Cocktail Party Physics

and justice for all

The world is reeling in horror today over news of the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. There's little I can intelligently say about this; more knowledgeable folks than I will be weighing in and analyzing this shocking event over the next several days (and beyond). All I can do is join the rest of us regular folk who mourn not just the loss of Bhutto, but the 20 or so others who were killed when the assassin blew himself up after shooting Bhutto -- mostly because they were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. The world, alas, is not always fair, or just.

World affairs are not my forte, so for now, I'll stick with scientific history, specifically, a news item yesterday in Wired about a new book by Seth Shulman claiming to provide "definitive evidence ... that Alexander Graham Bell stole ideas for the telephone from a rival, Elisha Gray." The book in question is The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret and it's due out January 7th. It should make for an interesting read, whether or not one is inclined to buy Shulman's argument. The invention of the telephone is one of the most hotly contested issues in scientific (and patent) history, figuring in a major court case as recently as 2002. Feelings still tend to run pretty high whenever the subject comes up.

Shulman's focus is on Gray, who famously filed his own patent application for a telephone just a few hours after Bell did, on February 14, 1876. But there is equally compelling evidence in support of an Italian immigrant named Antonio Meucci inventing the device. Meucci was born in 1808 in Florence, Italy, and studied chemical and mechanical engineering at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts. He got a job as a stage technician at the Teatro della Pergola, where he met his future wife, Ester, a costume designer. The same year they married, Meucci built a nifty sort of acoustic telephone system, similar to the pipes used for communication on ships; apparently that system is still working. The following year, after Antonio was briefly imprisoned for opposing his country's totalitarian regime, the couple fled Italy and emigrated to Havana, Cuba, where they both worked at the Great Tacon Theater for several years.

While in Cuba, Meucci became interested in the use of electric shocks to treat various medical ailments, such as migraine headaches and his wife's crippling rheumatoid arthritis. He wasn't a doctor, but he built up a rough approximation of a private practice in one of the theater's back rooms. One day, while preparing to treat a man with a migraine headache, he heard the man's voice over the piece of copper wire running between them when he switched on the current, even though the "patient" was in the next room. In a later affidavit, Meucci identified this moment as "my first impression, and the origin of my idea of the transmission of the human voice by electricity."

In 1950, the Meuccis emigrated to the US and settled on Staten Island, where Meucci set up a tallow candle factory with the capital he'd saved up while living in Cuba. Maybe he should have stayed there. His fortunes took a sharp downturn after moving to the US. He fell victim to "fraudulent debtors" and was financially ruined. His little Staten Island cottage was auctioned off, although the purchaser graciously allowed the couple to continue living there rent-free. Soon he was reduced to relying on public welfare and the generosity of friends, one of whom (William E. Ryder) invested money in Meucci's continuing experiments.

Furthermore, Ester's condition worsened, effectively turning her into a bedridden recluse. Meucci set up what his supporters call the first electromagnetic telephone as a means of connecting the second-floor bedroom with his basement laboratory -- basically, an intercom system so Ester could ring a mechanical call bell when she needed him. He called this a telegrafo parlante ("talking telegraph"). Between 1856 and 1870, he apparently developed some 30 different types of telephonic devices based on this simple prototype. In August 1870, Meucci demonstrated a telettrofono capable of transmitting a human voice over one mile using copper insulated by cotton as a conductor.

This should have been his big break, but Lady Luck just wasn't working in Meucci's favor. He was severely burned in a boiler explosion aboard the Staten Island Ferry, and while he was recovering, their financial straits were so dire that Ester sold his drawings and prototype devices to a second-hand dealer to raise some much-needed cash. Still, Meucci was determined despite these setbacks, even making preliminary arrangements to establish a fledgling company with three entrepreneurial-minded investors (all Italian) in December 1971. That was also when he filed a caveat at the US Patent Office for his "Sound Telegraph." (A caveat is basically an intent to file a patent. The filing fees are cheaper, require a less detailed description of the device, and if someone else submitted a formal patent application when a caveat was in place, the holder had three months to submit his or her own formal application.)

Meucci managed to scrape up funds to renew his caveat until 1874, when he finally allowed it to expire. Two years later, Bell filed his patent (closely followed by Elisha Gray), and Meucci sued for patent infringement. Bell counter-sued on similar grounds, instigating a legal circus that spanned some 15 years. Bell, frankly, had deeper pockets. He hired a team of lawyers, while Meucci had just one lawyer acting pro bono on his behalf. Meucci  supplied his annotated drawings and records, even testifying about publishing a description of his electromagnetic telephone in early 1861 in an Italian-language newspaper in New York called L'Eco d'Italia. Unfortunately for Meucci, all the archived issues from that time period had been destroyed in a fire by the time his dispute with Bell came to trial, so he could only testify what he could recall about that article. There were also mentions of his experiments in October 1865 in the paper, though, as well as a letter published in Il Commercio di Genova in December 1865. The court wasn't convinced. Bell's team countered by accusing the Italian of forging the records and backdating them so that they appeared to predate Bell's invention.

It didn't help matters that the presiding judge in the second case (where Meucci was the defendant), William J. Wallace, was openly hostile to the Italian immigrant. His sentence, issued in July 1887, was scathing in its condemnation and pretty much accused Meucci of attempting to defraud his investors with a device that had never really worked. The legal grounds for the judgment against Meucci were that his device was a mechanical, not an electrical telephone, and did not contain "any elements of an electric speaking telephone as would give the same priority over or interfere with the said Bell patent...." (Italian history Giovanni Schiavo considered the Wallace ruling to be "one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in this history of the U.S., and one of the most offensive." But he probably had his own biases in favor of his countryman.)

Meucci's case went through years of appeals, and just when he seemed on the verge of victory -- fraud charges were filed against Bell in 1888, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in 1889 -- he died. The lawsuit died with him. But the controversy sure didn't. And finally, over a century later, he received some symbolic vindication: in 2002, the US House of Representatives approved a resolution delcaring that Meucci should be considered the rightful inventor of the telephone: "If Meucci had been able to pay the $10 fee to maintain the caveat after 1874, no patent could have been issued to Bell." The Italian newspaper La Repubblica open gloated about it, choosing to view the resolution as a comeuppance of sorts for Bell (dismissed by the editors as a "cunning Scotsman" and "usurper"). And still the debate rages on.

As moving as the tale of Meucci's fruitless struggle is, Bell's story is just as compelling, in its own way -- plus it has a happy ending. His interest in telegraphy and telephony was perfectly natural, seeing as how he hailed from a family who loved speech and sound. His grandfather was an elocutionist, and his father developed the first international phonetic alphabet a form of "visual speech" that enabled the deaf to make specific sounds. The family had first-hand experience with deafness, since Bell's mother was almost entirely deaf.

