The smoking fingers trick is a simple yet impressive science "magic" trick that you can perform using nothing more complicated than a box of matches. You rub your fingers together, producing smoke. There's no heat or fire, though. This trick is based purely on chemistry. Smoking Fingers Video | Smoking Fingers Instructions
How To Watch the Radiation Belt Storm Probes Launch | Why You Should Care About the Radiation Belts
The popularity of ad blocking -- driven by users' frustrations with intrusive, distracting or just-plain-ugly-and-noisy ads -- threatens the free-for-all model of the Internet, said PageFair, a company that's helping content publishers audit the problem and try to stem some of the bloodletting.
"It's a vicious cycle," said Neil O'Connor, CEO of Dublin-based PageFair. "Ads are becoming more aggressive to capture eyeballs, but that forces more people to install ad-blocking software. It's a lose-lose situation."
But without ads and the revenue they generate, most content publishers cannot sustain operations. Sans ad revenue, the only options are to charge for access -- the path taken by publishers like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times -- or fold the tent.
[Note: Computerworld, like the vast majority of content creators, relies on ad revenue.]
PageFair mined its data from the past 11 months and found some surprising nuggets about ad blocking.
"We started this because we were a publisher ourselves, in the game space," said O'Connor. "We wanted to know how many of our users were dropping out by installing ad blockers, and thought it was maybe as high as 10%. But we found that 30% were blocking our ads. That was shocking to us."
On average, 22.7% of the users who browsed to the several hundred sites monitored by PageFair since September 2012 used an ad blocker, but the range was very wide, from just 1.5% to 65%.
The more technically savvy a site's audience, the more likely they will block ads, said O'Connor. Game-related websites, for instance, deal with an average ad-blocking rate of 30%, the highest of any category. More mainstream websites, however, have a lower percentage of ad-blockers: The average for travel sites is around 5%.
"The severity of ad blocking on a given site is positively correlated to the technical ability of its audience," said O'Connor in a report PageFair published Wednesday (download PDF).
That's because browser ad blocking relies on add-ons, which not all users are comfortable installing, or even know exist. AdBlock Plus, which offers add-ons for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and most recently, Internet Explorer, is the best known.
Firefox users block ads more than those running any other browser, said O'Connor, perhaps because the Mozilla browser has long trumpeted its add-on ecosystem. Also, AdBlock Plus has supported Firefox the longest of any browser.
According to PageFair's data, 37% of Firefox users block ads. Google's Chrome took second place with a 30% blocking rate. IE's rate was miniscule, under 1%.
Corroborating PageFair's numbers is difficult. A May 2012 analysis (download PDF) by ClarityRay, which like PageFair works with companies to counter ad blocking, pegged the percentage of browsers running blockers at 9.3%. But the two companies agreed on many points, including Firefox users' greater interest in ad blockers and technical sites' increased likelihood of being blocked.
Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.Read now.
When leaves appear green, it is because they contain an abundance of chlorophyll. There is so much chlorophyll in an active leaf that the green masks other pigment colors. Light regulates chlorophyll production, so as autumn days grow shorter, less chlorophyll is produced. The decomposition rate of chlorophyll remains constant, so the green color starts to fade from leaves. At the same time, surging sugar concentrations cause increased production of anthocyanin pigments. Leaves containing primarily anthocyanins will appear red. Carotenoids are another class of pigments found in some leaves. Carotenoid production is not dependent on light, so levels aren't diminished by shortened days. Carotenoids can be orange, yellow, or red, but most of these pigments found in leaves are yellow. Leaves with good amounts of both anthocyanins and carotenoids will appear orange. Leaves with carotenoids but little or no anthocyanin will appear yellow. In the absence of these pigments, other plant chemicals also can affect leaf color. An example includes tannins, which are responsible for the brownish color of some oak leaves.
Temperature affects the rate of chemical reactions, including those in leaves, so it plays a part in leaf color. However, it's mainly light levels that are responsible for fall foliage colors. Sunny autumn days are needed for the brightest color displays, since anthocyanins require light. Overcast days will lead to more yellows and browns.
Leaf Color Chemistry | Paper Chromatography with Autumn Leaves
Image: Chemical structure of chloroform, CHCl3.
However, our research found that social media platforms -- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest -- aren't very effective at generating quality sales leads," he says. "Meanwhile, some of the more effective methods, like executive events, webinars, search marketing and telemarketing, are underutilized."
While trade shows and webinars work well for certain organizations, many businesses swear by LinkedIn and Facebook (despite InsideSales.com's findings). Clearly, when it comes to lead generation, one method does not fit all.
So how do you determine which methods or media are the best for finding new customers? By testing several different lead generation strategies -- and measuring the results.
To make this task a bit easier, we asked dozens of sales and marketing experts to find out which lead generation methods yielded the best results for themselves or their clients. Following are their top nine suggestions on where and how to find new customers.
1. Customer referrals. Dogs may be man's best friend. And diamonds may be a girl's best friend. But customer referrals are an organization's best friend.
"There is nothing better than getting a sales lead from a happy customer," says JR Rodrigues, CEO, NetCablesPlus, which sells a wide variety of networking cables and accessories. An existing "customer knows what you are offering and probably has a good idea of what the referred prospect needs," he says.
"This means that the lead is probably well-qualified. Beyond this, you will have tremendous credibility with the prospect since you come well-recommended from someone that they know and trust," Rodrigues says
2. SEO, SEM and PPC. "The best way (in terms of lowest cost per acquisition) for an IT company or a service-based B2B company to generate leads is through pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO)," says Gabriel Shaoolian, the CEO and founder of digital agency Blue Fountain Media.
"PPC and SEO are the most effective way to generate leads because when companies need IT services, they go to Google and search for IT companies. (Something like 90 percent of consumers -- business or otherwise -- go to Google search first.)," Shaoolian says.
To increase the effectiveness of your search engine marketing (SEM) and PPC campaigns, use "long-tail keyword phrases, which are highly targeted search terms typically consisting of three words or more," advises Brett Prince, president, Marketaire, a provider of social media and Internet marketing news.
"Long-tail keyword phrases drive targeted traffic due to their specificity, and they're less competitive than related, shorter search terms, which tend to be higher in volume and more competitive," Prince says.
In terms of SEO, "consider something educational, something your audience could benefit from," says Prince. "Once you've identified your target keywords, create content around it. You may be amazed at how fast you will rank and start generating traffic and leads for this term."
