Speculative suggestions are occasionally made about ways in which new physics experiments could hypothetically bring about a catastrophe leading to the end of life on Earth.  Some of these, including "killer strangelets", would also lead to the destruction of the planet.  In any case, the proposed catastrophe mechanisms generally rely on speculation about hypothetical phenomena for which there's no evidence, but which at first sight don't contradict known laws of physics.  Sometimes, such pessimistic hypotheses can be countered by arguments which show that their existence is highly improbable, either because closer analysis shows that well-established physical principles are contradicted, or because it would imply effects which we should almost certainly have observed but haven't.  Unfortunately, it's difficult to make an argument of this type sufficiently reassuring.  One wants to know that the chances of inadvertently triggering a global wipe-out are very small indeed before going ahead with an experiment — but finding arguments which justify an appropriate level of confidence can be hard, even impossible.  Discouragingly few attempts to grapple with this issue have been made.  In fact, even the obvious and fundamental question — how improbable does a catastrophe have to be to justify proceeding with an experiment? — seems never to have been seriously examined. (Pdf file.)  By the way, a strangelet is a very dense object composed of strange quarks that could, theoretically, if stable and negatively charged, convert all atoms it comes into contact with into strangelets in a runaway process.

For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.  For the tiniest fraction of a second at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a team of about a dozen particle physicists created a symmetry-breaking bubble of space where parity no longer existed.  When the gold nuclei, travelling at 99.999% of the speed of light, smashed together, the resulting plasma was so energetic that a tiny cube of it with sides measuring about ¼ of the width of a human hair would contain enough energy to power the entire US for a year.  It was the equally gargantuan magnetic field produced by the plasma — the strongest ever created — that alerted physicists that one of nature's laws might have been broken.  The results were so unexpected that they waited more than a year to publish them, spending that time searching for alternative explanations.  If the effect proves real, it could help with understanding a similar asymmetry leading to one of physics' most fundamental mysteries — why is the universe dominated by ordinary matter when equal amounts of matter and antimatter must have been created by the Big Bang?  Via the New Shelton wet/dry.

Zhang Boting, deputy general secretary of the China Society for Hydropower Engineering, says that a massive dam on the great bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo River would benefit the world, despite the likely concerns of downstream nations, India and Bangladesh, which access water and power from the river.  A 38-gigawatt hydropower plant is under consideration that would be more than half as big again as the Three Gorges dam, with a capacity nearly half as large as the UK's national grid.  The Tsangpo-Brahmaputra — until recently considered the last great undammed river in Tibet — will be the next focus of China's efforts to increase the nation's power supply.  Along with the Congo river at the Inga falls, this is considered one of the two greatest concentrations of river energy on Earth, but it was long thought impossible to access because of the rugged, high-altitude terrain and the risk of water-related conflict with neighbouring countries.  But China has overcome many engineering obstacles with the construction of the railway to Tibet, and its growing energy demands are spurring exploration of ever more remote areas.  However, environmental activists warn against building such a huge project in a seismically active and ecologically fragile area.  The Times of India has reported that China has assured India that such a project is in fact NOT planned.  Time will tell.

Each year, millions of people visit public swimming pools and water parks.  Disinfection of recreational pools is critical to prevent outbreaks of infectious disease.  Pool water represents an extreme case of disinfection that differs from the disinfection of drinking water as pools are continuously exposed to disinfectants.  All sources of water possess organic matter that comes from decaying leaves, microbes and other dead life forms.  In addition to organic matter and disinfectants, pool waters contain sweat, hair, skin, urine, and consumer products such as cosmetics and sunscreens from swimmers.  These consumer products are often nitrogen-rich, causing concern that they may contribute to the generation of nitrogenous disinfection by-products.  When mixed with disinfectants, these products may become chemically modified, converting into more toxic agents that can mutate genes, induce birth defects, accelerate the ageing process, cause respiratory ailments, and even induce cancer after long-term exposures.  Test results show that all disinfected pool samples exhibit more genomic-DNA-damaging ingredients than tap water.  Data suggest that brominating agents should be avoided as disinfectants of recreational pool water - the best method of treatment is a combination of UV and chlorine (as compared to chlorination alone).  Swimmers can help by showering before entering the water and by never urinating in the pool.

Chemical-free, electronic-oxidation water sanitation offers an alternative to chlorine, salt chlorination and ozone, though it typically relies on metals which can be toxic to aquatic life in minute quantities.  Oxygen pools are produced via the electronic oxidation of the water molecule itself to generate the natural oxidisers hydroxyl (HO), atomic oxygen (O), hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) and molecular oxygen (O₂).  All of these have a higher oxidation reduction potential value than chlorine alone.  Electronic oxidation generates more oxidisers in under 1 minute than salt, chlorine, ozone or UV generate in an hour.  Electronic oxidation combined with low levels of copper ionisation (0.5 parts per million) provides a very effective pool sanitation that is 100% chlorine free — but it is not environmentally advantageous as the metals are far more persistent than chlorine and are toxic to aquatic life in the parts per billion range.

