Will the LHC End the World?

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest atom smasher. It will accelerate hadrons (protons) to nearly the speed of light forcing them to collide head-on. These collisions will produce greater concentrations of energy than have existed in nature since the first trillionth of a second of the universe, the Big Bang. That at least was a claim being floated around by proponents throughout the funding and construction phases of the project. Now that the interest of the public has shifted from funding to safety, that claim is downplayed and is replaced by assurances that the planned collisions are safe and routine. What’s the way it is?

Nature’s Nontraditional Families

In nature most families start when a male and female mate and have offspring that combines genetic characteristics of the parents (sexual reproduction). But nature is full of exceptions even for this basic rule. Some animals employ asexual reproduction, also called parthenogenesis, in which only one parent, usually a mother, is needed. It occurs throughout nature in many forms among reptiles, birds, and insects. Remarkably, mammals (including people) are the only creatures in which this virgin birth cannot occur due to a special way that our genes work.

Splenda and Marketing to the Gullible

Splenda (sucralose) has overtaken Equal (aspartame) in the artificial sweetener market thanks to a marketing campaign that claims Splenda is closely related to sugar and is by implication safer and less artificial. Splenda’s slogan “Made from Sugar. So it tastes like sugar.” can be found on every packet and appears in every ad. But that claim is misleading and was even the subject of a highly publicized lawsuit. Should advertisers be permitted to take advantage of gullible consumers by making misleading claims, even if those claims are based on truth?

Sex Isn’t So Simple After All

Eighteen year old South African track athlete Caster Semenya has stirred up a storm of controversy lately through no fault of her own. Semenya won the 800-meter race at the world championships in Berlin with a world record time. Semenya is an extraordinary athlete in many ways. In addition to her remarkable record, she has the misfortune of having some fairly obvious masculine features. It’s a misfortune in this case anyway because it has caused her sex to be questioned and subject to review by the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations). The issue is whether it’s fair to allow her to compete in women’s events if she is suspected to be a man.

Semenya has been raised as a woman and her family and friends vehemently reject suggestions that she is not. While the IAAF attempted to conduct their investigation in private, it has turned out to be very public, and Semenya has been subjected to sensationalism and embarrassment in the process. The serious privacy issues involved should probably overshadow the facts of the matter, but the public’s lack of understanding of sex is easier to discuss objectively.

It appears that Semenya is one of a large portion of the population (possibly as many as 1 of every 2000 people) that is intersex, not perfectly100% normal male or female, but in some way in between. In fact there are so many ways to be intersex and various degrees of each that there really is not definitive way to define who’s a male or a female. The public has a hard time with such things. They want there to be a simple either-or test. Unfortunately it’s not really a practical thing to determine.

The recent controversy over in California’s Prop 8 (constitutionally prohibiting same sex marriage) brings up an interesting academic question. If one’s sex determines their constitutional rights, such as who they can marry, it’s critical that we can easily and definitively determine someone’s sex. Is this really possible or practical?

Switch Pitching

Many great players have been switch hitters. Pete Rose, Mickey Mantle, and Mike Schmidt are just a few who could hit effectively from both sides of the plate. Switch hitting is an advantage because it’s easier for a right-handed hitter to bat against a left-handed pitcher and vice versa – it’s easier to hit a breaking ball that breaks toward you rather than away from you. Often a relief pitcher will be chosen primarily based on which side of the plate the next batter bats from. So where are the switch pitchers?

Possum or Oppossum

I finally tired of not knowing whether a possum and an oppossum were the same creature and if not, what was the difference. In the process, I found some really interesting things about these animals.

Olsen Twins – Fraternal?

After doing the twin research for the previous post, I find it interesting and a bit perplexing that many twins do not know whether they are fraternal or identical twins. A pair of twins I know (not the Olsens) insist they are fraternal twins, but their appearances are strikingly similar and they are indistinguishable unless you know them well. I’ve always suspected they were in fact identical twins. Now that I’m better informed, I feel I can mount a convincing case for this.

Twins – sniwT

Twins are remarkably interesting but widely misunderstood. Twins result from an unusual pregnancy in which the mother gives birth to more than one child. The number of twins or multiples, their genetic similarities, and their similarity in appearance can all vary widely, as can the cause and mechanism for the twinning. Scientific and sociological interest in twins is intense because they help us learn about genetics, embryology, human development, and the effects of environment vs. heredity.

Platypus

The platypus is one of the most unusual creatures. It’s a mammal, but neither placental nor marsupial. Instead it’s a monotreme, an unusual line of mammals that diverged from other mammals very early on. It evolved on its own confined to the Australian continent.

Ways to get to first base?

An interesting baseball trivia question asks how many different ways can a player reach first base without getting a hit. Unfortunately, there is no conclusive answer. The ground rules of the answer are left to personal taste and there’s no absolute way to tell when one way is actually different from another. For example, you could judge a way to get to first different from another only if it was scored differently, or only if it fell under a different official rule, or you could use a more subjective measure that reflects so called common sense or conventional wisdom. All these methods are legitimate, but they often conflict.