3. Cross-promotions and co-marketing. Consider forming "alliances with complementary, noncompetitive vendors to exchange leads, promote each others' products and services, or any number of other mutually beneficial activities," suggests Rodrigues.
"The leads generated from such activities can be quite good -- sometimes almost the same quality as customer referrals," he says. "The downside is that managing such alliances can be time-consuming and the lead flow can be unpredictable."
4. Providing useful content. "According to Google, tech buyers consume an average of 14 pieces of online content before making a buying decision (as opposed to just eight to 10 for the typical buyer)," says Kathleen Booth, owner and CEO, Quintain Marketing, which provides small to midsized businesses with end-to-end marketing solutions. "Companies that produce educational or informative content can establish thought leadership and generate leads earlier in the buying process, setting the stage to ultimately win the business," she notes. "It may sound counterintuitive," she continues, "but the key is to avoid selling. By offering prospects helpful information in the form of blogs, whitepapers, ebooks, webinars, case studies or demos, you can win their trust and their business."
5. Speaking at trade shows, conferences and industry events. "The best lead generator is to give an event presentation and follow it with customized letters, calls or emails to individuals that you met [there]," argues Susan Carol, CEO, Susan Carol Associates Public Relations.
Speaking at an event immediately gives you name -- and face -- recognition, literally separating (and hopefully elevating) you from the hundreds of other vendors or service providers trying to get noticed. And by following up with people you meet at shows in a timely fashion, you stay top of mind.
6. Using LinkedIn. "Our customer research showed that traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor to lead conversion rate (2.74 percent), almost three times higher than Twitter (.69 percent) and Facebook (.77 percent)," says Mike Volpe, CMO of HubSpot, a provider of inbound marketing software. So what makes LinkedIn a good source of leads for IT companies and professional services organizations?
"First and foremost, LinkedIn has a high percentage of professionals, so the likelihood, especially for B2B marketers, that you're dealing with people in your target audience is higher than some other channels," he says. "Moreover, LinkedIn Groups are organized around the concerns and challenges faced by many buyers and/or their geographic location and profession, so LinkedIn makes it easy to view and contextualize what your potential buyers are talking about and tailor content on your LinkedIn Company pages accordingly."
Just be careful not to lead with a hard sell. "Instead, focus on creating relevant content that is highly shareable and relevant to potential buyers," says Volpe. "Infographics, quick tips and examples of success from executives in their industry are all great examples of how to interact on LinkedIn Groups to drive leads and inspire engagement."
7. Using Twitter. Use Twitter "to promote sales, products or services... and utilize hashtags so that potential clients can find your sale or topic," suggests Kimberly Judd-Pennie, the founder and CEO of CyberMark International, an integrated marketing firm.
You can also use Twitter to find potential customers by tracking "buying signals," notes You Mon Tsang, vice president of Products and acting CMO at Vocus, which provides cloud-based marketing and public relations software and services. For example, if you sell skis, search for individuals looking for ski recommendations by typing in relevant search terms (e.g., "skis recommendation") or looking for the hashtag "#skis" or "#skiing." Or create your own hashtag.
8. Providing contact information on every website page. "With search engines being such an important driver of inbound website traffic, you can't always predict where people are going to enter your website," notes Jonathan Bentz, marketing manager, Netrepid, a provider of professional services. "Having your contact info on every page of your website increases the likelihood that people will contact you."
9. Live chat. "We added a live chat box to our website and generated a request for quote the very first night!" says Bentz. "I can't stress how important that was for a proof of concept, especially since most IT pros are looking for fast answers without possibly getting stuck on the phone with a pushy sales person."
Jennifer Lonoff Schiff is a contributor to CIO.com and runs a marketing communications firm focused on helping organizations better interact with their customers, employees, and partners.
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Read more about online marketing in CIO's Online Marketing Drilldown.
This story is reprinted from CIO.com, an online resource for information executives. Story Copyright CXO Media Inc., 2012. All rights reserved.
@sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed 
. Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.But, how do you know if a compound is ionic or covalent just by looking at a sample? This is where the properties of ionic and covalent compounds can be useful. Because there are exceptions, you need to look at several properties to determine whether a sample is ionic or covalent, but here are some characteristics to consider: Most crystals are ionic compounds. This is because the ions in these compounds tend to stack into crystal lattices to balance between the attractive forces between opposite ions and the repulsive forces between like ions. Covalent or molecular compounds can exist as crystals, though. Examples include sugar crystals and diamond. Ionic compounds tend to have higher melting and boiling points than covalent compounds. Ionic compounds tend to be hard and brittle while covalent compounds tend to be softer and more flexible. Ionic compounds conduct electricity when dissolved in water while covalent compounds typically don't. This is because covalent compounds dissolve into molecules while ionic compounds dissolve into ions, which can conduct charge. These links offer more properties, examples and exceptions. Also, feel free to post additional information that you think might be helpful to others.
Properties of Covalent Compounds | Properties of Ionic Compounds
AMC did not use real crystal meth for the television show Breaking Bad. Instead, they used blue crystal candy for Walt's (Heisenberg's) signature blue product. Do you want to make your own blue crystals to munch on during the show or for a Breaking Bad party?... Here's howif(zs>0){if(zSbL250)gEI("spacer").style.height=Math.floor(e[0].height/12)+17.5+'em';else{var zIClns=[];function walkup(e){if(e.className!='entry'){if(e.nodeName=='A'||e.style.styleFloat=='right'||e.style.cssFloat=='right'||e.align=='right'||e.align=='left'||e.className=='alignright'||e.className=='alignleft')zIClns.push(e);walkup(e.parentNode)}}walkup(e[0]);if(zIClns.length){node=zIClns[zIClns.length-1];var clone=node.cloneNode(true);node.parentNode.removeChild(node);getElementsByClassName("entry",gEI("articlebody"))[0].insertBefore(clone,gEI("spacer"))}}}};zSB(2);zSbL=0The first chemist actually was a Mesopotamian woman, Tapputi, who described the process of distillation. She might be called the Mother of Chemistry, but really didn't engage in science in the modern sense of the word. Jabir ibn Hayyan or "Geber", as he was also called, applied the scientific method to the study of alchemy circa 800 AD. Many people consider him to be the Father of Chemistry. Another popular choice for the title of Father of Chemistry is Antoine Lavoisier, who listed elements, described properties of matter, helped to revise and standardize chemistry nomenclature and made a host of other contribution to the field of chemistry. Lavoisier sometimes is known as the Father of Modern Chemistry, to distinguish his work from contributions made before chemistry was a true science.
