headers
Robert Park | 2 Apr 2011 19:26
Picon
Favicon

What's New Robert L. Park 1 April 2011

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 1 Apr 2011   Washington, DC

1. APRIL FOOLS: A DAY LIKE ALL DAYS; TRUTH MUST BE SEPARATED FROM FRAUD.
I have no stomach for jokes today.  The truth is too sad, and the lies too 
numerous.

2. FUKUSHIMA: HYDROGEN EXPLOSION IN THE REACTOR #4 SPENT-FUEL POOL.
It may be months before events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant 
are sorted out following the massive earthquake on 11 Mar 2011 at 14:46 JST 
and the huge tsunami it caused.  The major concern involves the fuel 
storage pool for reactor #4 which held the entire complement of fuel rods 
from the reactor coreand may yet melt down.  The rods had been removed just 
three months earlier.  Reactors 4, 5 and 6 had been shut down prior to the 
earthquake for scheduled maintenance.  The remaining reactors shut down 
automatically during the earthquake, but the 14 meter tsunami flooded the 
plant, knocking out emergency generators needed to run the pumps that cool 
and control the reactors; damage to transportation blocked help from 
elsewhere.   It gets worse.  Four days later, 15 March at about 06:00 JST, 
a hydrogen bubble that had collected above the spent fuel pond exploded, 
heavily damaging the rooftop area of the Unit 4 reactor.  At 09:40, the 
Unit 4 spent-fuel pool caught fire.  It was extinguished by 12:00, but not 
before huge amounts of radioactive contaminants had been released.  That 
should not have happened.  A hydrogen bubble is explosive only when mixed 
with a critical level of oxygen.  During the 1979 Three-Mile Island 
accident, it was feared that a large hydrogen bubble in the containment 
dome would explode rupturing the building.  It did not happen, but I have 
repeatedly urged that a tuft of "platinum wool" always be attached at the 
high points of nuclear containment buildings where hydrogen bubbles would 
be expected to collect.   The platinum would catalyze the oxidation of 
hydrogen back to water before the mixture reaches an explosive level.  The
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Robert Park | 9 Apr 2011 14:57
Picon
Favicon

What's New Robert L. Park 1 April 2011

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 8 Apr 2011   Washington, DC

FLASH!  I THINK THEY JUST AGREED ON A BUDGET.
I seem to have fallen asleep but the last I remember it was about 11 PM.

1. EASY RIDER: THREATENED SHUTDOWN HAD LITTLE TO DO WITH THE BUDGET. 
Agreement on budget issues was reached two days ago, at least in a 
technical sense.   The impasse that held the nation hostage was over the 
ultraconservative ideology embodied in "riders" that were attached to the 
budget in a House-passed bill in February.  President Obama would have 
vetoed the bill in the unlikely event that it passed the Senate.  The 
riders would kill any financing of Planned Parenthood because it performs 
abortions, and block foreign aid to countries that might use the money for 
abortion or family-planning.   The  riders would also deny aid to the 
United Nations Population Fund which supports family-planning, and put an 
end to local financing of abortion services in the District of Columbia.  
Why, you might wonder, would Republicans be interested in maintaining the 
fertility rate of the disadvantaged?  Perhaps there is pleasure in wealth 
only if there are poor for comparison.  Another provision would take away 
the authority of The Environmental Protection Agency to regulate 
pollutants.   That one is easily understood.

2. THE BUMP: DON'T GET ALL WORKED UP UNTIL WE HAVE INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION.
Is there an unknown particle about 160 times the mass of a proton?  Dennis 
Overby who wrote about the putative discovery in this morning's New York 
Times uses the word "cautious" to describe the reaction of physicists at 
the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.  Well, they aren't all cautious; 
new physics, dark matter, strange Higgs boson, even "a new force" are some 
of the speculations.   If it's real why hasn't it already been seen?  We 
shouldn't have to wait long to find out if it’s real.  There are two
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Robert Park | 16 Apr 2011 14:22
Picon
Favicon

What's New Robert L. Park 1 5 April 2011

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 15 Apr 2011   Washington, DC

1. NUCLEAR RADIATION: BEYOND THE LINEAR-NO-THRESHOLD MODEL.
On Tuesday Japan raised the severity rating of the Fukushima nuclear crisis 
to 7, putting it on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.  Although Japan 
is releasing few details, you can safely conclude that radiation is really 
bad; beyond that you're on your own.  The most up-to-date and comprehensive 
risk estimates for cancer and other health effects from exposure to low-
level ionizing radiation are in the 2006 Biologic Effect of Ionizing 
Radiation Report of the National Academies (BEIR VII).  The only data base 
we have is from victims of massive exposures at Hiroshima and Chernobyl. 
The report relies on the linear-no-threshold model to estimate the risk 
from multiple exposures at much lower levels, such as airliner crews.  This 
is not only wrong, they know it's wrong.  A DNA repair process is 
constantly at work in human cells repairing DNA damage from sources of 
ionizing radiation, including UV light and cosmic radiation.  There is not 
much choice but to ignore the repair process and assume a linear model 
which greatly overstates the risk from multiple exposures.  A panel of 
experts concluded that that, "the preponderance of evidence indicates that 
there will be some risk even at low doses."