The young Bell learned about resonance at a very young age, noting that when he pressed his lips against his mother's forehead, the bones would resonate to his voice, and that a chord struck on one piano would sometimes be echoed by a piano in another room. His conclusion? Whole chords could be transmitted through the air, vibrating at the other end at exactly the same pitch. Bell also participated in his father's demonstrations of "visual speech," and one summer managed to acquire a human ear from a local medical school, which he used to build an "ear phonoautograph": whenever he spoke into the ear, an attached stalk of hay would vibrate in response and trace the sound waves onto a piece of smoked glass -- pretty much like a modern seismograph. All those things contributed to his work on building a telephone.

Mary Bellis, who writes online entries on famous inventors for About.com, has faced her share of criticism for crediting Bell, and not Meucci, with invention of the telephone, prompting her to post this somewhat snippy entry in her defense (her exasperation is almost palpable, and understandably so). She makes a strong case, and is very careful not to claim that Bell was the first inventor; rather, "This website credits Alexander Graham Bell as being the first person to patent the telephone and whose company was the first to bring telephone services successfully to the marketplace." While recognizing Meucci's talent, she is skeptical of his claims of not renewing his caveat, or filing a formal patent, for his device because he couldn't afford it. Meucci was awarded patents in 1872, 1873, 1875 and 1876; it seems his attention was divided among many brewing inventions. As for the accusations of Bell stealing Gray's or Meucci's ideas, she points out that Bell couldn't do so without also falsifying every step toward invention: he'd need a fabricated cover story, fake notebooks, and so forth. And there's just no evidence that he did so. As for the Congressional resolution, Bellis is dismissive: "Are politicians now our historians?" (It was Italian-American deputate Vito Fossella who pushed for the bill, and his maneuver, while well-intentioned, was not free of bias either.)

Human nature being what it is, someone who achieves such major success is bound to find him or her self facing a few frivolous lawsuits, some by folks who truly believe they are entitled to a share of the profits.  (Lots of people have eccentric relatives who claim they invented Velcro, for instance.) Per N. Herbert, author of The History of the Telephone, "To bait the Bell Company became almost a national sport. Any sort of claimant, with any sort of wild tale of prior invention, could fine a speculator to support him." Herbert goes on to dismiss this "motley array" of pretenders to the throne, and no doubt many merited the criticism, but Meucci and Gray hardly fit that description. Still, again and again, most historians tend to come down on the side of Bell, with the above noted qualifications.

Shulman's take is that Bell was well connected enough to finagle an illicit peek at patent documents filed by Gray, and that a (possibly corrupt) patent examiner erroneously gave Bell credit for filing first. He also finds supposedly damning clues in Bell's own lab notebook (which has been digitized and available online since 1999) -- things like Bell's admittedly crude hand-sketched diagram of a person speaking into device being suspiciously similar to Gray's drawing in his own patent application. Other "evidence":

Bell's transmitted design appears hastily written in the margin of his patent; Bell was nervous about demonstrating his device with Gray present; Bell resisted testifying in an 1878 lawsuit probing this question; and Bell, as if ashamed, quickly distanced himself from the telephone monopoly bearing his name.

Um... okay. Look, I haven't read the book yet, so it's possible that Shulman has something a bit more compelling than the items listed above, which strike me as largely circumstantial, and even downright conjectural. Really, unless Shulman found undiscovered (until now) damning passages in Bell's private correspondence where the inventor states his feelings explicitly, I don't see how anyone could possibly know whether or not Bell was nervous about facing Gray, reluctant to testify at a trial (although who wouldn't be just a tad bit reluctant if one were being sued?), or was so ashamed he deliberately distanced himself from his own company. (Maybe he was just ready to move on, being more interested in invention than commercialization, however much he appreciated the financial rewards of the latter.)

So, even taken collectively, all of Shulman's evidence might not add up to the "definitive" proof he claims. Authors, alas, are not immune to the phenomenon of becoming so enamored of their own theories that they lose their objectivity when evaluating evidence. (Just look at Patricia Cornwall's embarrassing tome claiming to "prove" once and for all the identify of Jack the Ripper.) That doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for reading the book (which I have duly ordered from Amazon), since every new addition to this fascinating historical patent battle can shed further light on a very murky issue. A few things I hope to see addressed by Shulman:

(1) What proof is there that Bell had access to Gray's patent, or that Bell was erroneously credited with filing first?

(2) How does Gray's "case" stack up against the case for Meucci, who also claimed that Bell stole his concept for a telephone; and

(3) As for the similarities between Bell's and Gray's diagrams, again, unless Shulman has uncovered something new to bolster his case (which would indeed be exciting), it's primarily circumstantial.

I'm not necessarily a diehard Bell fan. The man wasn't a saint, but that doesn't necessarily make him a villain, either. He really was quite brilliant. A mere four years after demonstrating his telephone at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 -- prompting a visiting Emperor Don Pedro of Brazil to exclaim "My god, it talks!" -- Bell demonstrated the first wireless telephone message on his newly invented photophone, which transmitted sound on a beam of light instead of electricity. Seriously. Bell projected his voice through the device onto a mirror which vibrated in response. Those vibrations were projected as reflections when he then shone sunlight onto the mirror, and the reflections were then captured and transformed back into sound at the receiving end of the system. There was no immediate application for this, which should come as no surprise, since Tesla's pioneering work on wireless technology using radio waves was still 13 years in the future. But the photophone is nonetheless widely recognized as an ancestor of sorts for today's fiber-optic telecommunication systems.

On the whole, while I'm moved by Meucci's plight, I tend to agree with Bellis's take: that "several inventors independently worked on a telephone device, and that Alexander Graham Bell was the first to patent his and was the most successful in bringing the telephone tomarket." It's true, lots of would-be inventors were working on telegraphs and telephones and all manner of other devices in the late 19th century, and there's really only so many variations possible to make a working telephone-type thing. In addition to Gray and Meucci, there was a German inventor named Philipp Reis who built rudimentary telephone-like devices in the 1860s; there were others, too, most notably Charles Bourseul and Innocenzo Manzetti. Meucci's story is just the most tragic. Life dealt him a raw hand, while Fortune smiled upon Bell. But he has not been forgotten, as evidenced by the ongoing heated debates. That's justice of a sort.

robots 'r' us

Looking for the perfect last-minute stocking stuffer for that very special geek in your life? Check out Chico Bicalho's mechanical Critter Collection (available online at Kikkerland), a collection of small wind-up toys -- or "kinetic sculptures" if you wanna be more artsy about it. The original Critter was the brainchild of a motion display company called Handscraft Motors located in New York City, and built by hand using a vintage 1950s Japanese gearbox someone picked up at a surplus store. The Spousal Unit received one of the more recent designs from a friend of ours for Christmas: Awika, essentially the love child of two earlier designs, Bonga (a determined little crawler/climber: "it will crawl over anything to get to its objective, whatever that is") and Sparklz (known for shooting sparks, and hence carries a warning to keep it away from flammable liquids or vapors).