Geber and Lavoisier aren't the only people who have been called the "Father of Chemistry." Other investigators may be known by this name... Read more
Fire Projects | Make a Glowing Flower
It's commonly believed that taurine is an amino acid. There are a few reasons for the misconception. The chemical name for taurine is 2-aminoethanesulfonic acid, so it has an amino group and is an acid. Taurine has the "-ine" ending that is common with other amino acids, plus it is a nutritional supplement. However, the molecule does not have the amino acid structure. Taurine has a sulfonic acid group rather than the carboxyl group found in amino acids. Taurine is an important molecule in people and animals. It accounts for about 0.1% of total human body weight. It is a major component of bile and is used to moderate calcium signaling, osmoregulation, and proper muscle function. Human can synthesize taurine from the amino acid cysteine. However, cats and other carnivores cannot, so they have to obtain it from their diet. Taurine is important for development of other animals, too. Some birds seek out taurine-rich spiders to feed to their young.
Image: Chemistry Cat, like all other felines, needs taurine in his diet. Insufficient taurine leads to blindness, loss of fur, tooth decay, and eventually death.
If you're like me, you're lucky to pay attention to a recipe enough to notice whether you're supposed to be using baking powder or baking soda. Both ingredients cause baked goods to rise, but they are not interchangeable. Also, there is more than one type of baking powder. You can find single-acting baking powder and double-acting baking powder. You may be wondering how they are different or whether you should use half as much double-acting baking powder as single-acting baking powder. You use the exactly same amount of double-acting baking powder as you would single-acting baking powder. The difference between the two types of powder is their chemical composition and whether they produce the carbon dioxide gas bubbles that make your baked goods rise when the ingredients are mixed or when the product is heated in the oven. Both types of baking powder produce the same amount of gas, so they are equally effective as leavening agents.
Single-acting baking powder reacts with a water-based ingredient to form bubbles as soon as the ingredients are mixed. If you wait too long to bake your food or mix it too long these bubbles will escape and your food will fall flat.
Double-acting baking powder produces some bubbles when the ingredients are mixed, but most of the rising occurs once heat is applied. This product is more reliable for home baking because it is harder to overbeat the ingredients and the recipe is less susceptible to fail if you forgot to preheat your oven. Because it is practically failsafe, this is the type of baking powder most often found in stores. You'll encounter single-acting baking powder in commercial applications, plus this is the type of powder you would make if you prepare baking powder yourself.
Baking Powder Versus Baking Soda | Ingredient Substitutions
For the past few weeks, I've burned every 'wish dandelion' or dandelion seed head that I could find in South Carolina, Texas, and Nebraska. I've burned dandelions from ditches, dandelions from fields, dandelions treated with chemicals, and dandelions spritzed with flame colorants. A couple of my results are shown above. While you can get a dandelion to burn in multiple colors, the colors seem restricted to shades of orange, yellow and red. My next test is to burn a whole bouquet of dandelions, just in case I haven't been using a large enough sample size.
Have you burned dandelions trying to get the color effect? Have you seen anything unusual?
You can make nitrous oxide or laughing gas quite easily in the lab or at home. However, there are reasons why you might want to forego the preparation unless you have chem lab experience. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is also known as laughing gas. It is a colorless sweet-smelling and sweet-tasting gas that is used in dentistry and surgery because inhaling the gas produces analgesic and anesthetic effects. The gas is also used to produce the engine output of automotive vehicles and as an oxidizer in rocketry. Nitrous oxide gets the name "laughing gas" because inhaling it produces euphoria. Joseph Priestley first synthesized nitrous oxide in 1772 by collecting the gas produced from sprinkling nitric acid over iron filings, however, nitrous oxide usually is produced using Humphry Davy's method of gently heating ammonium nitrate to decompose it into nitrous oxide and water vapor: NH4NO3 (s) ? 2 H2O (g) + N2O (g)
The key here is gently heating the ammonium nitrate to between 170°C and 240°C, because higher temperatures may cause the ammonium nitrate to detonate. People have been doing this without incident for over 150 years, so they key is to be careful. Next, the hot gases are cooled to condense the water. The best way to do this is using a pneumatic trough, which involves a tube leading from the ammonium nitrate container that bubbles the gases up through water into a collection jar. This removes the water from the reaction as well as smoke from impurities in the ammonium nitrate. The gas in the collection jar is your nitrous oxide or laughing gas, plus lesser amounts of other nitrogen oxides, including nitric oxide or nitrogen monoxide. Nitric oxide is oxidized to nitrous oxide upon exposure to oxygen, although acid and base treatments are used to remove impurities for commercial-scale production of nitrous oxide. 
More Details on Nitrous Oxide Preparation
When I was trying to get dandelions to burn in colors I tried soaking the seed heads in a borax solution to get them to burn green. I left the flowers in the borax longer than I should have and ended up crystallizing the dandelions. Although the effect did not work for colored fire, it formed a stunning crystal flower. The only problem with the dandelion was that the stem shriveled and could not support the weight of the fragile crystal flower. I think twisting a pipecleaner or wire around the stem would have solved this problem, but I didn't have the materials on hand so I simply tried the project with a stronger flower. The subject shown in this photo is a musk thistle. As with dandelions, I'm reasonably sure no one in Nebraska objects to preventing one from going to seed (hah). Although you could add food coloring to the solution to tint the flower, what is neat about this project is the crystals take the color from the flowers. Dandelion crystal flowers are pale yellow. The thistle is lilac with a yellow center. You can use any flower for this project... Learn to make one yourself
A density column is a container of liquids that stack on top of each other because they have different densities. The heaviest liquid sinks to the bottom of the glass, while the lightest liquid floats at the top. A simple example of a density column is a mixture of oil and water. However, you can make density columns with more than two layers, plus you can color them. This pretty rainbow density column only requires sugar, water and food coloring! Rainbow in a Glass Video Tutorial | Step-By-Step Written Instructions
Chemical Fire #1
potassium permanganate glycerin waterAdd a few drops of glycerin to a few crystals of potassium permanganate. Accelerate the reaction by adding a couple of drops of water.
Chemical Fire #2 acetone sulfuric acid potassium permanganate
Soak a tissue with acetone to make it more flammable. Draw sulfuric acid into a glass pipette. Dip the pipette into potassium permanganate so that the tip of the pipette is coated with a few crystals. Dispense the sulfuric acid onto the tissue. The potassium permangante and sulfuric acid mix to produce manganese heptoxide and fire.
Chemical Fire #3 sodium chlorate sugar sulfuric acid
Mix a small amount of sodium chlorate and sugar. Initiate the reaction by adding a few drops of sulfuric acid.
