Starry Eyed Staring

Recently three missions were launched to repair Hubble, and all three missions were successful. Score! You hyped? Me too! Hubble is actually the only telescope ever to be serviced by astronauts in space. It's been serviced four times, the fourth of which was earlier this May when it was repaired and enhanced (it can now look deeper into space for part of the electromagnetic spectrum, woot again!) Maybe none of this strikes you immediately as meaningful, but frankly, if you're a humble admirer of the universe (which I'd like to think I am (sometimes anyways)), it ought to strike you as kinda damn meaningful. And, anyhow, it is to most anyone in astronomy. Right? Right.

You see, Hubble, launched in April of 1990 (though its intended quality wasn't delivered until December of 1993 when its imaging quality was corrected...incidentally, it was launched into space with the main mirror ground incorrectly), and since then, it has provided some major insights about the universe. It led, for example, to the determination of the rate of the expansion of the universe.

Additionally it has allowed us to gaze deeper into the universe than ever we had before, and, in turn, to reaffirm our place in this universe. People have been gazing into the sky and asking questions since the first we had the capacity to, and it is surely profound that we now possess the technology to answer our once unanswerable questions. And, on another, but perhaps less scientific note, the Hubble has provided images of some of the most unimaginably beautiful celestial objects, and I am confident that they have inspired and awed many (or at least one...hi!). If you want to see them, check it out here.

Eagle Nebula

So the point is, the Hubble has been pivotal in catering to some deep philosophical questions about our place in the universe and, meanwhile, it has provided us with deep insights, too, about the nature of the universe. I mean dark matter, come on. We're talking about 96% of the universe. Yeah. Only 4% of the universe is visible, and the other 96% (22% dark matter, 74% dark energy) is attributed to something whose existence we indirectly infer from its gravitational effects on visible matter. So, while it has revealed to us so many things, it has also revealed that there are so many things beyond what our eyes can glean. Hubble has altered the course of our universal understanding, but dear old Hubb is getting old. And she's being replaced by some new big bad boys.

If you're interested in these new monsters, you ought to check out this link. It gives the general specs and missions of these telescopes, offers some images, and links to their primary websites for more thorough information and what not. Anyhow, the article is really good if you're interested in big beasts like Hubble, and let me tell you, the next generation of telescopes go big (and go home, too with killer images of the far beyond that is.)

Take the James Webb Space Telescope (it's in the article), for example. It is essentially Hubble's successor. It will allow us to see the most distant objects in the universe, ones even beyond Hubble's view. Still, it will serve to complement Hubble rather than entirely replace it. That is, specifically, it will see in infrared, complementing the visible and electromagnetic spectrum observed by the Hubble and the other mad telescopes seen in the article. I'm genuinely excited to see what images these new telescopes reveal. I can't wait to see what lies at the end of the universe—such is the nature of humanity, and these lofty telescopes serve as an embodiment of this unrelenting upward glance, the constant questioning and need to understand further. Still, however, I'm slightly reticent to see if the Pan-STARRS telescope finds any "killer" asteroids. Meh. (I would say ignorance is bliss, but this would undermine the inherent need to question I just mentioned...curse me for avoiding self-contradictions!).


Also, I found this video on youtube...nothing too elaborate, but it gives some cool info on telescopes and their contributions to our understanding of the universe:

Beam Me Up, 23rd Century!

Why yes, this is an entry that centralizes around Star Trek. And yes, it will, indeed, still be scientific (for those who don't know, Star Trek is often—not always, I reticently concede—rooted in reality and legitimate physics. So why don't the things in Trek exist? It's not a matter of physics, but engineering!). Star Trek (and other science fiction shows and movies) actually have a lot to offer. Science fiction is really often prescient of what's to come (did you know that Simon Lake was inspired by Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to invent the submarine?). It bodes the future and inspires people of all generations to bring its creations into fruition.

Now you should know that I am a Trekkie. Not too hardcore—I don't speak Klingon—but I have seen pretty much every episode from every series. I attribute this to my father, for Star Trek facilitated a strong bond between me and him. He's been big into Trek since the original series came out in the late sixties, and I've always spent a lot of time with him on the couch going through all the seasons of the different series on the couch. We recently saw the movie and, frankly, we were both very satisfied (minus some discrepancies which, however, are resolved by some alternate timeline and all this funky jazz, but I shan't elaborate at the risk of 1, deterring your interest since my attack on discrepancies is silly to begin with, and 2, spoiling the movie if you've yet to see it). It spurred some conversation for us, too, about the possibility of Trekovations (a word I have just coined which means Star Trek inventions—please, hold your applause) becoming reality.