Because an accent makes a person harder to understand, listeners are less likely to believe that what the person says is truthful, researchers found.  The problem of credibility increases with the severity of the accent.  The results have implications for how people perceive non-native speakers of a language, particularly as mobility increases in the modern world, causing millions of people to be non-native speakers of a language they must use daily.  Accent might reduce the credibility of non-native job seekers, eyewitnesses, reporters, or of people taking calls in foreign call centres.  Accent is one of the factors that influences people's perception of foreigners in society.  However, its insidious impact on credibility had not been previously known.  Forewarned is forearmed!  (I hope.)

Truly Enduring: Ralph and Phyllis Tarrant (aged 107 and 101 respectively) have been married for 77 years.  Phyllis was 16 when she met Ralph, a 22-year-old steelworker.  For 3 years they were "simply friends."  Once they began dating, it was another 5 years before they married.  Their wedding cost £100, a princely sum for which they had saved for years.  Just as the couple were settling into married family life, World War II broke out and Ralph was called up for service.  The couple were apart for 5 years, until late 1945 when Ralph returned home.  He then worked up to 90 hours per week trying to get caught up financially — but they managed to hold things together.  Ralph credits their longevity to being healthy and active and having lots of cheese and onion sandwiches — plus a little glass of whisky every evening.

Also Enduring: Jack Sharpe was sent to Singapore just a few days before the Japanese invasion there and was captured by the Japanese.  He was sent to Thailand to work on the notorious Burma Railway, then sent back to the Outram jail in Singapore; almost no one survived it for 2 years, but Jack did.  It was from this infamous prison that Sharpe was liberated in August 1945 with the dubious distinction of being its longest survivor.  During his captivity, plagued by scurvy, dysentery and scabs, Sharpe saw his weight decreased from 70 kilograms to less than 25 kilograms.  In September 1945, the world was stunned by the publication of Sharpe’s skeletal figure cheerfully smiling from the end of his bed.  The photo told the story of appalling Japanese treatment of their prisoners, and also the indomitable spirit of Jack Sharpe — who eventually lived to be 88.

If you live in the US (and, possibly, most other places in the world as I know this also applies to NZ) your taxes are going UP in the new year.  (Surprise!)  Through the end of this year in the US, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.  But as of midnight on 31 December, the death tax returns — the progressive rate reaches 55% on estates of $1 million or more.  (The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.)  Also, tax brackets move up, capital gains tax jumps up, child tax credit is halved, other Bush tax cuts expire, no more deductions for tuition, and the net widens for the alternative minimum tax.  There are a few more, but those seem the worst.

The world's easiest ice cream recipe?  I haven't tried this yet (it's winter in NZ after all), but if it's as good as this writer says it is, I think it's worth a shot — IF you like bananas...

Phrenology is a hypothesis stating that personality traits can be derived from the shape of the skull.  It is now considered a pseudoscience.  Instead, it's the shape of the brain itself that apparently counts.  Psychological "scientists" have found that the size of different parts of people's brains correspond to their personalities; for example, conscientiousness is associated with planning.  Conscientious people tend to have a bigger lateral prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved in planning and controlling behaviour.  People who are more extraverted have a larger medial orbitofrontal cortex — it's just above and behind the eyes.  Neurotic people have a tendency to experience negative emotions which are associated with an enlarged area sensitive to threat and punishment.  Agreeable people have bigger parts of the brain that allowing an understanding of others' emotions, intentions, and mental states.  But is this predictive?  Can you look at a child's brain and tell how he or she will turn out?  Otherwise, how can you say which came first — the personality trait or the enlarged area of the brain?  Perhaps in later years this, too, will join the ranks of the pseudosciences.

Norman Rockwell, painter of hundreds of Saturday Evening Post covers, was long derided as an artistic dead end because he had so little influence on subsequent celebrity painters.  But he was hugely influential on an important cultural figure of the later 20th Century, Steven Spielberg, who mostly paid for the Rockwell museum in Massachusetts.  Rockwell operated much like a modern filmmaker, holding auditions for models and having his staff construct sets and assemble props.  If he'd been born a couple of generations later, he might well have become a movie director.  It turns out that George Lucas owns even more Rockwells than Spielberg does and together they are mounting a Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Smithsonian.  Rockwell was a storyteller, and he chose poignant moments in American life to romanticize.  He painted the old-time barber shop, the soldier home from war, the weary salesman, sports, popular culture, integration and racial issues, leaving the farm for college, holidays, and more.