Chemical Fire #4
ammonium nitrate powder finely ground zinc powder hydrochloric acidMix together a small amount of ammonium nitrate and zinc powder. Initiate the reaction by adding a few drops of hydrochloric acid.
Chemical Fire Safety
If you are performing a demonstration of chemical fire using any of these reactions, use very small amounts of the chemicals listed for each project. Wear proper safety gear and work on a fire-safe surface.
Here's an easy chemistry project you can do in which you take a clear liquid and instantaneously solidify it into hot 'ice'. It isn't water ice, however. This is how you make crystals of sodium acetate, which is used in hand warmers and chemical heating pads and hot packs.
Hot Ice Materials
sodium acetate water saucepan glass or panMaking Your Own Sodium Acetate Monohydrate
If you don't have any sodium acetate monohydrate you can make your own. Add baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to vinegar (weak acetic acid) until the mixture stops fizzing. This will give you an aqueous solution of sodium acetate. If you boil off the water, you'll be left with the sodium acetate. Expect to use a lot of baking soda and vinegar if you go this route.
Make the Hot Ice
What you are going to do is make a supersaturated sodium acetate solution. The solution will remain a supercooled liquid until a little solid sodium acetate is introduced. This will cause rapid crystallization that will resemble a block of ice, except it will be hot to the touch and not edible.
Dump some sodium acetate monohydrate into a saucepan. Add just enough water to dissolve the sodium acetate. Heat the solution to just below its boiling point. Stir in more sodium acetate. Keep stirring and adding sodium acetate until you start to see solid material accumulating at the bottom of the pan. Pour the hot solution into a glass or other container. Do not allow any of the undissolved solid to enter the container. Cool the solution in the refrigerator 30 minutes to an hour. Remove the solution from the refrigerator. As long as you didn't leave any solid sodium acetate in the solution, it should still be liquid. When you are ready to make 'ice' introduce a little of the solid sodium acetate. You could dip a toothpick or the edge of a spoon in sodium acetate powder. The crystallization will evolve heat (exothermic reaction), making the solid feel hot to the touch (~130° F).Hot Ice Trick
You don't have to solidify the sodium acetate in a dish. You can crystallize it as the solution is being poured to make fantastic shapes.
Glitter usually gets its sparkle from polymer coatings over plastic or even from metals! Yet, it's easy to make non-toxic glitter or even edible glitter. This is perfect for young investigators and also for adults who want safe sparkle... Try itif(zs>0){if(zSbL250)gEI("spacer").style.height=Math.floor(e[0].height/12)+17.5+'em';else{var zIClns=[];function walkup(e){if(e.className!='entry'){if(e.nodeName=='A'||e.style.styleFloat=='right'||e.style.cssFloat=='right'||e.align=='right'||e.align=='left'||e.className=='alignright'||e.className=='alignleft')zIClns.push(e);walkup(e.parentNode)}}walkup(e[0]);if(zIClns.length){node=zIClns[zIClns.length-1];var clone=node.cloneNode(true);node.parentNode.removeChild(node);getElementsByClassName("entry",gEI("articlebody"))[0].insertBefore(clone,gEI("spacer"))}}}};zSB(2);zSbL=0When I was trying to get dandelions to burn in colors I tried soaking the seed heads in a borax solution to get them to burn green. I left the flowers in the borax longer than I should have and ended up crystallizing the dandelions. Although the effect did not work for colored fire, it formed a stunning crystal flower. The only problem with the dandelion was that the stem shriveled and could not support the weight of the fragile crystal flower. I think twisting a pipecleaner or wire around the stem would have solved this problem, but I didn't have the materials on hand so I simply tried the project with a stronger flower. The subject shown in this photo is a musk thistle. As with dandelions, I'm reasonably sure no one in Nebraska objects to preventing one from going to seed (hah). Although you could add food coloring to the solution to tint the flower, what is neat about this project is the crystals take the color from the flowers. Dandelion crystal flowers are pale yellow. The thistle is lilac with a yellow center. You can use any flower for this project... Learn to make one yourself
This theory explained many unknown chemical phenomenon of the time and was quickly adopted by chemists. Today, we see flaws with the overall theory. Dalton had no idea of the existence of parts of atoms and the existence of isotopes. He also didn't know that atoms could be created or destroyed through nuclear processes. In spite of this, his basic theory lives on in modern chemistry.
Find out what else occurred on this day in science history.
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Masers operate using a different method now, but the principle is the same. They are used to amplify microwaves, radar, and even in radio astronomy to detect very weak signals over a great distance. Find out what else occurred on this day in science history.
Follow About.com Chemistry on Facebook or Twitter.
NASA launched their first satellite in January 1958. In the next twenty years, they put men in space, landed men on the Moon, sent robotic probes to other planets and out of our solar system, created networks of satellites, built the Skylab space station and created a fleet of reusable Space Shuttles.
Find out what else occurred on this day in science history.
Former President Bill Clinton hugs House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California as another Democrat, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, looks on at Wednesday's ceremony naming the Environmental Protection Agency headquarters for him.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/APThe environment may not come to mind when most people think about former President Bill Clinton, but on Wednesday he defended his legacy as the Environmental Protection Agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., was renamed in his honor.
At a ceremony in the EPA complex, Clinton mentioned reading an article that questioned whether his was the right name to put on the building.
"I think it more than sort of fits — not for me, but for what we did. For what our administration did," Clinton said in remarks greeted by applause from a small crowd that included senators, a congressman and former members of his administration.
EPA/YouTubeA short clip from the comments former President Bill Clinton made on Wednesday at the renaming of the Environmental Protection Agency's headquarters in his honor.
Clinton cited actions his administration took that protected wild lands, coral reefs and old growth trees. He stressed that his EPA put in place rules to clean up exhaust from factories and vehicles and set the first air quality standards for soot.
"When I left office, there were 43 million more Americans breathing air that met federal standards, which means less asthma among young people and fewer senior citizens dying because of air pollution," Clinton said.
The former president credited the environmentalists on his team, including his Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, his EPA chief Carol Browner and his vice president, Al Gore (who was not among those at Wednesday's ceremony).
Judith Layzer, associate professor of environmental policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that unlike Gore, President Clinton wasn't an environmentalist. But she says he stood up for the EPA in 1994. Congressional Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, wanted to eliminate regulations. Some wanted to do away with the agency.