The accompanying booklet claims, "Awika is a very good climber," and challenges the user to  try it out with various small objects serving as barriers, such as an open book. We did this with a Vosges chocolate gift box, with pretty disappointing results: mostly, Awika clawed ineffectually at the barrier, and if we really cranked it up and stored as much potential energy as possible, Awika managed to get part of the way up the barrier before flipping over onto its back. We doubt its parent, Bonga, would perform much better. Still -- sparks shoot out of Awika! That makes it better than Bonga. Even the cat, usually evincing a studied feline ennui, was cautiously enthralled enough to pad over from her comfy perch by the window.

We can't fault Awika too much, since the task of walking and/or climbing over barriers is quite a bit more complicated, biomechanically speaking, than one might think. Bipedal (human) forward walking employs the double pendulum strategy: one leg leaves the ground and swings forward from the hip (pendulum #1), then strikes the ground with the heel and rolls through the foot to the toe. As the foot hits the ground the other leg swings into motion (pendulum #2). Movement is coordinated so that one or the other foot is always in contact with the ground.

Furthermore, human beings can learn to adjust our gait to compensate for changes in terrain: we walk differently on ice (i.e., verrry carefully) than we do on dry ground, and our gait while walking uphill differs slightly from our gait while walking downhill. Straightforward walking requires very little mental effort, but clamboring over rocks or uneven terrain causes the brain to kick in at a higher level of processing to analyze the terrain and send signals to adjust the length of one's stride, speed, the angle of the torso, and a host of other modifications.

So getting a wind-up toy to walk or climb is a bit of a daunting challenge; heck, it's daunting even for robots, most of which have some form of a rudimentary brain, like an artificial neural network (ANN). The human central nervous system makes use of a biological neural network: definitions can get fuzzy, but basically we're talking about collections of neurons linked together into a network, capable of exhibiting "global complex behavior, determined by the connections between the processing elements [neurons] and element parameters." In biological networks, these grouped neurons perform specific physiological functions. The artificial versions aren't all that different, except they're far more simplified.  ANNs use artificial neurons -- computer processing elements -- connected together to form a network of nodes. The best thing about ANNs is that adding appropriate computer algorithms ("designed to alter the strength, or weights, of the connections in the network to produce a desired signal flow") makes them capable of adaptation.

As microelectronics has advanced, so, too have the ANNs used in robotics. Early attempts at walking robots had six legs, apparently because of limitations in microprocessor technology, but electronics have become so advanced that tripod and biped robots are much more commonplace today.  The robots the aliens built in H.G. Wells' classic War of the Worlds were essentially tripods, since that's a design that has an inherent stability -- unless you manage to knock out one of its three "legs." But the tradeoff is efficient movement: most tripod robots actually built in the lab don't do much better than a slow sort of shuffle. Anything more than that, and the legs inevitably become tangled.

Earlier this year, scientists at Virginia Tech introduced STriDER, a three-legged robot that does manage to achieve a reasonably elegant walking gait (h/t: Cognitive Daily). To step forward, the robot shifts its weight onto two legs so that it falls forward away from the third leg. Then its body flips upside down so the third leg can swing up between the other two just in time to catch the ground, so STriDER ends up back in a stable tripod stance. It just needs to switch its choice of swinging leg to change directions. Whether STriDER will actually prove to be a useful design in terms of real-world deployment remains to be seen, but the researchers think it might be useful to deploy small sensors.

Bipedal robots are certainly being built, and they're getting better and better. Scientists at the University of Goettingen's Computational Neuroscience program have built a walking robot that not only mimics the biomechanics of human walking, but also simulates the neuronal principles that form the basis of human adaptivity while walking, according to a paper they published back in July in PLoS Computational Biology.  In order for a robot to walk effectively, it has to be able to achieve comparable levels of coordination, meticulously adjusting all the aspects of movement control (angle of knee joints, hip momentum, the balance point of the torso, etc.) in response to whatever it encounters along its path.

Apparently, RunBot currently holds the world record in speed walking for dynamics mechanics, clocking in at 3.5 leg-lengths per second (impressive considering the thing is merely 30 centimeters high); the previous champion was MIT's "Spring Flamingo" robot, which is four times as tall and yet has a stride of just 1.4 leg-lengths per second.  and by adding an infrared eye, the researchers have enabled RunBot to detect a slope in its path and adjust its gait in response. (Here are some movies of RunBot in action.) The secret lies in part in how it mimics the human gait: RunBot leans forward slightly when walking and uses shorter steps. It's also worth noting that this is learned behavior: RunBot figures out through trial and error, in much the same way that a human child will do so. For instance, the first time it tries to climb a slope, RunBot will keel over backwards, mostly because it hasn't yet learned to change its gait in response to visual cues from the surrounding environment. But after a few tries, RunBot has learned its lesson, and adjusts its gait in proportion to the steepness of the slope it is attempting to climb.

How does it accomplish this reflexive response? A lot of robot designs are quite complicated: Honda's Asimo robots, for example, use elaborate control systems to maintain balance. RunBot has relatively few sensors and a simple program that mimics the way neurons control reflexes in humans and animals, and relies on inertia as part of its gait. The result is a quicker, more "natural" walk. RunBot really only needs to detect (a) when a foot touches the ground, and (2) when a leg swings forward. When one foot touches the ground, the opposite leg swings forward. The "knee" of the swinging leg bends automatically until a hip sensor tells it to straighten out just before hitting the ground. Once that other foot lands, the cycle repeats. And repeats.

RunBot gets its visual cues from a handy infrared eye, but that information is processed by a fairly simple neural network using a hierarchical organization for the control of its movements, similar (but simpler) to how the human brain functions. At lower rungs of the ladder, so to speak, movement occurs in reflexive response to input from peripheral sensors, and built-in control circuits ensure that the robot's joints don't over-stretch. It also makes sure that the robot takes its next step as soon as the foot touches the ground. The higher centers of organization kick in whenever an adaptation in gait becomes necessary, such as hitting uneven terrain or encountering a steep slope. Right now RunBot mostly walks in circles around a circular room, connected to the center by a boom. The next step is to develop a freestanding version, and the researchers don't anticipate major problems in achieving that, since the presence of the boom plays only a tiny role in RunBot's walking ability.

Once robots conquer walking and climbing, there's always dancing. You heard me.  Scientists at the University of Tokyo in Japan are using video motion-capture systems to record the movement of dancers performing traditional Japanese folk dances, many of which are in danger of being lost. This data is then translated into a limb-motion sequence for humanoid robots, which can then perform those dances -- kind of mechanical libraries. So far, the robots do okay in mimicking upper body movements, but they have trouble maintaining balance trying to perform some of the more intricate footwork. But they're still working on it, and I'd wager they'll crack this particular problem in due time. At which point, perhaps the Spousal Unit will receive a miniature dancing robot for Christmas capable of performing the Moon Walk, or the Macarena, or even something more ballroom-esque, such as the fox-trot or rhumba. We draw the line at David Levy's robotic vision for 2050, though. Some things should stay relegated to science fiction.

opening lines

It's that lazy, week-before-Christmas time of year when one is feeling disinclined to do much of anything that might require deep thought or mental discipline, or even light bloggy creativity. So we might as well indulge our inner slacker and take part in the meme ricocheting 'round the blogosphere at the moment, in which we feature the first sentence of the first post for every month of 2007. I did this last year, and resolved to pay a bit more attention to snappier openings. Let's see how I did, shall I?

