From Scientific American

Year-end lists inevitably leave room for debate and criticism, and ours is no exception. It was an eventful year, and we relied on voting among Scientific American editors to cull our candidates. Any of these notable achievements were certainly worthy but didn’t make the final cut. The runners-up were:

• The discovery in South Africa of a new hominid, called Australopithecus sediba, that could be a lost member of our family tree

• The emergence of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a controversial way to recover natural gas trapped in deep rocks

• The detection of an atmosphere of a “super-Earth” and other signs of potentially habitable worlds around other stars

• The recommendation by an advisory committee for the U.S. to approve genetically modified salmon

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From American Association for the Advancement of Science

Until this year, all human-made objects have moved according to the laws of classical mechanics. Back in March, however, a group of researchers designed a gadget that moves in ways that can only be described by quantum mechanics—the set of rules that governs the behavior of tiny things like molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. In recognition of the conceptual ground their experiment breaks, the ingenuity behind it and its many potential applications, Science has called this discovery the most significant scientific advance of 2010.

Physicists Andrew Cleland and John Martinis from the University of California at Santa Barbara and their colleagues designed the machine—a tiny metal paddle of semiconductor, visible to the naked eye—and coaxed it into dancing with a quantum groove. First, they cooled the paddle until it reached its “ground state,” or the lowest energy state permitted by the laws of quantum mechanics (a goal long-sought by physicists). Then they raised the widget’s energy by a single quantum to produce a purely quantum-mechanical state of motion. They even managed to put the gadget in both states at once, so that it literally vibrated a little and a lot at the same time—a bizarre phenomenon allowed by the weird rules of quantum mechanics.

Science and its publisher, AAAS, the nonprofit science society, have recognized this first quantum machine as the 2010 Breakthrough of the Year. They have also compiled nine other important scientific accomplishments from this past year into a top ten list, appearing in a special news feature in the journal’s 17 December 2010 issue. Additionally, Science news writers and editors have chosen to spotlight 10 “Insights of the Decade” that have transformed the landscape of science in the 21st Century.

“This year’s Breakthrough of the Year represents the first time that scientists have demonstrated quantum effects in the motion of a human-made object,” said Adrian Cho, a news writer for Science. “On a conceptual level that’s cool because it extends quantum mechanics into a whole new realm. On a practical level, it opens up a variety of possibilities ranging from new experiments that meld quantum control over light, electrical currents and motion to, perhaps someday, tests of the bounds of quantum mechanics and our sense of reality.”

The quantum machine proves that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to the motion of macroscopic objects, as well as atomic and subatomic particles. It provides the key first step toward gaining complete control over an object’s vibrations at the quantum level. Such control over the motion of an engineered device should allow scientists to manipulate those minuscule movements, much as they now control electrical currents and particles of light. In turn, that capability may lead to new devices to control the quantum states of light, ultra-sensitive force detectors and, ultimately, investigations into the bounds of quantum mechanics and our sense of reality. (This last grand goal might be achieved by trying to put a macroscopic object in a state in which it’s literally in two slightly different places at the same time—an experiment that might reveal precisely why something as big as a human can’t be in two places at the same time.)

“Mind you, physicists still haven’t achieved a two-places-at-once state with a tiny object like this one,” said Cho. “But now that they have reached the simplest state of quantum motion, it seems a whole lot more obtainable—more like a matter of ‘when’ than ‘if.’”

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Jennifer Rohn

From the “World View” column in Nature:

Despite decades of awareness, science is still inherently sexist. Women are vastly under-represented in professorships and in national academies worldwide. This is a familiar problem, but less highlighted is how the discrepancy plays out in the public arena of science — the media.

Male science pundits dominate television, radio and print — including the pages of opinion and comment in this journal. This imbalance cannot simply be explained by the shortage of female professors, as many male pundits are still at an early stage of their academic careers, when genders are better balanced. So what is behind this effective invisibility of women scientists in our media? And why does it matter?