"Instead of backing down — the way liberals often do and the way environmentalists sometimes do and the way Clinton sometimes did — he really reared up and said, you know, we are going to protect environmental laws we are not going to let Congress gut them," says Layzer.
But Clinton's record didn't please all those who consider themselves to be environmentalists. He supported trade deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement that were criticized for hurting the environment. Environmentalists feared factories would move to countries without pollution laws, and polluting industries would set up just across the border with Mexico.
And although Clinton signed the international climate change treaty called the Kyoto Protocol, he failed to send it to Congress to be ratified.
In his speech Wednesday, Clinton mentioned that the Senate had made its opposition to the treaty clear to him. "It is the only bill I ever lost in Congress before I sent it to them, and an astonishing example of bipartisan cooperation in the Senate, which voted against it 98 to nothing," Clinton said.
The building that's been renamed after President Clinton is one of a string of imposing structures with limestone facades near the National Mall. It sits next to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.
Clinton accepted his new honor in an ornate hall — with elaborately carved wooden ceiling and walls and crystal chandelier.
The former president also looked ahead during his remarks, saying that as he travels the world as an elder statesman, it is clear to him that these days leaders no longer have the option of ignoring climate change if they want to build jobs and strong economies.
"That is what the whole 21st century world is going to be about," he said.
Professor Chris Lowry needed to collect information on stream levels in Western New York but didn't have enough funding for the traditional methods, so he turned to a more creative option: crowdsourcing. Guest host Linda Wertheimer speaks with him about his research and the future of crowdsourcing in scientific inquiries.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:
Scientific research can be expensive but a lack of funds did not stop one scientist in Buffalo from moving forward with his project. State University of New York professor Chris Lawry came up with a creative and cheap way to get measurements on stream levels across the state by crowdsourcing his research.
Chris Lawry joins us from member station WBFO in Buffalo, New York. Professor Lawry, thank you very much for coming in.
CHRIS LAWRY: Oh, thanks for having me.
WERTHEIMER: Tell us what you did. I mean, as I understand it, you basically just stuck a big ruler in the streams whose flow you were trying to measure and attached a sign with a phone number and asked passersby to send you a text message and tell you what the water level looked like.
LAWRY: That's exactly what we did do, and we realized that text messaging was ubiquitous and so as a result we thought maybe we can engage citizens and see if they can start to help us make these measurements. And so we literally stuck a sign in the stream and that sign said please text us the water level and it was right on top of basically just a giant ruler.
WERTHEIMER: Ha. You know, I still, I haven't asked you yet what exactly it is that you are doing with this information. Why do you want it?
LAWRY: My specific research is looking at ground water and surface water interactions. I literally set up these gauges so that I could know what was going on in terms of streams so I could better understand what's going on in the subsurface.
WERTHEIMER: If you're having passersby do your research, what do your colleagues think about that? I mean, do they think that that might just be a tiny bit too random?
LAWRY: You know, I think the jury's kind of out. What we've been able to show is we've been able to show that these data that come in are actually very accurate. It's just a matter of kind of convincing people that this is a new way of doing things. This is leveraging a new technology.
WERTHEIMER: Well, what about if you got some person coming by who was hostile to the idea or thought it would be a great idea laugh to send you some completely bogus results?
LAWRY: So that is possible, right? But because you're crowdsourcing, what we're doing is we're getting multiple measurements, so you may see that the water level is 3.5 feet and then it might go to 6.5 feet and then back to 3.5 feet. That 6.5 feet is an outlier and we can easily identify that and say you know what? That was a bad measurement. And I don't think that people are being hostile. I think people are inherently good, right? I think it's more of people with fat thumbs texting, right?
(LAUGHTER)
WERTHEIMER: I hope you're right.
LAWRY: I mean, I have fat thumbs. Like, I have a hard time texting. I'm not - I didn't grow up texting.
WERTHEIMER: Do you think you've actually saved money by doing it this way?
LAWRY: Oh, yeah. We saved a ton of money doing it this way, and it's also engaging people that aren't engaged in hydrologic sciences. This is a really cool, not only scientific endeavor, but it's also a really cool engagement endeavor.
WERTHEIMER: Professor Chris Lawry joined us from member station WBFO in Buffalo, New York. Thank you very much for being with us.
LAWRY: Thanks for having me.
WERTHEIMER: This is NPR News.
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Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.Two recent eruptions on the sun sent solar tsunamis sweeping across its surface. Physicist David Long reported on the tsunamis in the journal Solar Physics, and he says the waves allowed him to calculate the magnetic field of a "quiet" area on the solar surface, which is 10 times weaker than a fridge magnet.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.IRA FLATOW, HOST:
Welcome back. I'm Ira Flatow. Look at the temperature map of the United States right now and the whole country is red. It's so hot that my E-ZPass fell of my windshield. It just melted right off there. But that's another story because there's weather in space also and my next guest says we might be able to fine tune our space weather forecasts by tracking an unusual phenomena - solar tsunamis.
That's right. Tsunamis not just here on Earth but on the sun. And it can ripple through the plasma of the sun at around a million miles per hour. And they're set off by enormous eruptions on the sun's surface. David Long is a solar physicist at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College of London in Surrey in the U.K. He joins us by phone. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.
DAVID LONG: Hi. How are you? Thank you for having me.
FLATOW: You're welcome. What is a tsunami on the sun like?
LONG: Well, so what happens is you get these huge solar eruptions occurring in active regions. And sometimes we see these great waves of plasma, these bright fronts, moving away from the source of the eruption across the sun at really incredible speeds. So you said at a million miles an hour. And we see these as these are these solar tsunamis.
And what's really interesting to us is that how these tsunamis propagate across the sun can tell us an awful lot about the sun, about the sun's atmosphere, about the magnetic fields in the sun's atmosphere, how dense and magnetic the sun's atmosphere is.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. How - you know, we talk about tsunamis here on Earth. How tall can a tsunami wave be on the sun?
LONG: Well, so the tsunamis that we're looking at are generally about 90 million meters above the photosphere, which is the visible surface of the sun. So they're quite high up in our terms but on the sun they're actually quite low down. This is the low atmosphere that we're talking about here.
FLATOW: Ninety million meters.
LONG: Yes.
FLATOW: You're not surfing that wave.
LONG: No.
(LAUGHTER)
FLATOW: And so what can you learn about the weather, the space weather? You were saying that you can learn things about the sun from it. What can you learn?
LONG: Well, so when we see these tsunamis, it generally means that there's - a blob of plasma has been fired out into space. And these blobs of plasma we call coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. Now, generally if we see one of these tsunamis it means that the blob of plasma is coming at the telescope. Which means that it's very difficult to measure how fast it's going, which is quite important when we want to predict when it might arrive at Earth, for example.