In all fairness, Star Trek has already beaten the future to the punch on multiple occasions. Take the communicators in the original series, for example. Can you say: "Hello, cell phones!"? But that's really something that wasn't too farfetched. But what about the more intense ideas and technologies explored in Star Trek? Yes, you guessed it (or maybe you didn't, though I won't hold it against you): I'm talking about stuff like teleporting humans and warp technology (that is, technology that enables warp travel, or a certain type of travel that is faster than the speed of light—and by that, I mean 299, 792, 458 meters per second).

Warp technology plays a huge role in all of the Star Trek series: their ships all travel at warp speeds, which basically enables them across the galaxy in times that put our ships to shame. While it would currently take four months (at the least—we're talking when the two are the closest) to get to Mars, it would take no more than twenty minutes to get there at warp speed. If you haven't seen any Star Trek, you should watch this video to just to see warp speed in action:

Scientists used to scoff at the notion of Star Trek's warp speed, especially since Einstein's theories of relativity suggest that it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. Now, however, warp speed seems an actual possibility (okay, a distant one, but hey, Star Trek is 23rd century and beyond, so it's conceivable). You see, around ten years ago, a physicist named Miguel Alcubierre came up with a new solution to Einstein's general relativity equation. It capitalizes on a loophole that Einstein had not conceived of—negative matter. Negative matter basically is contrary to what you'd expect, possessing exotic properties like negative mass, falling up rather than down, and so on. Alcubierre's solution is very similar to the warp drive of Star Trek—they use negative matter in Star Trek to power their ships for warp drive, except they call the negative matter dilithium crystals.

With negative matter, rather than going to the stars, you make the stars come to you. This basically frees you form violating the laws of physics (you don't have to break the light barrier in this case). You compress space like an accordion—such a space wrinkle can be formed since empty space can expand or contract faster than the speed of light (it's what happened with the Big Bang—empty space expansion to the universal max!). You experience space and time normally, but the stars in front of you would come at you very, very fast. So basically, you would compress the space in front of you so that the distance you have to travel is less (you bring your destination to you), and, meanwhile, you expand the space behind you so that the distance you've traveled is already more (even if you haven't really traveled the far). Unfortunately, we haven't ever seen negative matter, but I have hope!

Below is a model of the idea of compressing space in front of you and expanding it behind you. That is, travel of the 23rd century!

Now let's take a look at one more Trekovation. Human teleportation. Alike warp travel, teleporting humans is featured prominently in every movie and series since the original series. Just a fun fact, they actually came up with the idea for using teleportation when the original series was being written because they wanted to avoid having to show a smaller ship flying down to a planet whenever Kirk and the crew were going off on one of their many great adventures. In other words, it was just easier and cheaper to "beam" them down! But still, we (I) thank Trek for its brilliant creation. But time for that question: is it even possible to transport things?

Energize!

Quantum teleportation has actually existed for ten years. What this means is that scientists have been able to teleport photons (the basic unit of light) and certain atoms (i.e., cesium, rubidium, terbium) distances as great as 1,800 feet. The problem, however, is that it is very difficult to teleport things beyond the molecular level. All of the atoms of, say, a human have to vibrate in unison, and this is very, very difficult. We're talking 100 trillion cells, each comprised of a whole ton (trillions+) of atoms. Not to mention, the information required to store the specific configuration of this many atoms is...well...out of the picture (currently). That is, when something is teleported, it's actually destroyed; it is analyzed so that its very structure is understood atom by atom (so the Star Trek transporters understand the precise architecture of human, atom by atom!), and then a carbon copy is created at the transport destination. Put simply, the technology behind a transporter exists (at a simple level), but it is not (remotely) advanced enough yet to transport something as large as a human (let alone a molecule yet). But come the 23rd century, who knows! It certainly is conceivable that the technology will have advanced that much.

