Gulf oil leak hero – Will George Clooney play him in the move?

Heroes of Gulf oil leak: A scientist and a cell phone
[Via Boing Boing]

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill took months to contain, and the disaster might not have ended as soon as it did were it not for a handy cell-phone camera and the hard work of US Geological Survey researcher Paul Hsieh.

The cap that ultimately staunched the petroleum hemorrhage didn’t seem to be working at first, and authorities were set to remove it, according to the Associated Press. As scientists and government officials deliberated, someone sent a cell phone picture of the pressure readings to Hsieh. Over the course of one very long, and notably non-caffeinated night, Hsieh used the single photo to pull together a model that explained what was going on at the well, and showed that the cap was working, after all. His model was the linchpin that kept the all-important cap in place.

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Nice demonstration of how a good network can get the right information to the right person at the right time. ANd an adaptive community actually listened to him as they made the right decision and fixed the well.

This is usually ho complex problems are solved.

Fascinating example of our differences from rodents

by Patrick Hoesly

Unlike rodents, primates can grow new spinal nerve connections
[Via Ars Technica]

In Madeline L’Engle’s fictional work The Arm of the Starfish, Calvin O’Keefe discovered a way to help mammals regenerate tissue the way starfish do. Nonfictional research has not gotten quite that far, but it might not have to. A new paper has found that rhesus macaques can spontaneously reform connections among their spinal neurons following injury.

It has been known for some time that the mammalian spinal cord can extensively recover from partial, but not complete, injury. Although the general consensus has been that the axonal projections, which connect the neurons of the spinal cord, did not have the plasticity required to recover after injury, our heroes (the authors) thought otherwise and set out to test it.

To do so, they gave what’s called C7 lateral hemisection lesions to 5-8 year old rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), which involves severing one side of the spinal cord. They then examined structural, elecrophysiological, and functional responses to the lesion at either two weeks or 4-8 months later. They focused on the corticospinal projections, which primates use for many features of fine voluntary movement.

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This is a very specific type of injury, where the nerves in the spine controlling one side are cut.

After a few weeks, some function returns. This is because the nerves in primates do not just travel down one side of the spine. Some cross over. The increase in function comes from the uncut nerves that cross over to the damaged side.

This does not happen much in rodents so cutting one side results in lose of function pretty much forever.

I wonder what other differences in the nervous system we will find.

A nice story about a citizen politely standing up for their rights

by glenmcbethlaw

Matt Kernan Stands His Ground
[Via Daring Fireball]

After returning to the U.S. from a flight to Europe, Matt Kernan was asked by TSA to go through a new backscatter machine. He declined, and declined to be groped as well. This is his story. Keep in mind that he wasn’t trying to get on a plane — he’d just gotten off one and was simply trying to go home.

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This was after he cleared customs. Apparently exiting Customs in Cincinnati puts you in a sterile area of the airport. So TSA was there to screen him. But he refused to be screened by the backscatter and refused to be patted down. Since he had been selected for the backscatter, policy prevented them from letting him go through the metal detector. But they could not send him back the way he came.

Wonderful Catch-22. The TSA staff did not know what to do. Policy told them that the only choice was to refuse him into the sterile area but he could not leave the airport otherwise. They did not have the authority to arrest him, – only the police could do that, but he made sure he did nothing to tick the police off.

Be polite and stand your ground. Most of the time people put up with this crap because they do not have the time. The TSA uses our time obligations against us.

Here he did have the time. He was polite but firm regarding his rights. The officials usually rely on people not knowing their rights or doing something that lets them intimidate (such as not following an officer’s instructions). in the end, they actually did what should have been done to begin with –and I bet that it is now part of the standard procedure there if the case comes up again.

It does demonstrate that we do still have these rights, but it takes a lot of courage and, especially a lot of time, to exercise them. By the end of it, the police were on his side. They hate unreasonableness from any direction. It makes their job so much harder.