FLATOW: Right.
LONG: So we're hoping that by studying these tsunamis we might learn a little bit more about these CMEs. We might be able to work out how fast they are moving out into space.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Is this - are these recent discoveries, these tsunamis?
LONG: Well, actually, they were first observed in 1997 using a spacecraft called Soho. Now, the problem with Soho was that the cadence of the instruments - so it took one picture every 20 minutes, which means that it was quite difficult to see these tsunamis and we were quite lucky to see them in the first place. More recently we have an instrument, a spacecraft, called the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO. And this was launched by NASA.
It takes an image every 12 seconds. So that really allows us to see these tsunamis. So we're starting to see them more and more, but that's probably a result of the fact that we have better instruments now. We have better telescopes for observing these phenomena.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. So it might help you be able to predict a solar storm heading toward the planet, our planet.
LONG: Yes. Yes. That's the idea.
FLATOW: Yeah. And do you need any more special instruments for this? Or what you got, it's pretty good?
LONG: Well...
FLATOW: I should never ask that of a scientist.
(LAUGHTER)
LONG: So the instrument, the SDO spacecraft is really good. And it allows us to see the whole sun in one go. What was really unique about this work was we had a spectroscope. So we had an instrument called the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer on a Japanese spacecraft called Hinode.
And this allowed us to measure the density of the sun's atmosphere. Now, the ice uses a very thin slit to measure density, which means that you have to be in the right place at the right time, and in this case we were. So we were able to get density measurements of the atmosphere. And then as the tsunami passed across the slate, we were able to use the measurements of how fast it was going and the density measurements to then estimate the magnetic field strength...
FLATOW: Right.
LONG: ...in the sun's atmosphere.
FLATOW: And so it's the magnetic field that's important here too.
LONG: Yes. So it's really difficult to measure the magnetic field...
FLATOW: Yeah.
LONG: ...in the sun's atmosphere. It's quite easy to do in active regions where this magnetic field is very concentrated. It's very strong and it's quite easy - it's relatively easy to measure there. What we were looking at was the quiet sun where everything is quite small. There's a lot of things going on but it's all very small scale and it's very difficult to see. And the magnetic field is very, very small.
FLATOW: Yeah. Yeah.
LONG: So it's very difficult to measure.
FLATOW: Well, before you go I have one question I have to ask because we've heard about this. That we're not seeing as much solar activity as we would expect about this time. What's going on there?
LONG: Well, so the sun has an 11 year cycle of activity. It's come out of a very long minimum and it's approaching or has reached maximum, which is quite small at the moment. And, I mean, that's really interesting. We are trying to understand why that is, why is this maximum so small. And why was the last minimum so long? And that's really a field of active research at the moment.
FLATOW: All right. We'll see what happens, if you can figure that out. Thank you. Thank you for taking time to be with us today.
LONG: No problem. Any time.
FLATOW: David Long, solar physicist at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory. That's at the University College London in Surrey, U.K.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
This composite panorama image shows a proposed controlled-burn site in the Centennial Valley of southwestern Montana.
John W. Poole/NPRWildfires were once essential to the American West. Prairies and forests burned regularly, and those fires not only determined the mix of flora and fauna that made up the ecosystem, but they regenerated the land.
When people replaced wilderness with homes and ranches, they aggressively eliminated fire. But now, scientists are trying to bring fire back to the wilderness, to recreate what nature once did on its own.
One place they're doing this is Centennial Valley, in southwestern Montana.
Rimmed by snow-capped mountains, Centennial Valley is about as wild as it gets in the lower 48. In part, that's because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and now The Nature Conservancy, own big patches of it and keep it wild. But what's been missing there is fire.
Astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet malfunctioned during Tuesday's space walk outside the International Space Station. Water built up inside, causing the excursion to be abandoned. Audie Cornish talks with NPR's Geoff Brumfiel about what happened yesterday, how serious it was, and what NASA believes could be the cause of the leak.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We want to warn claustrophobics about our next story and alert aspiring screenwriters because in space, no one expects to drown. Yesterday, more than 200 miles above earth at the International Space Station, Luca Parmitano was about 90 minutes into a spacewalk when he noticed that his head was wet and getting wetter. Water then got into the Italian astronaut's eyes.
His spacewalking buddy, Chris Cassidy, took a quick look and saw nearly a pint of water floating around in Parmitano's helmet. The pair returned to the space station and removed his helmet as quickly as possible. Parmitano is fine. Joining me now is NPR's Geoff Brumfiel. He's been following the story. And Geoff, to start, what is NASA saying happened here, about the possible cause of this water leak?
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Well, not very much. They had a press conference yesterday and talked about possible sources, but believe it or not, there are actually multiple sources of water in a space suit, so they're not sure where it came from.
CORNISH: I don't understand this. Why would there be water in a space suit in the first place?
BRUMFIEL: Well, the first reason is for the astronauts themselves. Spacewalking is kind of hard work. You're out there for several hours. You're doing physical labor, so they actually have drink bags inside the suits. The other reason is that even though you might think space is really cold, and it is, there's a need to regulate the temperature because you basically have no way to radiate your heat so they actually have these built in radiators that circulate water through the suit that help keep the astronauts cool.
CORNISH: So we're joking around here, but how serious was this yesterday for Parmitano?
BRUMFIEL: It was pretty serious. You know, they stayed calm, as everyone at NASA always does, but they did get him into the airlock quickly. Not as quickly as they would have done in a full-blown emergency, but they got the helmet off right away. They got the gloves off and they had to get him clear. I mean, the problem here is that water in space does not behave like water on earth.
Surface tension causes it to sort of glom together like mercury does, you know. Little beads of mercury will tend to clump up. And so what potentially could have happened is he would have this big floating blob of water in his helmet that he couldn't clear away 'cause it's in his helmet and he could've inhaled it. He could've choked or drowned. So it was potentially, actually, a pretty dangerous situation.
CORNISH: So what happens now? Will Parmitano get a chance to get out of there, to at least get a different suit?
BRUMFIEL: Well, the situation at the moment is that they have to figure out where this water actually came from. The leading candidate at the press conference yesterday was the cooling system, but they really don't know. And they also don't know whether it was an isolated incident or whether it's a problem with all of the space suits.
So in order to get the astronauts back out there, they're going to have to troubleshoot this and they spent all day doing that, the astronauts and mission control. They do have a backup space suit, so if it turns out to be a problem with this one spacesuit, they will probably go back out there at some stage.