2. MICROWAVE RADIATION: DO CELL PHONES CAUSE BRAIN CANCER?
I've been living in the past, grousing about the failure of "the media" to 
expose the public to the facts about cell phone radiation and cancer.    
That used to mean a trusted figure like Walter Cronkite on the evening 
news, a segment on 60 Minutes or Sunday Morning, and an in depth feature in 
the New York Times.  Television news is now kept busy keeping us informed 
about celebrities checking into rehab; print news now means an army of 
bloggers.  The best coverage of the cell phone thing so far was an article 
this week in the New York Times Magazine by Siddhartha Mukherjee, "Do Cell
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Robert Park | 23 Apr 2011 18:41
Picon
Favicon

What's New Robert L. Park 22 April 2011

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 22 Apr 2011   Washington, DC

1. GOOD FRIDAY: MARKING THE DEATH OF TENNESSEE SENATE BILL 893.
The date of its resurrection cannot be foretold, but it’s inevitable.  
After all, Tennessee is where John Scopes was convicted of teaching 
Darwin's theory of evolution 86 years ago.  Had it been enacted, Senate 
Bill 893, would have required state and local educational authorities 
to "assist teachers to find effective ways to present the science 
curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies" and permit teachers 
to "help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective 
manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing 
scientific theories covered in the course being taught."  Hmm!  I could do 
that, depending on exactly what theories we’re talking about, and what is 
meant by "an objective manner," and I wouldn't need any help.  The only 
theories the bill mentions are biological evolution, the chemical origins 
of life, global warming and human cloning.  I could certainly teach those 
in an objective manner.  What's more, the bill says it would protect 
teachers from discipline if they "help students understand, analyze, 
critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and 
scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the 
course."  Hey, I'm a perfect fit.

2. MARTIN REES: THE TEMPLETON PRIZE CONTINUES TO EVOLVE.
First awarded to Mother Theresa in 1972, the Templeton prize is awarded 
annually to a living person for "affirming life's spiritual dimension.” 
Winners were typically well-known religious figures such as Billy Graham.  
The prize was established by Sir John Templeton, an American-born British 
investor who moved to Bermuda to avoid the income tax.  He was knighted by 
Queen Elizabeth II in 1987 for his philanthropic efforts. Currently at 
£1,000,000, it is the largest annual financial award to an individual for
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Robert Park | 30 Apr 2011 19:56
Picon
Favicon

What's New Robert L. Park 29 April 2011

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 29 Apr 2011   Washington, DC

1. ANTISCIENCE: THE ALPHA MAGNETIC SPECTROMETER.
What happened to all the antimatter after the Big Bang? It's an important 
physics question: the theory is that the putative Higgs boson would 
catalyze equal numbers of particles and anti-particles.  If matter and 
antimatter come into contact we get a Big Kablooey, so when antimatter is 
missing it's okay to worry.  Sam Ting at MIT, who shared the 1976 Nobel 
Prize with Burton Richter for discovering the J/Psi particle, now wants to 
look for antimatter among cosmic rays, perhaps even determine what 
direction they’re coming from. So maybe 17 years ago he went to see Dan 
Goldin the NASA administrator, and proposed to hang his Alpha Magnetic 
Spectrometer on the space station, bypassing the peer review system.  It 
was a big mistake but you tend to get away with that kind of stuff if 
you're Sam Ting.  But although he got around peer review, he landed in the 
middle of a dying astronaut program, and it's been delay after delay 
including the Columbia disaster.  Ting had to appeal directly to Congress 
to get on the endeavor mission. The spectrometer should've been launched on 
its own platform, as far away from the astronaut program as possible. The 
AMS is now a massive $1.5 billion undertaking involving 500 scientists from 
56 institutions and 16 countries.  . .   WAIT, JUST IN!  12:28 Friday: NASA 
has postponed today's launch of Endeavour citing a technical problem!  Even 
if the problem is minor, we’re looking at a three day delay.  Time is 
running out for the shuttle -- and for the AMS.

2. MONARCHY: IS THERE NO CURE FOR THIS AFFLICTION?
In seeking news on the Endeavor non-launch I found the US news media almost 
totally focused on the royal wedding.  It particularly pains me to watch 
Americans fawning over the monarchy we fought a war to get rid of, and if I 
hear "fairytale" mentioned one more time I may become violent.
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |

Gmane