Tag: physics

Transcript-TWIS.ORG June 30, 2009


Synopsis: Digg’n Physics via Twitter, Dino Skinny, Bird Brain Insights, Fish Freakouts!, Tunguska Shuttle Hugs, Building Better Melons, Minion Mailbag, and The Question of the Month!

Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

What is right is right. And what is wrong is wrong. What is true is true. And what is untrue is untrue. What is science is science. And what is not science is not science. Such absolutes are hard to find in the push-pull of human nature driven world.

For what is right, like a free election can be untrue in it’s result. What is most easily condemned as wrong, like the murder of innocents can be true as we have seen too often in the past than most recently in Iran.

What is not science can be disguised as science in order to gain our trust. And fake science journals rigged industry research and false claims by hired assassins of truth — tobacco isn’t addictive, global warming isn’t happening, drugs will never kill you.

As the fabrication of false denials are found out, defrocked, defiled and filed under fraudulent, they much like the following hour of our programming, do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of California at Davis, KDVS or its sponsors.

As living in a world without absolutes can make for a foggy notions sense of being, let us create a few absolutes upon which to stand. What is science is absolutely right and never wrong. For it is a continuing process, the self-correction, that is willing to change when it isn’t correct.

What is science is absolutely true and never untrue. For this ever moving towards truth, regardless of where it started and what we want truth to be has no relation to what truths we find.

And science is a process of getting it right. That is willing to get it wrong until we are getting at what is true more often than we are settling for what is untrue. And so, science therefore rejects all absolutes. All absolutes that is a long the way to becoming, This Week in Science, coming up next.
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Transcript-TWIS.org June 16, 2009


Synopsis: Bisphenol A and estrogen, Toxoplasma Gondii causing car crashes?, Beware of Robo-Ferret used to sniff out hidden things, RoboGames Redux, Adventures in Popularity, Move Over Silicon!, Go Fly A Kite, TWIS Bits, and Interview w/ Dr. Greg Gibson re: Genes and Illness.

Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

It’s no secret, no one gets out of here alive. The question then, if anyone asks, is what if anything we do with the time we have in the great go around. Suggestions are plenty and opinions abound or regardless of intentions of what we do or who we are and why we are doing these things, our opinions, like the following hour of our programming, do not necessarily represent those of the University of California at Davis, KDVS or its sponsors. Still, regardless of self-opinion, this is the moment in which we can do.

In a sense, what we can do is who we are, we are all about to be, This Week in Science, coming up next.
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Transcript-TWIS.ORG March 24, 2009


Synopsis: Brains, brains, brains! Cold Fusion, Bad For Baby, Kiki needs to drink less, and lots more

Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer! The Earth is facing an immediate global threat of self-annihilation. And while the vast majority of Earth’s inhabitants do nothing to fight the threat of global warming, this is likely because most of its habitants are non-sentient life forms.

Yet even among these sentient thinking reasoning informational adaptive earthlings, there seems to be a little initiative taken. Either from a lack of knowledge, absence or of awareness or worse, a sense that the trouble ahead is too terrible.

The challenge is too great and so they ignore the issue resolving the Earth to a coward’s fate. And though terribly troubled earthlings much like the following hour of our programming do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of University of California at DAVIS, KDVS or its sponsors.

The fate of the world is NOT so predetermined. There are some human principles that do not back down from the challenge. Science ever thinking, never blinking, innovating answers instead of hesitating the question, inventing the tools needed to face the future instead of pretending that tomorrow will never come.

With science, a new energy portfolio is being designed. Roof tiles integrated with solar cells, algae and hydrogen fuel sources, emission-free vehicles backed up by better battery technology, rooftop, wind turbines and water turbines and ocean currents, geothermal power plants tap in deep into the Earth below and pursuit of perhaps the greatest of potential prices. Even fusion is on the table still.

Nothing is impossible. No challenge too great, no question too tricky for the brave-minded modern scientist. And speaking of brave minds, hello! Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science, coming up next.

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Transcript-TWIS.ORG May 5, 2009

Synopsis: Remote Control Brains, Making Blood Crawl, Birdsong Basics, This Week in Science History, Drink To Your Sanity, and an Interview with Dr. Leonard Mlodinow re: The Drunkard’s Walk.

Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

In the wake of the H1N1 worry, the world has a new wave of statistical woe on the way. As the number of confirmed deaths continued to drop, from hundreds, to dozens down to only ten within a single week.

The latest statistical projections of the un-die-ing situation now suggest that we are trending towards a potential population explosion!

If people continue to un-die at this rate, we may soon be looking at a human transmittable in fallopian pregno-demic that could grow exponentially over the next nine months.

And while this exponential growth oddly mirrors the rate of natural human reproduction it, much like the following hour of programming, does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of California at Davis, KDVS or its Sponsors.

Listeners should be wary, as face masks will not be enough to protect you from the probability of procreation. Staying indoors with loved ones might actually contribute to the further spread of parental syndromes.

While the CDC sits idly by and does nothing to slow the rapid rate of confirmed un-deadenings, you can be comforted to know that we will be dedicating the next hour to keeping you reasonably safe by offering you something else to do, here on This Week In Science coming up next.
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Transcript:TWIS.ORG Sept 16, 2008


Justin: Heading through the Large Hadron Collider, the Physics world buzzes with excitement about the many potential discoveries, confirmations and unexpected revelations, the media and the general public are scrambling to learn the basics of the Physics at play.

