I’m enjoying this short web series with Brent Spiner, Data from Star Trek. He is himself, post-”incident,” as a cast-out from Hollywood. Good stuff!

I’d watch.

While house cleaning, I took a moment to make a photo with a cool fruit using our white plastic fruit bowl. I might work on this a little and print it for display in the kitchen.

Whether or not this particular shooter had political motives derived in whole or part from right-wing propaganda and conspiracy theories, such violence is a perfectly predictable outcome when people believe their government is out to kill them via death panel, take away their liberties, their money, their country and all other manner of tea party and Fox News irrationality.

People will do what authorities want them to do or what they perceive their peers would do (and what would someone believe if he or she watches Fox News and hears about succession, second amendment remedies, hit lists, etc.?).

Decades-old experiments from Milgram and Zimbardo are illustrative, and several other recent incidents have been demonstrably fueled by right-wing rhetoric. Whether such rhetoric should be “blamed” for this specific incident is immaterial to the larger issue that such acts are the reasonably foreseeable outcome from such errant propaganda.

Here are references for recent incidents and the psychology at work. Not new.

http://mediamatters.org/research/201010110002
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19crash.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/459
http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html

David Altman described his first year teaching as more exciting than he could have imagined. It was punctuated by two nationally competitive grants to study the protein myosin, a family of motor proteins that are core pieces of cellular machinery.

When you clicked on the link to read this story, myosin was at work. It is the cell’s motor, responsible for muscular contraction among many other cellular functions.

“Myosin’s got this elegant simplicity,” Altman said. “I want to understand how the motor works.”

Collaborative research

As part of Willamette’s Science Collaborative Research Program, Altman works with Jared Green (’11) and Jesse Sant (’12). The team spent the summer building an optical trap in Collins Science Center, using a laser to examine myosin’s behavior. They will analyze the motor’s range of motion and perform experiments to study its function in retinal cells.

“I’m really excited to use the lab for my senior project,” said Green. “David and I sat down and came up with a really cool idea. We’re going to look at how the molecular motor works in endocytosis within eye cells.” Endocytosis is how cells absorb molecules from outside the cell.

“Jesse will use the lab for his junior year ATEP, Advanced Techniques in Experimental Physics, which I’ll be teaching next semester,” Altman said.

The research he and his students are doing now will act as the springboard for future projects, continuing to study myosin not just in its original form but also working to engineer specific behavior. Likewise, Altman would like to see Green’s work become the framework for a model of myosin function within eye cells.

Altman’s journey

Altman’s own intellectual voyage mirrors many students’ college journeys. “I like exploring as many things that I don’t understand as possible,” he said.

“I started working with optical traps as an undergraduate in Chicago, where we studied the dynamics of colloids – the dispersion of small particles in liquids,” Altman said. His optical trap experience paid off in graduate school at Stanford, when he was asked to be part of a biochemistry team. Ultimately his work led to collaboration with a group in India, beginning Altman’s focus on molecular motors in cellular systems.

Altman’s passion for intellectual exploration has influenced his students. The team visited Stanford to create motor proteins using the university’s specialized equipment, and the trip was transformative. “Just sitting in on some of David’s conversations with his colleagues and seeing the immersion you get in grad school where you’re constantly talking and reading about all of these subjects was really cool,” Green said.

Green’s goal is to become an educator, a goal which was well-served by working with Altman through SCRP. “Having a research background and being able to bring a lab to a department would be an advantage,” he said.

Outside the lab

Even the staunchest researchers need a break from the darkened laboratory space required for such optical trap experiments. Altman often meets with students outside of the Collins Science Center to discuss the team’s work or occasionally to jam.

“Willamette has been fun in that you get to form really close relationships with a lot of professors,” Green said. “I first got to know David when we played in a band last semester at Wulapalooza. It was called ‘Dr. Altman’s Bird Refinery,’ and we had a really good time.”

Altman is a percussionist. “We’re looking at playing bluegrass this year,” he said.