Anyhow, the point of examining these two 'trekovations' is that science fiction is more than just entertainment. As I said, it often foretells of things to come, and, beyond that, it inspires scientist to make certain things a reality. When you understand the history of Star Trek, its offerings beyond a fake language (Klingon), silly catchphrases (Beam Me Up, Scotty), and a...well...very dedicated (NOT ridiculous) subculture, you gain a deeper appreciation for what it really means. There's more truth to it than meets the eye! Anyhow, if you haven't seen the new movie, I highly recommend you go and see it! In the meantime, if you're interested in seeing the original episodes, check out this website.

Also, if you found this post at all interesting, you should really check out this book. It's entitled "Physics of the Impossible", written by Michio Kaku, and it contains chapters entirely devoted to 'Trekovations'!

Catch ya in the 23rd century (sigh, I do mean next post)!

Teaching Babies

Is the title of this post ambiguous to you? If so, good. Because this post concerns not only the notion of teaching information to babies, but how they learn (the ways in which they learn, that is) can then teach us. We're going to be dealing with development psychology and science in this post, and using it to explore the philosophy of humans (Soulful Science promised to connect science and humanity—I'm trying to keep that word).

Anyhow, let me get more specific. I spend my free time meandering through different science articles (isn't that what all college kids do?), both online and in print, and recently stumbled 

upon one about babies and their ability to learn that peaked my interest. There are a multitude of reasons, really. For one, it is a great example of how science and philosophy connect, or how science can reveal much about ourselves. Moreover, it connected to a few classes I've taken which I'd hoped to learn more about. Psychology, for example, which provided Freud's insights about the different phases of life (which, frankly, I was very skeptical of, but hey, can you blame me for doubting a dude who says that women secretly want to be raped?). And linguistics, too, which talked about how brain development influences and alters the ability of people to learn information.

This article summarizes some of the recent research in the field of developmental psychology as conveyed by a recent book (its name and the link at the end of this post), debasing the theories provided by Freud and Piaget that children "produced so much fantastic, unreal play" because they couldn't differentiate between fantasy and reality. On the contrary, rather than their play suggesting limited abilities, such extensive play actually corresponds to their immense imaginative abilities. Imagination was formerly conceived as an ability special to adults, but recent research has shown that it is existent in babies as young as 18 months. And imagination is not longer thought of as being something existent for the purposes of solely entertainment, but rather, too, extant for the comprehension of the "causal structure of the real world." Psychologists now think that babies and children think in ways similar to bayesian networks, meaning that imagination lends way to the thought of different possible things that are then eventually probabilistically connected to outcomes (that is, they learn causal relationships in the world around them through their crazy imaginations!). In fact, children have been shown now to work with very complex statistical information...although not consciously understanding what they are doing, they process complicated sets of relationships even better than adults.

Moreover, new developmental psychology purports children to be "useless on purpose." The point is, it is pretty illogical for an organism to evolve such that it must be dependent upon adults for so many years. So what is the evolutionary benefit? Basically, evolution has given way to a long period of childhood were we are endowed a great amount of freedom (that is, we don't have many responsibilities, we don't have to work—ah, to be young again!), and this freedom enables children to dedicate their time entirely to learning. We explore the world, often through imaginative play, for years and years and then acquire all of this knowledge when we're adults. So, developmental psychology now suggests, in short, that the period of childhood exists so that we can learn! It's pretty interesting and actually makes a lot of sense if you ask me.

And I found this part to be pretty cool, too: recent research has provided some insight on innate moral constructs, showing that, from the age of two, humans recognize and understand the respective and relative importances of moral principles and conventional principles (that is, for example, social customs). Toddlers understand, for example, that it is never okay to hit someone (moral principle) even if everyone at the daycare said it would be okay, whereas toddlers acknowledge it is not necessarily okay to not hang up your coat it the daycare (that is, they understand that the conventional rules change from daycare to daycare). So even at such a young age, it seems humans understand different moral rules derived from empathy versus convention. I find this especially interesting since teachings I've endured—err, had—suggested that such a moral understanding isn't acquired until far later.

So developmental psychology (or science in general) does serve to be helpful in philosophy. It provides us with great insights about the nature of humanity and its capacity for change. That is, it shows, on the hand, that we have innate moral instincts, for example, but that, on the other, their is huge capacity for change, revision, and development. Don't you just love when science and philosophy goes hand in hand? I'm personally of the belief that all science is rooted in philosophy, anyhow, so seeing this article really got me interested in the book (which is entitled "The Philosophical Baby". I'm definitely going to check it out, and if you're interested, you should, too...the link for it is here.