And Parmitano's up there till November, so he may have a shot at it.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Geoff Brumfiel. Geoff, thank you so much.
BRUMFIEL: Thank you.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio. This composite panorama image shows a proposed controlled-burn site in the Centennial Valley of southwestern Montana.
John W. Poole/NPRWildfires were once essential to the American West. Prairies and forests burned regularly, and those fires not only determined the mix of flora and fauna that made up the ecosystem, but they regenerated the land.
When people replaced wilderness with homes and ranches, they aggressively eliminated fire. But now, scientists are trying to bring fire back to the wilderness, to recreate what nature once did on its own.
One place they're doing this is Centennial Valley, in southwestern Montana.
Rimmed by snow-capped mountains, Centennial Valley is about as wild as it gets in the lower 48. In part, that's because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and now The Nature Conservancy, own big patches of it and keep it wild. But what's been missing there is fire.
Fish oil may have some benefit for the heart. But a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute links higher blood levels of the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil to a higher risk of prostate cancer. Study author Alan Kristal says the potential mechanism is unclear, but he warns that supplements can sometimes increase the risk of the very diseases they're meant to prevent.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.IRA FLATOW, HOST:
Welcome back. I'm Ira Flatow and our next story is destined to confuse you. It's one of those stories about nutrition, an update where new research seems to contradict old ideas, so let me just get right into it. We've all heard a lot of good news about fish oil and Omega-3 fatty acids.
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UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Omega-3 fatty acids may help reduce the risk of breast cancer.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: The fish oil you need is Omega-3 fatty acids.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Omega-3 is protective in heart...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Fish oil may even slow the aging process...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: It also helps people with diabetes, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, post-partum depression, and cancer.
FLATOW: And the list goes on. But last year a major study in the Journal of the American Medical Association said, hey, you know what? Omega-3 supplements don't really protect you against death from heart disease. And now a new study by my next guest adds to the bad news. It says men who had a higher level of Omega-3 fatty acids in their blood also had a higher risk of prostate cancer.
No cause and effect here, just a correlation. But it does make you wonder whether all these supplements and vitamins we take might be doing more harm than good. Alan Kristal is the author of the study in the journal of the National Cancer Institute. He's associate head of the cancer prevention program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington.
Welcome to the program, Dr. Kristal.
DOCTOR ALAN KRISTAL: Thanks very much.
FLATOW: Tell us exactly what you found.
KRISTAL: So the - this is based on a study of 35,000 men where we did a randomized trial looking at whether selenium or Vitamin E supplements would prevent prostate cancer. And one thing we did was we measured the levels of Omega-3 fatty acids in the blood of men as they entered the study and looked at how that related to prostate cancer risk.
And we found that high levels increased the risk of high-grade prostate cancer, which is the serious disease that actually kills you by over 70 percent. And it increased your risk of low-grade cancer by about 40 percent. And I should just add that we published a similar finding from a different study two years ago and we didn't really believe it, but we thought it was important to get it into the literature.
And now that we replicate it, it has some more immediacy. We begin to believe the association is true.
FLATOW: Does it matter where the Omega-3s come from, whether it's a supplement or, you know, you're just having some salmon?
KRISTAL: Yeah, I wish I could answer that very clearly, but I can say that most of the men in our study were not taking dietary supplements of Omega-3 fatty acids, so the high levels were coming from food.
FLATOW: Are you then recommending people don't eat fish, salmon and things like that?
KRISTAL: You know, that's the most complicated question you could ask me and I'd say this: Although the data on dietary supplements really doesn't support the use of Omega-3 fatty acids for anything and I want to emphasize that. There's no good data.
FLATOW: For anything? I just went through this long list, a little clip there, of everything that it was supposedly good for.
KRISTAL: It's, oh yes, things people want to believe about nutrition versus what scientists can tell you we know. It's an interesting list. But the point would be that there probably are benefits to fish consumption. The evidence points to Omega-3 fatty acids consumed as part of foods and that would be as part of fish reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease.
But it definitely shows, I think, that taking supplements has no impact. So there are some benefits, obviously, to eating salmon and other fatty fishes and, you know, it's a balance. There's a benefit for cardiovascular disease and I think there's clearly an increased risk for prostate cancer and, as I often say, none of us get out of this alive, so it's a balance.
FLATOW: Yeah. You know, first we hear it was Vitamin E was good; then it wasn't good. And then we hear Vitamin D - are we going to hear that something about Vitamin D now also?
KRISTAL: I'm pretty sure you will. I mean, if I look back on my career, which I've been doing this work for about 25 years now, we naively thought a long time ago that high doses of micronutrients would reduce risk of cardiovascular disease or various cancers. And as we test them rigorously, what we find it has no impact at all. Or worse we find that it increases the risk of the diseases we're very trying to prevent.
And it also increases the risk of other diseases we never thought it would affect.
FLATOW: Well, then how did we get the idea in the first place that these things were helpful?
KRISTAL: You know, that's a long story, but part of it has to do with the way we do nutrition research and the difficulty in measuring what people eat. So there are certain types of study designs that have inherent balances and the way that we measure food consumption when we have very large studies is actually very poor.
And so as we - so one thing we've done is we've moved to using biomarkers of dietary intake, so we can - I don't have to ask people how much Omega-3 fatty acids they eat; I can measure it in their bloods. And as you start doing the designs more rigorously, as you start measuring food intake more carefully, then, you know, you start narrowing down on the truth.
FLATOW: Yeah. So you've ruled out that it could be contaminants in some of the supplements?
KRISTAL: No, we can't rule out contaminants, and to be honest with you, we can't rule out the problem that plagues all this sort of research and that's that there may be something that characterizes men who eat fish that also increases their risk of prostate cancer and the association that we see isn't true, it isn't causal.
But on the other side, if you look at the number of studies, and there have been quite a few that have looked at Omega-3 fatty acids and prostate cancers, they all point to an increased risk except for one. So these have been done all over the world, these have been various kinds, different kinds of people, different sources of Omega-3 fatty acids, and they all point in the same direction.
FLATOW: To me what is most fearful about your results is that it increased the risk of the worst kind of cancer, that very fast-moving cancer.
KRISTAL: It does, but you have to remember that it's actually a rare disease. High-grade prostate cancer is very rarely diagnosed. It's no more than 18 percent or so of all prostate cancers detected.
FLATOW: But even then, the other prostate cancer, that's still up 40 percent.