When not in the lab or teaching, you might see Altman downtown at Governor’s Cup, Venti’s or Tangled Pearls, a new knitting shop. “Our lab in general has become a big fan of Clockworks Café,” Altman said. “That’s become a regular meeting spot.”

Whether in class, working in a lab or chatting over coffee, Altman appreciates the opportunity to get to know students personally. “The interactions in the small classes at Willamette were so wonderful,” he said. “I definitely ended my first year thinking I’m in the right place.”

Worst Day Since Yesterday  by Flogging Molly

Johnny Cash’s version of Won’t Back Down

I am reading Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan, who I have recently discovered. This passage struck me as particularly relevant to what is happening in politics today.

We are becoming more polarized; certainly, I perceive such. When I see logically-challenged “celebrities” such as Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or Ann Coulter spew fallacious nonsense attacking science and education to gullible zealots, ideologues and racists, Sagan’s words seem most prescient.

“Science is an attempt, largely successful, to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get a hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course. Microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death.

“…Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance about ourselves. I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we seen it before?

Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us – then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

“The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”

-Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World, 1996

According to Richard Watkins’ latest research, nearby galaxies have an enigmatic “flow,” like billiard balls rolling on a slightly tilted table – motion that challenges the current cosmological model.

Watkins, a physics professor at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., is at the leading edge of research into the movement of galaxies. He works with Hume Feldman from the University of Kansas and Michael Hudson from the University of Waterloo to use satellite data to draw conclusions about how galaxies flow.

In 2001, NASA launched the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which measures remnant light from the Big Bang. This light loses energy as the universe itself expands. By measuring tiny differences in the resultant low-frequency microwave radiation, WMAP’s precise scans define parameters of mathematical models of the universe.

WMAP image of the universe’s matter density at 380,000 years

According to the prevailing model, the expansion of space causes all galaxies to recede from each other. Galaxies also flow towards areas of higher concentrations of mass because of gravity. The model makes very specific predictions about how galaxies should move based on expansion and gravity. Scientists refer to any additional movement as “peculiar velocity.”

Watkins’ team measures this peculiar velocity by directly comparing previous surveys of differing volumes of space from “nearby” galaxies – within 163 million light-years of Earth.

His team calculated that nearby galaxies are flowing quickly, at the very edge of consistency with the prevailing model. “What’s the likelihood that a universe with the WMAP parameters could give us this big of flow?” Watkins asked. “It’s less than 2 percent.”

The simplest explanation for the flow found by Watkins’ team is that we live in a statistically unlikely volume of space. “If you had a hundred volumes, you’d expect one or two out of a hundred to be moving with this velocity,” Watkins said.

A researcher from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Alexander Kashlinsky, takes Watkins’ results much further. Kashinlisky cites Watkins’ work in a recent article as potential support for Kashlinsky’s notion of “dark flow.”

Kashlinsky’s team uses a different technique to look much further away on a much larger scale. In their latest paper, the team claims to have found evidence of a large flow of galaxies that is in roughly the same direction as the much smaller flow measured by Watkins’ team in nearby space.

While Watkins’ measured flow is improbable but within the bounds of the prevailing model, Kashlinsky’s results would require a major revision. Kashlinsky suggests the flow “might provide an indirect probe of the Multiverse,” a theory that suggests that our universe may be part of a higher dimensional space in which there are many – or even and infinite number of – other universes, potentially with different physical laws.

His results have met with some skepticism in the scientific community. Several physicists have taken aim at Kashlinksy’s conclusions, specifically the way he computes the level of uncertainty in his calculations.

According to Watkins, figuring out uncertainty on such extreme scales is difficult, and his next step is to use computer simulations to test his team’s assumptions. Watkins also expresses some reservations about tying his team’s results to Kashlinksy’s conclusions.

“There may be some process that we don’t understand. Perhaps something that occurred between the Big Bang and now to cause this peculiar velocity, but you don’t need something radical to explain our flow.”

Scientists remain conflicted about the extent, direction and cause of the flow. “We need more data,” Watkins said. “This is an indication that something is not quite right. Right now, it’s just a hint.”

Related links:
•    Rick Watkins profile
•    Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)
•    Expansion diagram