Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for December 7, 2019

An argument that multiverse theories represent a legitimate line of scientific endeavor; Retractions of two papers that linked violent media to aggressive behavior; A TED talk describing the problem of light pollution and offering solutions; New technique with promise for harnessing "blue energy" from river deltas; and a Steem essay describing lab techniques for typing strep bacteria

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Update:

How's that for a typo in the title? Guess my fingers have irreversibly associated "December 7" with Pearl Harbor Day. I fixed the title, but can't fix the URL.

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1. Long Live the Multiverse! - In this essay, Tom Siegfried delivers an apparent response to Multiverse Theories Are Bad for Science by John Horgan. According to Siegfried, multiverse theories are legitimate lines of scientific inquiry. He supports this argument with three main lines of reasoning: First, multiverse theories have a long tradition among legitimate scientific theorists, even as far back as the ancient Greek philosophers; Second,that the history of science is filled with examples of things that were once unobservable, but have now been observed. An example of such a concept is the atom, which was also criticized as being "unscientific" and "metaphysical" because 19th century scientists didn't have the tools to observe it. Another example is the expanding boundary of the observable universe. Kepler, for example, argued that there was no point in studying the universe outside of our own solar system; And the third line of argument is that the existence of multiple universes might be inferred from changes in the cosmic background radiation or other indirect means. In a sentence, Siegfried argues: "The multiverse is not a theory to be tested, but rather a prediction of other theories that can be tested." (Horgan's article was covered in Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for December 1, 2019.)


2. Journal retracts two papers linking exposure to violence to aggressive behavior - Two studies, Short-term exposure to movie violence and implicit aggression during adolescence, and The priming effect of violent game play on aggression among adolescents, claimed to find a link between aggressive behavior and exposure to violent media, but were retracted by the journal Youth & Society after Joe Hilgard and Arlin James Benjamin raised questions about the data and statistics. According to Hilgard, "I feel like Youth and Society did a good job in good speed, and I appreciate their response. Of course, I feel like these papers were pretty obviously flawed, which probably helped. Because one never knows just how serious and how extensively cataloged the errors must be to motivate correction, I spent a fair amount of time organizing and documenting the problems." Additionally, Benjamin commented on his blog that, "These papers fit a pattern consistent with other published reports from Zhang and colleagues in which there are reporting errors, tables that make no sense, and reported methodology that at the least would raise eyebrows. …"


3. The problem of light pollution -- and 5 ridiculously easy ways to fix it - This TED talk was posted in November and came across the ted.com RSS feed on December 4. In the talk, Kelsey Johnson discusses the problem of light pollution noting that it's harmful to many forms of wildlife, and even to humans who can suffer from sleep disorders, anxiety and depression, and even cancer from it. After 10 or 12 minutes working to convince the audience that light pollution is a problem, she offers five ways to mitigate it: (i) Don't use lights that are brighter than needed; (ii) Don't use lights when they're not needed; (iii) Make sure that lights are shielded to focus their light downward; (iv) Don't buy blue LCDs - look for words like, "warm white", not "natural light" or "daylight"; and (v) advocate for light control measures at the local and even federal level.


4. The Tantalizing Promise of Blue Energy - French scientists in 2013 found a way to harness power from water by using carbon nanotubes to separate ions with positive and negative charges in river deltas and estuaries, by taking advantage of the change in composition from fresh water to salt water. The team used negatively charged nanotube films to repel negatively charged ions in the water, and thereby filter the water into pools with positive and negative charges in different sections. They could then harness the charge differential in order to generate electricity. The technique worked, but was not practical at scale. Now, a team from Rutgers has extended the idea by applying a coating that can be selectively activated and deactivated at will, and the updated process is feasible at scale, though still limited to 2% efficiency. Going forward, the team hopes to continue improving the process for additional gains in efficiency. The work was reported by Semih Cetindag and Jerry Wei-Jen Shan "at the semiannual meeting of the Materials Research Society." h/t RealClear Science


5. STEEM Practical Microbiology: Strep Typing - This post by @enforcer48 describes a lab's technique for identifying Beta-hemolytic streptococci (BHS). The technique uses three different reagents to extracts antigens from bacteria in a culture, and then adds latex and looks for agglutination, as an indication of the presence of BHS. An interesting note is that the testing is intended to be used with a full suite of latex, but the microbioligist can improve on the efficiency because they normally know what varieties of bacteria might be present. (A 10% beneficiary has been applied to this post for @enforcer48.)

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