KRISTAL: Right. You know, definitely a cause for concern and...
FLATOW: You must be getting pushback, a lot of pushback.
KRISTAL: Goodness yes. I have received the most vituperous(ph) email I've ever received in my career on this one. You know, people like to believe that the supplements they take improve their health and they're barraged by advertisements on this. And it's all, frankly, it's just not true.
FLATOW: But you're going up against people who will say there's all this other research that X, Y, Z contradicts what you're saying. Yeah?
KRISTAL: Not really. Not really. Now, what people say and the quality of the research it's based on is something that really requires a lot of critical scrutiny. There's a lot published on nutrition and disease and a lot of it, frankly, is not high quality work.
FLATOW: Is there any kind of supplement that you've looked at that you would suggest people take?
KRISTAL: Well, you know, you can look at, for example, folate supplementation of women of childbearing age. That has had a profound impact on neural tube defects, so that's really a success story that's translated into fortification of the food supply. I honestly can't say any condition where I think taking supplements really makes any sense.
FLATOW: But you're even saying here that it's not just the supplements. It could just be eating fish that are high in Omega-3s.
KRISTAL: Right. So in this case, yes. So here we have the issues that - I'll explain it this way. So we know Omega-3 fatty acids have a long range of biological effects. Some of them we understand quite well. And the issues is some of these effects would prevent some diseases while at the same time increasing the risk of other diseases.
You know, overall there's a balance and I will say that there's a very large trial ongoing right now looking at Vitamin D supplements and Omega-3 fatty acid supplements, both on men and women. I don't expect it to publish for another five years at least, but that's a trial that will really be informative on, you know, the balance.
It will increase the risk of some things, increase some risk of the others, and the question is what's the overall impact on quality of life and survival.
FLATOW: Do you have any preliminary results from that study?
KRISTAL: Oh no, it's not my study and...
FLATOW: So how does it affect you personally? Do you now, when you sit down in a restaurant, say oh I'm not ordering this salmon?
KRISTAL: Well, you know, the strangest thing in the world is that the day this came out I went downstairs to my cafeteria at work and I had a piece of salmon, so I really believe in the balance issue. To me, if you had one or two servings of salmon or a similar kind of oily fish a week, that's fine. It's when you get to higher levels that the possibility of a risk really exists.
FLATOW: Because people are taking those fish oil tablets every single day, multiple times a day, sometimes.
KRISTAL: Multiple times a day, right. You know, just the best advice I can ever give people is just to stop taking supplements. The evidence that they're beneficial for anything is so slim and the more quality research we do, these randomized trials, we find it increases the risk of really serious kind of diseases.
FLATOW: Is there money to do randomized trials that we need to do, because supplements, they're not, you know, they're not Viagra.
KRISTAL: That's right. So that's a big policy question and I'll just say that there was a lot more money to do these trials ten years ago. The effect of the decreased federal funding for scientific research has been profound over the last couple of years and the possibility of getting a large clinical trial done to test - to examine either nutrition or test dietary supplements just doesn't exist.
They're very expensive to do. they're hundreds of millions of dollars to do and there's no excitement to do them.
FLATOW: Thanks for being the barer of good news today, Alan.
KRISTAL: My pleasure. Thank you very much.
FLATOW: You're welcome. Alan Kristal, associate head of the Cancer Prevention Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle. Also professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington talking about stuff that was published in a very tough journal, The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. They don't put stuff in there that they don't believe in, so if he's put it in there and they've accepted it, it's a very, very good study.
Thank you, Alan, for taking time to be with us today.
KRISTAL: My pleasure.
FLATOW: We're going to take a break and next up, get out your drills and saws. You might want to swing by your Radio Shack, your Home Depot, your Lowes, whatever, because it's time for our summer do-it-yourself segment. We've got projects you can so out by the pool. How about a beverage barn? Yeah, how about a water bottle rocket launcher? How about a cooler that you can turn into a heater?
All kinds of projects we've got for you. Stay with us, we'll be right back after that.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.
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Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.I've got a friend, Destin, who has a YouTube channel called Smarter Every Day, where he pokes around with his camera to get extremely intimate looks at small miracles in nature. In this one, about the secret life of baby butterflies, he learns that when it comes time for the caterpillar to turn itself into a butterfly, it doesn't spin a lot of silk and build itself a shelter (a pupa). I thought that what caterpillars do. But no ... take a look at what actually happens.
There's another mystery here that Destin has yet to ponder. (But he says he will. He's working on it for later this year.) We've read, and reported on this blog that when it's time for caterpillars to transform themselves, once they are safe inside the pupa, they melt. That's what some experts say: they dissolve into a cytoplasmic goo, and cells they used as wormy little babies break down, and inside the pupa, the caterpillar becomes a soup. Then, somehow, that ooze gets rebuilt into a very differently shaped, flying, gorgeously colored adult. Most babies, like ducks, ants, people, birds, keep their form and just grow. Not moths and butterflies. They do a total makeover. How does that work? What is directing the resurrection? I don't know what kind of camera Destin will need to peek into the innards of a tiny, hard insect hideaway, but knowing Destin, he'll figure out something.
For bakers, turning a donut into a donut hole is simple. For a mathematician, it's impossible.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
A program such as ours is timed to the exact second, and occasionally, there are small holes when our mix of news and features doesn't quite fill up our two-hour slot.
So NPR's Joe Palca offered to come to our rescue with some short math and sciencey hole-filling stories, stories about what else - holes.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: Today, we're going to talk about doughnut holes, those round things you buy in a bakery. To a baker, it's not a troubling question to ask whether you can turn a doughnut into a doughnut hole. Simple. Instead of shaping the dough into a tube and dropping it in the deep fat fryer, you shape the dough into a sphere and drop it in the deep fat fryer.
For a mathematician, the question is more complex. In the mathematical world, a doughnut is referred to as a torus. And mathematicians who study the algebra of shapes have been arguing for more than a century whether there was any way you could bend or twist or compress a doughnut-shaped torus so it would turn into a sphere. In 1904, the French mathematician Henri Poincare said the answer was no, but he couldn't show why with mathematical reasoning, and neither could anyone else until finally 100 years later, the less famous Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman did find a way to prove you can't turn a torus into a doughnut hole.
The moral of the story is if you want a doughnut hole, don't ask a mathematician, ask a baker. But if you want to know about the shape of the universe, the mathematicians who worry about doughnut shapes can probably help with answers.
With the help of our mathematically trained intern Anna Haensch, I'm Joe Palca, NPR News.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.