Many people think that women themselves are to blame for the male-dominated media, in science and other subjects. Women, who often bear the brunt of domestic obligations, are said to have less time than men to participate in activities outside their work. And female colleagues tend to say that they do not feel eminent or qualified enough to comment. Perhaps this points to a question of confidence — one that does not seem to bother most men. Women may also be uncomfortable with the cut and thrust of conflict and debate. Indeed, at scientific seminars I have attended, most of the questions come from men, despite the audience usually containing an equal number of women. Voicing one’s opinion in a public arena is a charged activity that seems to discourage many women, yet this is precisely the skill that a good pundit needs.

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The 2011 Science in Society will be held at The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA 5-7 August.

Call for Papers

If you intend to present a paper at the conference, your participation begins with submission of a paper proposal. For information on proposals, presentation types, and other options, see: http://science-society.com/conference-2011/call-for-papers/. To submit a proposal, see: http://science-society.com/conference-2011/call-for-papers/. Please note that if your proposal is accepted, you will then need to register for the conference.

Registration

Those who submit paper proposals should register following the acceptance of the proposal. Conference delegates who do not intend to present may register at any time. For registration options or to register for the 2011 Science in Society Conference, see: http://science-society.com/conference-2011/register/.

Themes

• Theme 1: The Social Impacts of Science
• Theme 2: The Values, Ethos and Ethics of Science
• Theme 3: The Pedagogies of Science
• Theme 4: The Knowledge Systems of Science
• Theme 5: The Politics of Science
• Theme 6: The Economics of Science

From John Leslie, The Sunday Times

Why is there a universe, not a blank? The Grand Design and Cycles of Time suggest very different answers. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow make The Grand Design reader-friendly. Its physics and cosmology are enlivened by myth (“In the Mayan legend the Maker, unhappy because there was no one to praise him, decided to create humans”). You’ll find colourful artwork, jokes, a quick history of science, no mathematics. And the book can seem astonishingly open-minded. Even Archbishop Ussher’s view that things began in 4004 BC appears to get considerable respect. Suppose that Ussher’s modern disciples taught that in 4004 BC God created the universe exactly as if it had existed for billions of years, inclusive of fossils in the rocks: Hawking–Mlodinow’s “model-dependent realism” wouldn’t call their teaching mistaken, or its imagined facts “less real” than those you presumably believe in.

“Philosophy”, the book declares, “is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science.” The authors then make bold philosophical claims. For example they aren’t attracted by the idea, perhaps it has never occurred to them, that even chess-playing computers “make choices” in a sense. So they theorize that “though we feel that we can choose what we do”, we are in fact “governed by the laws of physics and chemistry”, which at once proves we can’t. Presumably, they hope that after weighing the alternatives we will select their theory without actually choosing it.

Again, Hawking and Mlodinow treat quantum theory controversially. What could terminate “quantum superpositions” in which seemingly contradictory situations are combined? For instance a cat – anaesthetized, observing nothing, its fate linked to an atom liable to decay radioactively – with the seemingly incompatible properties of being alive and being dead. Or an electron’s passage through a left slit, as a particle, and simultaneously through a right slit, once again as a particle, and simultaneously also through both slits, as a wave. Only observations could have the power to terminate such paradoxical states, on the book’s world-view: “the unobserved past is indefinite”. That’s philosophically bold. Cannot photographic film record how superpositions have “collapsed” into unparadoxical realities long before the film is developed and observed? And how about our efforts to build quantum computers in which superpositions perform complex calculations? Aren’t we seemingly thwarted by how the superpositions keep collapsing before we look at them?

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From Alan Boyle, Cosmic Log

Scientists are buzzing over a peer-reviewed study that suggests humans have predictive powers, but it’s too early to predict whether or not the research will hold up.

The 61-page paper, titled “Feeling the Future,” was written by Cornell psychology professor emeritus Daryl Bem and is due for publication in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Bem says his experiments support the idea that there really is something to human precognition of events that haven’t yet occurred.

