	protozoan
Populus	trichocarpa	Green Plants	Embryophyta / Streptophyta	poplar
Rattus	norvegicus	Metazoa	Chordata	rat
Saccharomyces	cerevisiae	Fungi	Ascomycota	yeast
Schizosaccharomyces	pombe	Fungi	Ascomycota	yeast
Takifugu	rubripes	Metazoa	Chordata	fish
Tetraodon	nigroviridis	Metazoa	Chordata	fish
Thalassiosira	pseudonana	Stramenopile	Bacillariophyta	plankton
Yarrowia	lipolytica	Fungi	Ascomycota	yeast

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