<insert crazy ramblings here>

1) Hypothesis: You should chew your food thirty times before swallowing.
Experiment:
Split a bottle of sink de-clogger between 4 glasses, and cut a steak into bite sized chunks and split between 4 bags.
i) Empty 1 bag into a glass.
ii) Hit 1 bag with a tenderiser 10 times before emptying it into a glass.
iii) Hit 1 bag with a tenderiser 30 times before emptying it into a glass.
vi) Hit 1 bag with a tenderiser 50 times before emptying it into a glass.
After 4 hours sieve and weigh the remaining solids.
Expected Results:
i) Lots left.
ii) Some left.
iii) Little left.
iv) Not too different from iii)

2) Hypothesis: People can't divine for metal.
Experiment:
Stolen from Dawkins.
Experimenter 1 places a metal object under a small fraction of a number of buckets, records this, and leaves.
Experimenter 2, without meeting Experimenter 1 leads the diviner into the room, and lets them test each bucket with divining sticks, and records the result.
The experimenters results are compared.
Expected results:
The number of buckets whose contents are correctly identified is not significantly higher than would be expected if the selection was at random (this number to be determined before the experiment starts).

[Poll #1486717]

I recently read "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene. It contained a rather brilliant description of the Delayed Choice Double Slit experiment, in which effect precedes cause. Rather damaging to the notion of free will I thought.

This led to me think about an Asimov story where such an experiment takes place. They wait until the experiment says that water was/will be poured on this in 24 hours, and then seal the container. They find that the universe conspires to ensure that there always was/will be someone to do just that. Be it a Janitor spilling something, or a junior lab technician not understanding, or something more.

I was wondering what would happen if the same thing was done with this Delayed Choice test. So I started writing it up as popular science essay, that I was aiming at being understood by anyone without a science background.

I was comparing this to the Bell's inequality experiment, when I finally realised what I'd missed. In the Bell's inequality tests, non-local quantum entanglement cannot be used to send information faster than light because it involves random processes, and you need to combine information from detectors on both sides of the experiment before you can see the non-local connection.

Similarly, there is no way to send information back in time using the Delayed Choice test, as the only way to show that effect has preceded cause is to combine information from both detectors at the cause and effect time of the experiment before you can see the non-temporal connection.

{ETA} This makes the weirdness of quantum mechanics really clear to me. I knew that entanglement meant that entangled particles have some faster-than-light spacial connection, but hadn't made the obvious connection that they therefore must have some faster-than-light chronological connection.

I think this implies that all events must be predetermined.

Old news I know, made me giggle.

Big thanks to major_clanger for inviting me to a talk on invisibility at the IET. It was actually about the new materials with interesting optical properties, that don't exist in nature. His write up is worth a read.

I've tried to find some copies of the ray diagrams from the slide show to illustrate the fantastic properties of this stuff (if you made a milk bottle from it, you would see the milk outside the edge of bottle), but couldn't find any online. If I get time, I'll write them up from memory.

---

chiller has found what causes the squigly things you see when you look up at clear blue sky.

It reminded me of an odd visual distortion I've noticed a few times.

If you press you palms to your closed eyes, applying a light pressure simulates the retina. When I do this I see sort of yellowy-greenish-purple blobs. It wasn't until I tried to photoshop the image you'll see below that I realised this is the colour of magic and being made up from opposite sides of a colour wheel shouldn't exist e.g. (red+green = white, blue + orange = white, yellow+purple=white, etc).

To get the point, I've noticed that I occasionally, when having a shower in the morning, and I'm scrunching my eyes up to stop soap getting in them, I see an Phosphene that looks a bit like this:


It gets brighter the longer and tighter I screw my eyes up. If I leave them closed long enough I even get afterimages. Never happens at any other time.

Anyone else have any intersting visual distortions?

Being a Friday Afternoon I doubt there's many LJ readers out there, but thought I'd ask just in case

Colour is (badly) defined as the relative amount of one three frequencies of light waves reflected off a visible point.

Could you make a false colour ultrasound image by using three different frequencies of ultrasound? If so would they be of any use?

I caught last night's file on four. It was an interesting discussion on recent theories involving the use of stored red blood cells.

IIRC They tend to be stored for between 10 to 30 days before being given to someone. Scientist know the cells change slightly with storage. For instance they become less flexible, so cannot fit down the smallest capillaries as easily. They can take up to a day to recover.

A lot of blood goes to people who've lost red cells through traumatic accidents, surgery, complications in birth, and haematology (leukaemia, chemotherapy, bone marrow transfers, etc.), and no-one disputes this saves lives. But some goes to people who read as anaemic on charts, or as a precaution during elective surgery, and the debate was around the benefits to this group, and the length of storage of blood.

Ben Goldacre would have liked it, as there was lots of discussions of methodology, and statistical evidence.

Both main participants were in favour of funding a proper randomized controlled trial, but disagreed on the validity of the retrospective study that had already been taken place. This study had found that people who receive older blood are more likely to have complications than people who hadn't

Participant 1 said that the retrospective study wasn't valid as the patients weren't randomised, and generally sicker people who receive blood in the first place. This would only affect the 10% who didn't fall trauma/surgery/birth/haematology group. So we should continue current practice while further evidence is gathered.

Participant 2 said that 30% of blood goes to people who haven't lost it in trauma/surgery/birth. And that they had taken account of the effects of the level of illness properly in their study, so we should stop storing blood for as long.

I don't have time to go through all the literature myself, but I know who I trust more at the moment. The scientist who didn't spin the statistics by leaving out haematology patients, and deflecting the question ("Yes, but the research is important because...") when confronted on it.

I did it. If it's a very slow news day, you can see me in a labcoat, and an Science. It works bitches. t-shirt, crouching down behind an MP, trying to make sure the stem cell billboard doesn't blow away.

In other Democracy related news:
Number of tourists taking pictures of Parliament from Waterloo Bridge; 3
Number of tourists taking pictures of the London Eye from Waterloo Bridge; 10

Canadians weigh less than Americans even if they have the same mass!