Why – what is a Hadron? What is a Higgs? How did they accelerate one? Is it safe to do so? Are Proton beans colliding going to cause a big bang? What is a Big Bang anyway? And I heard they want to make a big black hole and it’s going to swallow the whole Earth. Is that true? Have they gone mad? Should we stop them? And where, oh where on earth is the country of CERN I keep hearing about anyway?

While the location of CERN much like the following hour of our programming, does not represent the views or opinions of the University of California, Davis KDVS or its sponsors. The real benefit of the LHC may lay as much in the minds and imaginations of the curious public as it does in the 17 miles of buried tunnel.

As fears of impending doom circulate, like rumors in a mill, the incredible need for the man on the street to know his Higgs from a Hadron Collider in the ground becomes clear. And so, too the solution to such dire need also becomes clear. For where else can the public turn to for on the fly science learning but This Week in Science, coming up next.
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Transcript: TWIS.ORG April 14, 2009


Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. The mortal words of the anthropomorphic little engine that did while face the seemingly undoable task of scaling a steep mountain grade. Much like the little engine, bound to travel the rails laid before it, science too has little choice but to take head on the obstacles and its path.

There are less treacherous tasks to tackle in life than those of astrophysics quantum unification and autoimmune disease. There are much smaller mountains to master than those of global climate, cancer or the multitude of mental afflictions that assault the human line.

And just like the moralistic little engine tail, it is the belief that anything can be accomplished through persistent thinking and doing that science ultimately makes a grade.

And while making the moralistic mental grade, much like the following hour of our programming, does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of California at Davis, KDVS or its sponsors, the plain old fashion pluckiness of science continues to push us to new heights chugging away with pistons of persistent PhDs patiently plodding out data proofs like pops of smoke from the stack of a story book steam engine.

“I think I can” unify all forces under one theory. I think I can cure cancer. I think I can put a man on Mars. And while the plucky mountain climb continues, other trains are just now returning to the station here on This Week in Science, coming up next.
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Transcript: TWIS.ORG April 28, 2009

Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

It is said that a little knowledge can be dangerous. By this logic, having no knowledge at all may make you safe. Well, the following hour of our program is potentially lethal. More accurate perhaps is to say that too little knowledge can be an annoying thing — like finding a subtype strain of human-swine-avian flu that had not been previously documented and freaking out based on zero information, assuming that it can persist to a pandemic proportion.

While fear of such scenarios may be warranted, action out of that fear is not. And we attribute to the unknown the properties that lurk within our worst case scenarios our worst fears and then act on that fear without any true information, we spread the fear, incubate misinformation, making the potential or false fear and ignorant actions become a global pandemic freak out.

Enough with the surgical masks already! With patient to patient observations, we will learn that this flu is likely just a flu and therefore defeat-able. Fear served no purpose in solving such things. And then our best solution is soap and water, covering mouths while coughing, not leaking fixtures in public places and to avoid kissing pigs.

While licking fearful farm animals in public, much like the following hour of our programming, does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of California at Davis, KDVS or its sponsors.

We live in a world with the mysteries of disease are few. A world with a source and transmission of most illness is generally well known, identifiable and preventable, a world in which science has concurred many mortally challenging ailments and will continue to do so into the future. We will do so by seeking a lot of dangerous knowledge by gathering a lot of dangerous information and by acting out of reason, not fear.

While science is busy making us safer, it’s time to make you more dangerous here on This Week in Science, coming up next.
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Transcript: TWIS.org Aug 12, 2008


Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

As the Earth turns and meanders along its orbital path about the nuclear fireball in the center of our solar system, we find ourselves launched effortlessly into tomorrow after tomorrow.

A new morning, a new day, a new chance to get out and explore new possibilities. In no other territory of the world does this spirit of exploration offer greater opportunity for discovery than in the pursuit of science.

Each day, the exploration of the scientific territory bears new fruit, new tasty morsels of the universe explained, to feed the curiosity of our insatiable hunger for knowledge.

And while tasting the fruits of knowledge, like we do so often on the following hour of programming does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of California Davis, KDVS or its sponsors, it is the main ingredient in the ambrosia of sciencey goodness that has been plucked from only the very latest developments in This Week In Science, coming up next.
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Transcript: TWIS.org Aug 08, 2008

Justin: Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer! There is information all around us – from the spinning spools of the newspaper press to the planet that is spinning. And the solar system is spinning. Spinning in our atoms too. Electrons spinning since before the day began, spinning now and into the future and beyond that too.

And while the dizzying spin of information – much like the following hour of programming, does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of California Davis, KDVS or its sponsors, the potential loss of these spinning bits of information once threatened the very foundations of modern physics.

As massive black holes loomed in even the tiniest waves of anthropic space, even though ships ahead had singled back their eventful fates, one man fearlessly refused to abandon ship and set course for the heart of the swirling gravity well with a singular determination.

“Oh captain, my captain, will we ever see the shores of home?” “Both yes and no,” Captain Susskind assures us and raises sails made of the finest threads to catch a cosmic wind. So, batten your mental hatches, me miniony mates and get ready to cast off with us on This Week in Science, coming up next.
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Transcript:TWIS.org Sept 4, 2007

Justin: Good morning Kirsten.

Kirsten: Good morning Justin.

Justin: I can’t hear any…

Kirsten: Hold on.

Justin: Where is the – ouch!

Kirsten: I got it.

Justin: What’s going on around here? What’s happening?
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