In the Beginning...

Howdy! Haven't posted for a while, been very preoccupied with getting educated and that sort of fun jazz, glad to be back anyhow, and hoping you can pardon my disappearance!

I thought I'd touch on something that is relevant both to recent scientific news and some of the stuff I've studied in some of my science classes. In looking at the beginning and origins of life, there are tons of huge questions. The (not-so-shocking) biggie: how did it begin? Let me preface and conjecturing with this: there are no definitive answers (well, obviously there are, but we don't have them since we don't have time machines (yet)), and I am only exploring presently more scientific ones.

In looking at how life began then, we have to somehow explain how proteins ( 1, what we're all made of, 2 things responsible for catalyzing chemical reactions or, in other words, making the

teeny tiny molecular processes in the body possible) and genetic material/DNA (what codes for these proteins that make us up) came about. But the problem therein is, what came first, DNA or protein? Proteins, as we know them, cannot form without some DNA to provide the directions essentially for how to make that protein. Meanwhile, DNA is assembled by proteins. So, it's been a pretty difficult chicken or the egg conundrum for scientists, but a discovery in the 1980s potentially offered to solve this problem and pave the way for a more thorough understanding of life's beginning: ribozymes!

Ribozymes are molecules that can replicate 

themselves and store genetic material (DNA is made up of lots of genes that code for specific proteins, hence DNA is said to contain/be composed of genetic material)—that is, ribozymes solve the chicken or egg conundrum by providing a molecule that is both! These ribozymes are actually RNA molecules rather than DNA molecules. The main difference between DNA and RNA is that RNA is single-stranded while DNA is double-stranded. Anyhow, scientists didn't think it was likely that DNA molecules spontaneously formed during early Earth, so RNA coming first is realistic.

In any event, these ribozymes are now believed to have accounted for an RNA-dominated early world. These ribozymes, too, are theorized to have evolved into modern day DNA and protein molecules. It all seemed so perfect! Annoyingly perfect for science, y'know? But fret not, 'twas not so perfect or simple! For, you see, scientists could not resolve how RNA molecule (or the ribozymes that RNA molecules can be) would have actually formed on the Earth so early on.

But, after decades, scientists have finally determined (okay, not entirely, but they've make great, great progress in understanding) how RNA got started! In the primordial soup that is early Earth (to clarify, we're talking about...let's say, four billion years ago or so), it is very difficult to imagine the components of RNA (a base, a phosphate group, and a ribose sugar) coming together to become one, the reason therein being that they all exist rather stably independent of each other. However, by altering the order in which these components come into contact with one another, scientists have come up with a viable way for ribozymes to come about that agrees with the models of geochemistry of dear old early Earth. 

As stated, the research isn't complete and there are still some things to be figured out, but this is still a great advancement in the understanding of early life. These sorts of advancements are crucial in further understanding the origins of life, providing us with a great appreciation for the complexity and diversity of life, lending us some insight to the direction life is going, and directing us in our searches for life elsewhere in the universe. Like I said, this news was very relevant to some of the material I've covered in my classes, so I was actually pretty enthused to see that an adequate explanation has finally been provided for how these RNA molecules and ribozymes spontaneously formed in the delicious primordial soup. Hope it sparks your interest too, and if nothing else, one must admire what Earth has come from...from soup and goop (ostensibly) to me and you!

The original (and full-sized image that makes the text legible) should be checked out for a chuckle (I got one, anyhow) here: http://www.mbio.ncsu.edu/JWB/PrimordialSoup.jpeg

Tricking Humanity Into Saving Humanity

(This is a metaphor)

It seems this would be a totally incomplete science blog if it did not cover (at least once) the issue of global warming. So boom, here it is. I hope you're not surprised to find, however, that I am concerning this post more with social sciences rather than the natural sciences, but for good reason. Recently, in fact, an economist named Ben Ho claimed that it is social scientists like himself who have the power to save humanity from climate change. Upon looking into the matter, I find myself agreeing.