You could argue that this is a case of science imitating sci-fi – particularly considering that precognition provided a key element of the plot for “The Minority Report,” a Philip K. Dick short story that was made into a movie starring Tom Cruise in 2002. You might be forgiven if you think this is the latest trick from a professor who used to be a stage magician. But Bem is dead serious about the experiments, and his submission to the journal is no work of fiction.

“My very first publication was 50 years ago in that journal, which would make a nice capstone,” Bem told me today.

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From Alice Bell,

Every now and again, the term “scientific literacy” gets wheeled out and I roll my eyes. This post is an attempt to explain why.

The argument for greater scientific literacy is that to meaningfully participate, appreciate and even survive our modern lives, we all need certain knowledge and skills about science and technology. Ok. But what will this look like exactly, how will you know what we all need to know in advance and how on earth do you expect to get people trained up? These are serious problems.

Back in the early 1990s, Jon Durant very usefully outlined out the three main types of scientific literacy. This is probably as good a place to start as any:

• Knowing some science – For example, having A-level biology, or simply knowing the laws of thermodynamics, the boiling point of water, what surface tension is, that the Earth goes around the Sun, etc.
• Knowing how science works – This is more a matter of knowing a little of the philosophy of science (e.g. ‘The Scientific Method’, a matter of studying the work of Popper, Lakatos or Bacon).

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Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry.

The new position was declared in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Department of Justice late Friday in a case involving two human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer.

“We acknowledge that this conclusion is contrary to the longstanding practice of the Patent and Trademark Office, as well as the practice of the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies that have in the past sought and obtained patents for isolated genomic DNA,” the brief said.

It is not clear if the position in the legal brief, which appears to have been the result of discussions among various government agencies, will be put into effect by the Patent Office.

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Ottawa, October 18, 2010 – Today, the union that represents federal government scientists launches a campaign to put the spotlight on science for the public good.

“Federal government scientists work hard to protect Canadians, preserve their environment and ensure our country’s prosperity but they face dwindling resources and confusing policy decisions,” says Gary Corbett, president of the Institute.

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada is a national union. Among its 59,000 federal and provincial members are 23,000 professionals who deliver, among other knowledge products, scientific research, testing and advice for sound policy-making.

The recent decision to end the mandatory long form census is the latest step in a worrying trend away from evidence-based policy making. Restrictive rules are curtailing media and public access to scientists, while cutbacks to research and monitoring limit Canada’s ability to deal with serious threats and potential opportunities.

A new online information and action centre launched today – PUBLICSCIENCE.ca – (http://publicscience.ca) features interviews with the professionals who do science for the public good, experts who understand the critical importance of this work, and Canadians whose lives have been touched by public science.

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From Zoe Corbyn, Times Higher Education

It is a dreamily beautiful day in early August, and the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, devoid of students for the summer break, could hardly be a more pleasant place. But in an empty hall of residence is a group of about 50 academics who are not here for the weather. They have travelled from across the country and from abroad – Mexico, the UK, Sweden – to participate in the only regular conference dedicated to their subject: the psychology of science. They arrange themselves for a group photo, and the camera preserves for posterity the smiling faces of the delegates to the third conference of the International Society for the Psychology of Science and Technology (ISPST).

The discipline is the newest kid on the block in the world of “science studies”. The history, philosophy and sociology of science are all well established. But now the fledgling field of the psychology of science is vying for a piece of the action. It seeks to put science on the couch and apply the methods and theories of psychology to scientific thought and behaviour (see box below).

Already the field is attracting interest from funding bodies – perhaps unsurprising given its potential applications in identifying and fostering creative scientists and improving science and science education. The National Science Foundation, one of the largest funders of basic research in the US, is not only sponsoring a training workshop the day after the conference (with the renowned British sociologist Harry Collins of Cardiff University being brought in to broaden delegates’ minds), but it is also specifically encouraging this new breed to apply for funding from its flagship science, technology and society programme.

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