Category Archives: Science And Society

Business, Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

A Calorie

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…is not a calorie:

“Our current system for assessing calories is surely wrong,” said evolutionary biologist Richard Wrangham of Harvard University, the co-organizer of the panel.

In a wide-ranging discussion of how food is digested in everything from humans to rats to pythons, the panel reviewed a new spate of studies showing that foods are processed differently as they move from our gullet to our guts and beyond. They agreed that net caloric counts for many foods are flawed because they don’t take into account the energy used to digest food; the bite that oral and gut bacteria take out of various foods; or the properties of different foods themselves that speed up or slow down their journey through the intestines, such as whether they are cooked or resistant to digestion.

Of course, in addition to that, the thermodynamic theory of nutrition doesn’t take into account how your metabolism responds to different kinds of calories. In a just world, much of the lipophobic nutrition industry would be sued into oblivion, or in prison, bearing responsibility for millions of premature deaths, and sufferers of ill health. Instead, they still seem to be in charge of the FDA.

Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Chelyabinsk: What Just Happened?

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My thoughts over at PJMedia.

[Update a few minutes later]

Deep Space Industries has already jumped on the PR opportunity:

McLEAN, VA – February 15 – Today’s impact in Russia and the near miss by
asteroid 2012 DA14 should shock the world into creating a sentry line of
spacecraft circling the Earth to intercept and evaluate incoming threats, Deep
Space Industries proposed.

“The hundreds of people injured in northern Russia show it’s time to take action
and no longer be passive about these threats,” said Rick Tumlinson, chairman of
Deep Space Industries.

Deep Space Industries proposes establishing several sentry lines encircling
Earth with small spacecraft able to dart after intruders to get close-in photos
and data as they pass. Over time additional spacecraft able to grab samples for
analysis on Earth would join the sentry lines.

Not all asteroids are the same, and to be ready to deflect one that’s on a
dangerous trajectory the world needs to know more about their structure and
composition. Many may be solid but all photos so far have shown gravel and rock
piles. A defense plan assuming the wrong type could make matters worse.

“Placing ten of our small FireFly spacecraft into position to intercept close
encounters would take four years and less than $100 million,” said David Gump,
CEO of Deep Space Industries. “This will help the world develop the
understanding needed to block later threats.”

There are estimated to be more than 10,000 near Earth asteroids that could
destroy a major city and a hundred that would end civilization. Near Earth
asteroids are confirmed at a rate of more than 900 per year, but as yet little
is known about their composition and structure.

“Observations by space telescopes like the Sentinel planned by the B612
Foundation and the smaller units offered by Planetary Resources should be
supported,” Tumlinson said. “Astronomical observations are a good first step but
at Deep Space we believe we need get up close and personal. Then when these
objects are identified, we can launch one or more FireFlies to intercept them,
and give us close-up images so that we understand what we are dealing with.”

Deep Space Industries is preparing the FireFly series to begin prospecting in
2015 for asteroids that are very small, five to seven meters in diameter. The
same FireFly prospecting design would be used in the sentry line of asteroid
interceptors.

Then in 2020, Deep Space will bring one of these tiny rocks back to a parking
orbit near Earth to be harvested for its water, rocket fuel, and metals for
in-space customers such as communications satellites that have run out of gas.
The larger harvesting spacecraft might be the basis for interceptors that could
nudge larger threats into trajectories that miss Earth.

In the coming months Deep Space Industries will be offering plans to develop a
coordinated low-cost commercial solution to setting up humanity’s first line of
defense against asteroid threats.

“While our primary mission is the harvesting of asteroid resources, we believe
that virtually the same effort and technology can be applied to removing this
threat to our precious planet,” Tumlinson said.

I suspect Planetary Resources won’t be far behind.