To understand why, we must first consider the threats of global warming. Seas rising by 17 cm in the next century, stronger hurricanes, greater heat waves, deadly diseases spreading, and so on. Are you threatened? I know I am. We know the threats are many, serious, and real, and yet, we find ourselves not acting. Huh. Crazy (I prefer to think 'stupid', but refrain from using this word out of parentheses to seem less confrontational and, too, to mitigate my hypocrisy). This shifts the issues of climate change into the hands of social scientists.

The point being, even withstanding knowledge of the potential dangers of global warming, we swill have to mobilize the community, incite action. We have not done enough yet. Alas, if only humans were the perfectly rational creatures asserted by classical economists. Thus, social economists like Ben Ho are now exploring how human feelings and emotions like altruism and guilt can be utilized to motivate people to reduce their carbon footprint. A term is employed to describe how to steer people into the most rational action: 'choice architecture'. This term relates to the idea that, because the way in which information is conveyed to us alters our response to it, the best 'choice architecture' steers in the direction of behavior that thorough creatures would choose.

So the problem then is that engineers, who are endowed with the most responsibility now in dealing with issues of climate change, treat the problem like a math problem rather than like something that actually involves decision-making by actual people. Frankly, people will not choose the most quantitatively logical decision. Economists and social scientists get this. But rather than tricking people into mindlessly acting to save the environment, considerations must also be made about how to make people behave mindfully. The question is then asked, rather than what prevents us from making bad decisions, what prevents us from making good ones? The answer that was offered Elke Weber, a psychology professor at Columbia cofounder of Columbia’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED), is that global warming does not adequately scare us. Global warming is slow, oft presented in statistical and abstract forms, and perceived frequently, too as something occurring far away, both temporally and spatially. Thus, the threat of global warming fails to evoke the adequate emotional response. And such a weak response is not adequate to motivate action. She then suggests that the obvious conclusion is to...well....scare people more. We gotta hit Americans where it hurts to make 'em respond, in other words.

Others, such as David Krantz, a psychologist, too, and codirector of CRED, disagree with this approach, asserting instead that social scientists need to allow people to consciously make the right choices. People, he asserts, approach a problem with far greater seriousness if they play an active role in solving it as opposed to passively receiving information from above. "...people will think long term so long as they are primed to think that way at the right moment (as in the case of families who save for their children’s college education)."

So while there is disagreement, there is fundamental harmony in the belief that climate policies have to employed that get people into the correct mode of thought. Who knows what suggestions what will work. It doesn't hurt to try them all, eh? Thus, a "portfolio" of solutions must be created; we often simply attempt one thing and assume we've fixed the problem. This is referred to in science literature (coined by Weber) as "single-action bias".

Another problem: in communicating the information, it's hard to gather whether the audience (us) gets it or not. A teacher can easily gauge right on the spot whether a student understands the information or not. Not so on such a large and indirect scale. From Yale, Anthony Leiserowitz suggests that the idea of the 'American public' is a misnomer; rather, there are many American publics. He is working alongside climactic researchers (including those at CRED) to design a survey system which effectively builds a feedback system so that "interpretive communities" can be identified. That is, each community will be designated by "its own tendencies and biases, its own preoccupations or blocks; different policies will suit each. “Naysayers” must be engaged differently from “alarmists,” and so forth."

It goes on and on with the potential solutions that are being suggested by social scientists, psychologists, and so on. The point is though, the fate of our environment does not rest solely in the hands of natural scientists, and organizations and policies must be altered accordingly. While we know what to do and the risks of not acting, we don't really know how to go about acting, or even care enough to. So it must be left to natural scientists to figure out what must be done, and then to social scientists to see how it's gonna get done.

Don't know much about global warming? Check out this video for Global Warming 101:

It's All In Your Head

Is it in your head or for real? Read on, dear friends, read on!

I really enjoy reading articles that talk about/learning about the role of the mind in different human processes...I find it pretty cool to see how the mind plays such a big role in so many things. It's very relevant to me in lots of areas of my life...I'm a tennis player, for example, and I've beaten opponents who've clearly been physically superior to me by just being dedicated, focused, resolved. The mind really has great power—it controls our interpretation and understandings of the universe around us, so it is curious to see how the mind can often deceive us.