JANUARY: "Popular legend has it that the 17th century monk Dom Perignon invented champagne -- hence the classic brand that bears his name."

FEBRUARY: "Anyone who doubts the existence of entropy has clearly never tried to stage a combined Buffyverse lecture/martial arts demonstration in midtown Manhattan on a Thursday evening."

MARCH: "If it's Sunday night, it must be Denver." [Half-assed intro to the first post on the APS March Meeting.]

APRIL: "There's much to love about the animated film, Finding Nemo, but one of many treasured moments is the frenzied fish in the dentist's aquarium, who is enthralled with the toy sunken treasure chest."

MAY: "Memes are nefarious things, ricocheting their way around the Internets for months on end, and never quite dying away entirely."

JUNE: "Jen-Luc Piquant has been on a bit of a mummy craze this past week, ferreting out such online gems as a downloadable Mummy Maze Game; an archived Cyber Mummy; and National Geographic's highly informative How To Make A Mummy."

JULY: "It's a national holiday and Los Angeles is experiencing its version of a heat wave -- which pales mightily in comparison to the equivalent in New York City or Washington, DC." [Here we see the beginnings of serious decline...]

AUGUST: "Among the many things I was anticipating about my relocation to Los Angeles was the thrill of once again having a voting representative in Congress." [Introducing a post about the reliability of voting machines, or lack thereof.]

SEPTEMBER:  "Got an hour to spare this fine Labor Day weekend? Head on over to Bloggingheads TV to catch my "diavalog" with fellow physics history buff George Johnson." [Opening with a shameless self-promotional plug? How dare I?]

OCTOBER: "Original posting at Cocktail Party Physics is on hiatus." [Wow, that's kinda an all-time low for opening lines. Then again, it was introducing a re-post.]

NOVEMBER: "It seems I moved away from Washington, DC, just in time: Earlier this week, the Washington Post announced the arrival of The Rumbler, a high-tech blaster now being used in conjunction with the traditional siren on a select few police cars in the District."

DECEMBER: "Ya gotta love John Donne, who was quite possibly the first English poet to find romance in a blood-sucking, disease-carrying insect." [Another re-post, this time on account of illness. Am I lame, or what?]

So that was the year in blog posts, or at least a representative sampling thereof. Like most resolutions, I did well at the start, but my resolve to come up with better ledes began to wane mid-year, and really petered out there at the end. I'm not giving up, though: I shall endeavor to do better next year. In my defense, lots of other stuff happened in 2007 to keep me ridiculously busy: a book tour, selling my condo, moving to Los Angeles, my folks' 50th wedding anniversary, and something else that escapes me at the moment. Let's see... what could it be...

Oh yeah! That whole getting married thing! (Yes, I wore red. I've always wanted to be The Scarlet Bride.)

And now the Yuletide Season is upon us. Hope y'all have a wonderful holiday, and if you have a spare moment between all the feasting, ceremonial opening of presents, and sitting around feeling bloated, check out this killer a capella rendition of "The 12 Days of Christmas."

the toad and the pufferfish

One day in 1980, a man claiming to be called Clairvius Narcisse showed up in a rural Haitian village. This came as something of a surprise to the villagers, since Narcisse had supposedly died in 1962, and was subsequently buried. The new arrival claiming to be Narcisse said he'd been turned into a zombie after his "death," forced with other zombie slaves to work on a sugar plantation at the behest of his "master," a voodoo priest. He claimed his own brother had put the plan in motion, since the two had quarreled over land ownership. The brother had since died, so the sudden reappearance of Narcisse to claim the inheritance raised a few suspicions, to say the least. Yet the newcomer knew certain facts of the dead man's life that only Narcisse himself, it seemed, could have known. He claimed he'd been drugged into submission, and when the master died, and the drugs wore off, he regained his memory and sanity.

Narcisse was a rare case, but not the first such occurrence of purported zombification. In 1937, novelist and scholar Zora Neale Hurston was researching Haitian folklore when she came across the case of Felicia Felix Mentor, who died and was buried in 1907 at the age of 29, and was rumored to have been zombified. Hurston heard rumors that zombies in Haiti were created using strong drugs, but couldn't verify them. Still, she predicted, "If science ever gets to the bottom of voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony."

Enter Canadian ethnobotanist Wade Davis, who made a pretty strong case for the pharmacological basis of zombification in his 1985 book, The Serpent and the Rainbow, which I devoured (figuratively) in high school in a single night. It was that fascinating. (Also, as a child, zombies scared the hell out of me, along with werewolves. Somehow, reading a science-y book placing it within the context of reality dissipated any lingering anxiety on that score. Davis also penned a more scholarly tome, Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie, in 1988.) He investigated the strange case of Narcisse, and in the process somehow gained unprecedented access to the secret voodoo rituals involved in creating zombies. (This also raised some ethical questions, since he apparently observed the desecration of graves.) But Davis did discover that voodoo priests relied on complex powders in their rituals. The ingredients differed according to region, but of seven of the eight samples he managed to collect contained pufferfish, a marine toad, a hyla tree frog, and human remains. The first two are the most pertinent, since both animals secrete powerful neurotoxins.

Neurotoxins are chemicals that change the way the neurons in the brain function, either by inhibiting the release of certain neurotransmitters or enhancing them to harmful levels. There's around 100 billion neurons in the brain, controlling muscle contractions (motor neurons) by carrying electrochemical signals from the central nervous system to the muscles, or conveying sensory signals from the outer parts of the body to the central nervous system (sensory neurons). Interfere with this complex communication system, and you can interrupt speech, thought processes, motor function, even respiration. That's why neurotoxins provide such a useful hunting mechanism for creatures like the blue-ringed octopus, Australian paralysis tick, Japanese pufferfish and numerous snake and spider species.

The blue-ringed octopus' approach to feeding is especially gruesome: its venom is maculotoxin, which paralyzes but doesn't kill the prey, so said prey is fully conscious (inasmuch as one would consider the creature to have consciousness) as it is being eaten. We hope the octopus is, at the very least, quick, rather than choosing to slowly savor its meal. The good news, for the prey at least, is that the paralysis spreads rather quickly to the respiratory system and causes it to fail. Usually, human victims don't survive unless they receive oxygen immediately.

Maculotoxin is the venomous form of tetrodoxin, the neurotoxin of choice for the pufferfish (a.k.a., fugu), a gourmet delicacy because daredevil diners really like the tingling sensation the remaining traces of poison produce on the lips and tongue. Despite a stringent certification requirement for chefs to prepare fugu, a few people die each year from consuming it. Because accidents happen.

And here's where the zombies come in, because tetrodoxin is a key ingredient in Haitian zombification rituals. The other key ingredient is toxins produced by the sea toad (bufo Marinas) as a defense mechanism. Davis' book details the process by which the zombie poison is created. The toad is placed in a jar with a stinging sea worm and the ensuing conflict causes the toad to produce a lot of toxin, which is mixed with a bit of tetrodoxin from the pufferfish. A voodoo priest (boko) will poison a victim, causing him or her to become catatonic, and often mistaken for dead. Said victim is buried, the drug wears off after a few days, and the boko can exhume the "zombie." Ah, but how to get the victim to do the boko's bidding? Apparently, this is achieved via regular doses of datura stramonium (more commonly known as jimson weed), an extract of the thorn apple, which makes the victim docile and biddable.

Davis' theories are a bit controversial, however. True, when he applied his collected samples of the powders to the shaved skin of rats and a rhesus monkey, they became lethargic and immobile, but eventually recovered completely, and critics question whether these experiments were sufficiently controlled. (A few even believe Davis' research was fraudulent.) While the ritualistic practices he documents were further confirmed by British researchers in the 1990s, they didn't find any examples of real zombies. Usually, people labeled as such were suffering from mental diseases, such as catatonic schizophrenia or an organic brain disorder. In other cases, it was as simple as mistaken identity. In 2005, there were some sensational tabloid headlines about University of Pittsburgh scientists creating "zombie dogs," but in truth, the work was in cryogenics and suspended animation: the scientists successfully revived dogs who had been in suspended animation after three hours had passed, and two-thirds of the subjects suffered no brain damage. Still, they weren't "zombies." (And no, suspended animation and resuscitation for humans isn't even close to becoming a reality just yet. Suspending the animus can be done; it's the resuscitation part that's tricky.)

But there does seem be a living example of zombification in Nature. Via Zooilogix, we learned last week that scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel have figured out how a certain species of wasp (the emerald cockroach wasp/jewel wasp, or Ampulex compressa) managed to turn poor, innocent cockroaches into their willing "zombie slaves." Lots of venomous creatures stun their victims before devouring them, but this particular species of wasp will sting its roach-y prey, so that the prey is able to walk, but can't do so of its own accord. The predator-wasp literally has to grab the roach's antenna and lead it back to the wasp nest, much like leading a dog on a leash. There, instead of eating the roach, the wasp lays an egg on its belly, Eventually a larva hatches and devours the still-docile roach. It's not exactly laboring in the fields, but it is a handy solution to the problem of providing an ultra-convenient food to one's offspring. Nor is the roach-corpse wasted about the eating: the larva weaves its cocoon inside the corpse, eventually bursting out as a full-grown Ampulex compressa, eager to go out into the world and create its own zombie-roach horde.

Okay, but what's going on, exactly, to achieve such a subtle control of the victim's behavior? BGU researcher Frederic Liberstat and his colleagues knew the secret lay in "a rich cocktail of toxins" that the wasp injects into its victims. And they also knew that the wasp makes two injections: once to subdue them, and then again delivering a more precise sting directly into the roach-prey's brain -- specifically, a section called the protocerebrum, which controls the escape reflex. The stinger has sensors along its side to guide it to the appropriate brain section.

The Ben Gurion scientists theorized that the venom blocks a key chemical messenger in the brain called octopamine. This chemical is what makes insects alert, motivates the to move and perform physical tasks. It serves a similar purpose as noradrenaline, a chemical messenger involved in the "flight or fight" response.

To test that hypothesis, they managed to replicate the effect by injecting cockroaches in the lab, and even figured out how to "un-zombify" the bugs by following up with an antidote injection. Many a New Yorker plagued by roach infestation might be tempted to buy a roach trap that makes use of the wasp's venom -- except then they'd just have a bunch of lazy zombie roaches lying about the apartment, having to led around by the antenna all the time. We'd need to figure out how to get one to behave like a bellwether, leading his catatonic cronies out into the street much like the Pied Piper led all the rats (and, later, the children) out of Hamelin.

Ironically, the same day I read about the zombie roaches, reminding me of the unfortunate Narcisse and the first time I read The Serpent and the Rainbow, I also noticed a post on BLDGBLOG entitled  "The Husband Who Would Not Die." A man named John Darwin went out canoeing some five years ago, and never returned, although eventually authorities recovered the wrecked canoe and a paddle. Five years later, John Darwin returned -- as a zombie! Um, okay, not really. Nor was it amnesia, kidnapping or anything else that makes for a good potboiler. Turns out he just didn't want to pay his bills, so he faked his own death and spent the next five years living in a secret passageway that connected his old master bedroom to another room next door. He and his wife had purchased adjoining properties 15 months before his disappearance. The entrance was through a closet, hidden by a wardrobe. Perhaps Darwin was a Narnia fan. At any rate, being dead wasn't all it cracked up to be, so he turned himself into the authorities. They've since sold those properties, no doubt to pay those long-overdue bills. We are so jealous of the new owner. There's nothing cooler than having your own secret passageway.

The upshot is, apart from the victims of the jewel wasp, though, it seems our fascination with zombies owes more to legend and superstition than actual science. (As a Monday morning diversion, take this fun little zombie quiz at Discovery Channel Website; you should score pretty well, provided you've absorbed the science in this post, and have seen the major zombie movies.) But just in case, the How Stuff Works page on zombies offers a few helpful hints on surviving a zombie attack along with classic mistakes to avoid -- like entering a zombie-infested building, leaving potential weapons about for zombies to wield, or locking yourself in a cellar without adequate supplies. I know I felt better after hearing I could probably outrun a zombie... provided I wasn't surrounded.

slash and burn

The December 2007 issue of Physics Today is out, and among other interesting articles, it contains one by yours truly describing emerging medical applications for cold plasmas. I stumbled on the topic quite by accident while browsing abstracts for the APS-sponsored 2007 Gaseous Electronics Conference back in October, and it turned out to be a pretty rich subject. Sure, I have a soft spot for plasma science in general (along with materials science, acoustics, and the occasional quirky little fringe item). Plasmas, cold or otherwise, are so versatile, they're used in all manner of practical real-world applications. But it turns out that perhaps we've only scratched the surface thus far. According to the folks I interviewed for the article, with a bit more development work, cold plasmas could be used to kill bacteria,remove dental plaque, loosen the connections between cells that make up biological tissue, help coagulate blood and reduce bleeding following a wound, or during surgery, and perhaps even remove cancerous tumors.

The term "cold" is a bit misleading, like scientific terminology tends to be. (Eg, "high-temperature superconductivity" takes place at temperatures common to liquid nitrogen.) They're cold compared to, say, the sun, but many so-called cold plasmas are still pretty hot: on the order of 70 to 100 degrees Celsius. Apply that to living human tissue, and it's gonna burn. Badly. Still, they're useful for things like sterilizing drinking water and decontaminating industrial surfaces. That's because they kill ("inactivate") bacteria by destroying the bacterial cell membrane via a lethal combination of charged particles, free radicals and UV radiation. They work fast, too: the Air Force has an active cold plasma research program, using them to break down the chemicals found in toxins like anthrax in mere minutes, compared to several hours for other methods.

Sometime in the late 1990s, researchers figured out how to create truly room-temperature cold plasmas in the laboratory, so for the first time, they could be tested on biological tissue. Needless to say, those decontamination properties are incredibly useful in helping accelerate wound healing. Wound healing has roughly three stages, although they tend to overlap here and there. There's an inflammatory stage, where everything is red and/or swollen and painful, in which it might seem like little healing is actually taking place -- in fact, it's easy to confuse with actual infection. But in fact, there's all kinds of things going on to prompt the body into the second stage: producing collagen to strengthen the wound. This can take several weeks, depending on the severity of the injury, and thick scars can develop. The final stage is called the remodeling phase, in which the body gets rid of the excess scar tissue. Sometimes a heavy raised (keloid) scar still remains, if the wound was especially deep and nasty.

Being able to kill bacteria reduces the chance of infection, and being able to remove dead cells and replace them with healthy ones can significantly speed up this weeks-long process. Eva Stoffels-Adamowicz of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands is one of several researchers interested in exploiting the ability of cold plasmas to cause biological cells to temporarily detach from each other. She's developed a handy little device called a plasma needle -- basically a thin tungsten wire about 50 millimeters long, inside a gas-filled quartz tube -- that enables her to precisely remove or manipulate biological cells. She calls it "surgery without cutting." Just drive a voltage through the needle and voila! A small plasma spark is generated at the tip.

Then there's the helium-filled plasma pencil developed by Mounir Laroussi, currently director of Old Dominion University's Laser and Plasma Engineering Institute. (ODU also opened a brand-new Center for Bioelectrics in 2003, devoted to investigating how electromagnetic fields and ionizes gases interact with biological cells.) It's a little different from the EUT device, which generates small plasma sparks. Laroussi's tool creates a long plasma plume of 2 to 3 inches, which can kill bacteria on the delicate surface of human skin without damaging the surrounding tissue. Laroussi has used it on e coli bacteria. Other groups working with cold plasma "jet guns" have demonstrated the destruction of salmonella and even a few viruses. (One day, similar devices might be used in dentistry to remove plaque; it can't be any worse than the ultrasonic tool my dentist uses these days.)

Neither the plasma needle nor the plasma pencil are actually using a cold plasma to do actual cutting. But a company called Peak Surgical has a prototype device called the Plasma Blade that actually uses cold plasmas to cut biological tissue. Surgical scalpels have served us well for a very long time, but while they cut very precisely, they can't control bleeding. There are alternative electrosurgical devices that can do both, but there's usually some accompanying thermal damage to surrounding tissue. The Plasma Blade cuts, cauterizes, and doesn't burn surrounding tissue, plus you've got those built-in decontamination attributes to fight infection and reduce inflammation, thereby accelerating the healing process. Peak has tested their Plasma Blade on both retinal tissue and on pig skin.

Pretty nifty, right? We think cold plasmas are cool. But cold plasmas aren't the only physical mechanism under investigation as an alternative surgical tool: in fact, they're relative newcomers. Many researchers have spent the last decade or more looking into how sound -- particularly ultrasound -- can be used therapeutically in medicine. I wrote about this topic way back in 1998 for The Industrial Physicist magazine, and it continues to be an active and innovative field.  For instance, Zhen Xu and colleagues at the University of Michigan are interested in creating acoustical "mini-scalpels" for non-invasive surgery, using pulses of high-intensity ultrasound. Xu's team thinks it might be possible to use those pulses to make surgical incisions inside the body without ever opening up or puncturing the skin in any way.

Apparently it's possible to deliver enough power without heating to tissues deep within the body using a concave transducer that focuses the acoustical waves onto one small spot of intense energy. In the case of the acoustic mini-scalpels, the energy from the ultrasonic pulses cause microbubbles to form at the focal point, which expand and collapse, in the process fragmenting tissues. Xu thinks it's because the individual cell membranes can't withstand the pressure caused by the bubbles. The Michigan researchers, reporting at the recent Acoustical Society of America meeting in New Orleans (which we sadly missed this year) have managed to focus the acoustical beams into a bundle of tiny scalpels roughly the size of a singe cell, manipulating them with a computer mouse or joystick. It's not entirely clear to me how all that acoustical power can conveniently bypass the outer layers of skin, but sound has some pretty amazing physical properties, so it wouldn't surprise me. It's a nifty idea if they can ever get it to work in a practical clinical setting.

Combine that acoustical scalpel with a bit of therapeutic ultrasound, and you can reduce bleeding as well. Essentially, the heat from the ultrasonic pulses "cook" the proteins in the blood, causing it to coagulate, or clot, much more quickly. This is especially useful when someone is bleeding in delicate internal organs, like the liver, spleen, or kidneys, where many tiny capillaries can burst all at once. More often than not, car accident victims perish from this uncontrollable bleeding, not from the more obvious injuries they sustain. There's lots of groups working in this area, but at the New Orleans meeting, the focus was on Vesna Zedric (George Washington University) and his University of Washington collaborator, Shahram Vaezy, who reported on their latest work. They tested a range of ultrasound frequencies and found they blood would coagulate faster at energies that produce microbubbles at the focal point.

Yes, we're back to microbubbles! (Bubbles are another longstanding fascination.) The same effect that helps control bleeding can also be used to aid in drug delivery. In this application, the ultrasound energies need to be lower to avoid thermal damage to the tissue (translation: big, nasty burns). Instead of heating the tissue, applying the ultrasonic pulse produces microbubbles pinpointed in the target area, and this gives rise to temporary holes in the cell membranes, allowing drugs placed there to diffuse more easily. Right now Zedric and Vaezy are conducting preclinical studies in the cornea, in hopes that the microbubbles produced will more efficiently deliver antibiotics and anti-inflammatory compounds to treat serious eye infections.

Not even cancer is safe from the power of sound. It's tough to remove brain tumors completely, for reasons scientists don't fully understand, although they suspect it might be that cancerous cells migrate too quickly for the timed-delivery chemotherapy drugs that are usually implanted in the affected area in wafer form after a tumor is removed. Ideally, it would be nice if the brain was a bit quicker on the uptake when it comes to absorbing those life-saving drugs. George Lewis Jr. of Cornell University, also at the ASA meeting, has been testing the effectiveness of acoustic pulses to do just that. It's ultrasound again -- a damned useful frequency range -- and Lewis found that focused ultrasound agitates the tissue matrices in such a way that they become more permeable to the chemotherapy drugs. (Can you say "microbubbles"?) So the drugs spread further and faster into the brain tissue.

Lewis likens the effect (and the brain) to a damp sponge. (Now there's some vivid imagery for you: SpongeBob reimagined as a pinkish, squishy brain, instead of a bright yellow cheese-like square wearing funny pants.) If you hold the sponge under a dripping faucet, it gradually absorbs more and more water until it becomes saturated. Typical sponge-like behavior. But, says, Lewis, "If you move the sponge and squeeze it in your hand while it is under the water faucet, the sponge would absorb more water and become saturated more quickly." He's not the only researcher working in this area, either. Sham Sokka of Phillips Medical Systems is developing an MRI-guided therapeutic ultrasound system designed to treat cancerous tumors, among other clinical applications. Again, it's the formation of microbubbles at the targeted area that is the key, enabling doctors to "remove" tumors without ever piercing the skin. And once again, it can also be used to generate just enough heat to speed effective drug delivery, rather than causing the cavitation that gives rise to microbubbles.

Even a relatively old use of ultrasound -- for imaging and diagnostics -- still has a few innovative tricks up its sleeve, according to Azra Alizad of Mayo Clinic College, who presented data at the ASA meeting on his novel non-invasive imaging technique called vibro-acoustography. Ultrasound is a very sensitive means of detecting thyroid nodules, but it's not very good at figuring out whether they are malignant or benign; a biopsy is usually required to do that. But biopsies can be painful, so ideally, it would be nice to have a way to figure out the difference without the need for biopsies. Enter vibro-acoustography. Alizad's method uses ultrasound to vibrate the tissue at low frequencies, then detects those vibrations with a sensitive microphone. Harder tissues have different acoustical signatures than softer ones, and since malignant lesions tend to be stiffer than their benign counterparts, this might turn out to be a useful method for telling the difference between the two. Right now Alizad is testing the technique for detection of breast cancer lesions.

I should probably note that almost none of these techniques are yet routinely used in clinical settings -- although the cold plasma jet guns are being used in European clinics, so we should be seeing them here in the US within five years or so, depending on how quickly regulatory approval proceeds. What works beautifully in the laboratory doesn't always easily transfer to the harsher, less predictable (and controllable) real-world clinical environment. But it's fun to hear about them, plus, it's just nice to know that there are people out there looking for new tools, even brand new paradigms, for medical treatments. Because human health is pretty darn important.

a matter of debate

It's been a really bad year (or seven) for science and technology policy, and not just from a funding angle. Science lies at the heart of some of the most critical issues facing our nation -- in fact, the world -- today, and yet scientific expertise is sadly lacking in the corridors of Congress and in the White House. It took decades for our government to wake up to the realities of global warming, for instance, and despite the broad global scientific consensus on this issue, our energy policy is only now beginning to fully reflect the need for finding renewable alternatives to fossil fuels. We're falling way behind other countries in stem cell research, which has been shamelessly politicized by extreme right-wing sorts who are wildly ignorant of what, exactly, stem cells are, and how they're actually being used by scientists, yet still feel free to fuel the flames of public hysteria with their uninformed diatribes.

That's just two of the most obvious examples. Major policy decisions are being made every week in Washington by politicians who either don't know, or don't care (and sometimes both) about the scientific underpinnings of their decisions, and therefore remain (willfully) ignorant of any potential consequences. Our tax dollars pay their salaries, and personally, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to do their jobs -- which includes making well-informed policy decisions about what is best for the country, based on the best possible evidence. Yet instead of informed decision-making, we have people like Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who last year infamously described the Internet as "a series of tubes," while pontificating on the issue of "net neutrality," in the process revealing an appalling ignorance of the most basic aspects of the Internet.

There used to be an Office of Technology Assessment to advise Congress on such matters, but that was disbanded in 1995, and Congress has been pretty much flying blind ever since. As for the White House -- sure, there's a presidential science adviser, but in the Bush Administration, that position has been relegated to being largely ceremonial. For all we know, current PSA Jack Marburger is giving perfectly sound advice to the president behind closed doors, but it's obviously not being followed. In fact, the White House has a nasty habit of actually altering any reports it receives where the scientific consensus is at odds with what the administration wants to do. Because, as Stephen Colbert has observed, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias!" Can't have that! Not in a conservative White House! Scientific facts be damned! (Jen-Luc Piquant reminds me that Colbert hilariously skewered this tendency to unnecessarily politicize science this past April, when he declared that Einstein's relativity was simply "science's way of flip-flopping. Space or time? Mass or energy? Which is it? Pick a side!")

This state of affairs can't continue indefinitely, and change starts at the top: i.e., the President. It's crucially important that the next occupant of the Oval Office -- regardless of his or her political party affiliation -- have some smidgen of scientific understanding, or at the very least a healthy respect for the scientific method (and critical thinking in general). So I was pleased when Chris Mooney emailed me over the weekend with news of a new coalition he's set up with his Intersection co-blogger, Sheril, calling for a science-themed debate among the presidential candidates in 2008. The Website describes it as "a grassroots initiative spearheaded by a growing number of scientists and other concerned citizens." This is the call to arms:

"Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we, the undersigned, call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Medicine and Health, and Science and Technology Policy."

Chris and Sheril have recruited some heavy hitters to the cause already, including several "Nobel Laureates and other leading scientists, presidents of universities, congresspersons of both major political parties, business leaders, religious leaders, former presidential science advisors, the editors of America's major science journals, writers, and the current and several past presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science." There's also a growing coalition of bloggers. Case Western physicist (and coalition board member) Lawrence Krauss has an Op-Ed on the topic in the Wall Street Journal, which you can also read it here now. Needless to say, the Cocktail Party is fully on board -- because we're as sick of sound science being ignored or twisted for political ends as everyone else. C'mon, join the bandwagon and demand a science-oriented debate!

Anyway, the announcement reminded me that I've been meaning to write about a terrific book I read on my honeymoon: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me!), by social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. We met Tavris back in August, when the Spousal Unit participated in a Categorically Not! event in Santa Monica. The theme was "mistakes," so it was an ideal forum for Tavris to discuss the book, whose subtitle is "Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts." Not surprisingly, the co-authors maintain that human rationalization is a very powerful thing -- and also very natural behavior. We all do it instinctively; the more self-aware among us occasionally recognize that fact, and even more rarely, we cop to it. One of my favorite scenes from The Big Chill is when Jeff Goldblum's (somewhat neurotic) character declares that rationalizations are more important than sex. When one of his pals expresses skepticism ("C'mon, nothing's more important than sex!"), he ripostes, "Have you ever tried going an entire day without a single rationalization?"

It all comes down to cognitive dissonance: that internal conflict that ensues whenever we find ourselves holding two conflicting beliefs, or acting against our own professed beliefs -- you know, like Larry Craig campaigning against gay rights while secretly indulging in illicit liaisons with men. We all have an innate need to maintain a positive self-regard, per Tavris and Aronson. So, faced with this sort of internal contradiction, the human brain seeks to reduce the dissonance as quickly as possible. We are capable of jumping through quite a few implausible semantic hoops ("I have a wide stance") to convince ourselves that our actions, or beliefs, are entirely justified. (That doesn't mean we necessarily convince anyone else; it's much easier to spot these patterns in other people.) That's why it's extremely rare for someone to hear an opposing argument to a cherished belief, and change their mind -- or to hear a politician publicly admit they've made a mistake. (There's evidence this phenomenon might not be limited to just humans. According to this November 6 article in the New York Times by John Tierney (h/t: 3 Quarks Daily), a group of Yale researchers has reported finding the first evidence of cognitive dissonance in capuchin monkeys.)

What I found interesting, listening to Tavris speak, is that this tendency is actually a kind of survival mechanism to help the human brain cope with enormous amounts of incoming -- and often confusing or contradictory -- data. It can be useful in helping us make decisions, such as what kind of car to buy -- there's a huge number of options, so we've got to winnow down the playing field somehow. But once we've made that decision and committed ourselves, an interesting thing happens: we have to justify that decision. That car becomes the best possible choice we could have made, and if, after we make the purchase, we encounter some negative information about it, chances are, we'll block it out. And we'll keep blocking out negative information; if challenged, we'll become belligerent and defensive about our choice. The more zealous among us might feel compelled to condemn anyone else who didn't choose the same model of car we did.

Sound familiar? It should. (Personally, I found myself hanging my head in shame upon reading a couple of the passages in the book detailing mistakes I've definitely made in the past.) It doesn't just apply to consumer products, either. The more we have invested in our product, or opinion, of choice, the more fiercely we will defend it, and the more we will refuse to consider any evidence to the contrary. We only notice or embrace those things that confirm our biases. What started out as a strength becomes a serious shortcoming. Our biases blind us to our mistakes even as we vehemently deny that we have them. And if we are blind to our mistakes, we can't correct them, or learn from them, so we end up repeating those same mistakes, over and over again.

Heck, we're even blind to our biases. Tavris told a compelling story about visiting the Museum of Tolerance here in LA, which can only be entered through one of two doors, side by side: one marked "Prejudiced," and one marked "Unprejudiced." Only the former actually opens and leads into the museum, since the point is that we all have ingrained biases. Yet, when she visited, Tavris witnessed a group of Hasidic Jews, angrily pounding on the "Unprejudiced" door demanding to be let in. And this was after watching a preliminary video presentation in the foyer emphasizing that we are all, in  one way or another, prejudiced.

There was a controversial study in neuroscience back in September that caused quite a stir in the scientific blogosphere, since it concluded that those darned left-wing liberals were slightly more open-minded and willing to consider opposing points of view than their right-wing conservative counterparts. In actuality, the way Tavris tells it, this whole process of using rationalization and confirmation bias to decrease cognitive dissonance is kinda hard-wired into human cognition, and has little to do with political preference. I certainly know my share of liberal-leaning folks who are just as rigid and unyielding in their opinions and beliefs as the most extreme conservatives.

Tavris cited separate studies that found that test subjects of either political orientation rejected negative information about their favored candidate or party. For instance, if they read two articles -- one that verified their opinions, and one that challenged them -- they would invariably deem the former a competent, well-written piece, while finding all kinds of nitpicky faults with the article that challenged their opinions. The entire blogosphere runs on this kind of thing, which is why I try to read a smattering of blogs across the political spectrum (within reason, of course -- there's absolutely no excuse for the likes of Matt Drudge or WorldNut Daily). Apparently, this built-in selectivity has something to do with the "reward" center of the brain; the fMRIs showed an increase in activity in those areas whenever the subjects encountered information confirming their preset opinions.

So, are we all just helpless pawns to our own cognitive conditioning, doomed to refuse to consider other views, change our minds, or admit mistakes, thereby ensuring that we never learn or evolve? Tavris says no, pointing out that the scientific method is the best defense against our all-too human tendency to self-justify. Which is not to say that scientists don't sometimes fall victim to this as well. They do. Scientists are human, after all. It's just that the very nature of the scientific method forces one to set aside, as much as possible, our deeply ingrained biases or preconceptions and consider what the actual evidence is telling us -- even if we don't much like what we're hearing. For instance, plenty of physicists in the 1920s were unhappy with the inescapable conclusions of modern quantum physics, yet ultimately, they trusted the evidence... even if they didn't like it.

That's why we need more "science-minded" leaders in both Congress and the White House (and on the Supreme Court, for that matter): people who are sufficiently aware of their own capacity for bias, self-delusion and justification that they actively take steps to counter it. And the best defense, per Travis, is learning to think more like a scientist.

where to park it

There's a great scene in the movie Clueless (loosely inspired by Jane Austen's Emma) where the main character, Cher, is practicing her driving skills with her pseudo-stepbrother (eventual love interest) in preparation for taking her driver's test. He asks if she wants to practice parallel parking, to which she airily responds, "What's the point? Every place  you go has valet." That's actually quite true in Los Angeles (where the film is set): sure, you can try to find on-street parking, and in some neighborhoods, you might even succeed. But chances are, every moderate to pricey bar or eatery provides valet parking services, often for quite a reasonable fee. ("Reasonable" is subjective, but I tend to weigh the cost of valet parking against the time wasted and ensuing aggravation of finding an on-street parking spot... that doesn't have a meter, therefore requiring spare pocket change.)

It's a different story in New York City, where I spent the last few days visiting pals and old favorite haunts (plus a few new ones, like the fabulous Cocoa Bar on the Lower East Side). Parking is in short supply, and you're going to pay premium prices for a space. Which is why most New Yorkers either walk or take cabs or public transport to get around, rather than drive; I certainly did when I lived in the Big Apple. In fact, many of my long-time New Yorker pals, especially Manhattanites, don't even have driver's licenses, never mind own cars. Nonetheless, some people insist of bringing their vehicles into the city and clogging up the streets as they drive around block after block looking for that magical open space on the street until, in desperation, they opt for the parking garage.

Parking is a $26 billion industry, and there's always more cars than there are spaces. So those invested in the business of parking are always on the lookout for any innovative new approach that will enable them to cram more cars into New York City's increasingly limited real estate space. That's why it was headline news when the Big Apple's very first automated parking garage, located on Baxter Street in Chinatown, made its debut several months ago. The developers are confident that they'll be able to squeeze some 67 cars into the basement under an apartment building that would otherwise fit only 24 cars. They managed it because the robotic parking technology enabled them to remove the ramp and maneuver space normally required to get vehicles in and out of the garage. It won't be cheap: about $400 per month, or $25 per day. But New Yorkers are used to those kinds of prices.

It's actually not a new idea. The very first Park-O-Mat opened on December 5, 1951, per this article in Wired, and like the Chinatown system, it used a revolving elevator-type contraption, with an attendant operating the system remotely. Earlier this year, there was an article in The New York Times by Phil Patton about the sudden surge of interest in such systems. The inspiration derives from vending machines, especially the automats that were first popularized in the 1950s. Volkswagen's Autostadt Center in Wolfburg, Germany, features an automated parking garage that looks like it stepped out of a sci-fi movie, and apparently a Boston-area architectural firm is designing a see-through automated garage for shared-car services like ZipCar. Their inspiration? The humble Pez dispenser. Pez: it's not just about the candy anymore.

The term "robotic parking garage" is a bit misleading, since it's not like a humanoid robot straight out of The Jetsons will be taking your car keys (and demanding a bigger tip). There is a human attendant to handle the financial transactions and explain the system to any clients, but the garage itself does the parking. The driver will pull the car onto a computer- controlled pallet, turn it off, and get out. The pallet is then lowered into the abyss of parking spaces, much like a freight elevator for cars, except it can also move sideways, not just up and down. There's an array of laser sensors that let the system