This notion of the mind tricking us was the subject of an article I recently read in SEED: Science is Culture magazine. Reminisce, will you? I'm sure you're acquainted with (if you haven't endured it firsthand) the experience I'm about to describe. So imagine you're doing something physically grueling—running a marathon, playing an intense basketball game, fighting a lengthy tennis match, or so on. You're feeling incredibly tired. Your legs are dead. You're out of breath. You simply cannot make it—you have no energy left. Is it really so? Or has your mind given up?

New research suggest that the brain actually gives up before the muscles do. So new experimental research further implies that our physical limits are not so much in our muscles as they are in our minds. New study says, too, that we can push ourselves much harder when we expect to get a boost from sugar, way before the carbohydrates (the primary source of energy) are even absorbed and converted into usable energy. As far as expectation goes, a study published The Journal of Physiology states that athletes don't even need to swallow an energy drink to feel a boost.

The study was led by Ed Chambers, Matt Bridge, and David Jones at the University of Birmingham, and their goal was to get to the core of fatigue. Jones says “The issue revolves around what is known as central fatigue” rather than peripheral fatigue. Central fatigue refers to the central nervous system, the feeling of fatigue herein attributed to the signaling in neurons. Peripheral fatigue, meanwhile, refers to the actual muscles failing.

The study was conducted by producing three so-called energy drinks, though one of them was a placebo, containing no carbohydrates (all of the 'energy drinks' had their flavors masked, so the subjects could not tell which they were receiving). Subjects performed intensively on stationary bicycles, swishing their mouths with one of the three energy drink concoctions (not actually swallowing). The cyclists who got the energy drinks with carbohydrates performed better than those that got the placebo, suggesting some mechanism in the brain tipped off signaling for the presence of carbohydrates, thereby doling out extra energy to the muscles. This implies that the brain has more control over physical performance and endurance than the muscles. The power of the mind gets me kinda hyped. You too?! Well then prepare for more!

The group conducted a second part of the study where they had the subjects again rinse with one of three energy drink concoctions while in an fMRI (which shows what parts of the brain are active when humans are performing, either consciously or unconsciously, certain processes). In agreement with the first part of the study, only the subjects who had the 'energy drinks' that actually had carbohydrates had their anterior cingulate cortex and striatum show usage by the fMRI. These parts of the part are believed to regulate reward and motor control.

Further studies are being complete because of some limitations to the initial research, and loads of theorizing has already been done (I will spare you of that here, but if you're interested I advise you check out this). The point of this post is just to cover what I view as a very interesting idea—we are so thoroughly convinced of the notion that "perception is reality", but maybe it is not so. We must bring into question the things we think and feel and consider the possibility that the reality is something quite to the contrary. I am often enchanted to hear about how my mind tries to trick me, cause then I feel like I can become a better master of my body. That is, if I know what tricks to look for, I am better equipped to scrutinize and analyze my feelings, thoughts, and experiences. Anyhow, I intend to stay updated on this recent research, and if you're interested, too, just let me know and I can start my research now rather than later and do some more posts concerning the mind and its effect on the body and our interpretation of the world around us. I'll end on a crappy rhyming note: don't be a fool; don't let your mind rule!

Obama the Science Guy

Freedom!

"Be free, be free!" That's the triumphant shout releasing scientists from the clutches of a sinister ideological monster (You Know Who, or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named). Obama addressed (among others) the National Federation of Sciences April 28th (video ahead), and in his speech he pledged three percent of GDP (gross domestic product) to research. He noted that, due to the political and economic state of the nation of the world, some “ say we cannot afford to invest in science...", that "The support for research is somehow a luxury at moments that are defined by necessities." He responds, however, saying "I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment and our quality of life than it has ever been before.”

Obama will not permit our nation to fall behind, and he has thereby pledged, along with devoting three percent of the GDP to research, to establish a new initiative—the APRA-E, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, to double the budgets of important agencies inclduing the Nationl Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, to increase funding for National Institutes of Health (notably $6 billion to support cancer research), and more.

Without a doubt, Obama is incredibly enthusiastic about and devoted to the sciences. In fact, shortly after his inauguration, Obama was quoted as saying to Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn), House Science and Technology Committee chairman, that "I'm a science guy." Needless to say, I'm pretty pleased about that. Obama the Science Guy...not quite the ring of Bill Nye the Science Guy, but it's got me just as hyped. Here's to the new age of science!

The Speech from the 28th: