Jason's Log

The National Ignition Facility is Actually Cerebro

Reading an article today on the accomplishments of the National Ignition Facility, I was somehow struck by the similarity in the design of the NIF and the Cerebro chamber, featured in the X-Men movies. Putting the images side-by-side shows just how strikingly similar they are:

 

Hmm - controlled nuclear fusion or mutant detection. You be the judge!

New Scientist Magazine: Making it as hard as possible to buy their product

I really do enjoy many of the articles available on-line from the British science mag New Scientist. I have no desire to subscribe to a printed edition - I know I won't read the paper version, and don't want it. So I attempted to find an 'on-line only' subscription.

Nope. Nada. Nuthin. 

In order to gain unlimited access to the on-line articles, you must subscribe to the printed edition. So instead of allowing me to just pay them money for on-line access, they lose an on-line reader. Too bad. So sad.

A discovery about my circadian rhythms

With a solid month of sleep data now captured (using my Zeo Sleep Coach), I've been able to tease out an important contributor to how rested I feel when I wake up in the morning.

I had initially assumed that my body would allow me to sleep enough hours each night in order for it to fully recuperate. In other words, if I go to bed late I figured that my body would just sleep in a bit longer and wake me up a bit later. But based on the recordings from my Zeo, this turned out to not be the case at all. In fact, no matter how late I went to bed, my body would just 'wake up' at right around 6am the next morning. 

So even if I went to bed very late - 2am for example - I would still wake up around 6am. Of course, I didn't feel well rested, but I was never able to go back to sleep. Once the eyes were open, they stayed that way.

That told me that if I wanted to feel more rested in the mornings, that my only realistic option was to go to bed earlier. So that is what I did - adjusted by bedtime to 10pm, no exceptions. Sure enough, I still woke up just about 6am, but I felt much better rested. 

The results of adjusting my bed time to 10pm are shown in the chart below. I made the shift on Thursday, 8/27. Notice how my total sleep time jumped by over an hour? I could definitely feel the difference:

A bit of research into why this might be the case lead me to this article: Differential rescue of light- and food-entrainable circadian rhythms. In the study, the scientists show how circadian rhythms are strongly influenced by feeding/meal times. As it turns out, I eat dinner very consistently at 6pm each night. So my speculation is that my circadian clock says "Jason - you will wake up 12 hours after your last meal, no matter how much time you spent sleeping." 

Although I'm not sure meal time dictates my wakeup time completely, it sure does seem to be a strongly contributing factor.

Sleep Stats: Plenty of REM, too little Z

I've now collected nearly two weeks of sleep data with the Zeo, and the results so far are mildly encouraging. During this entire period I did not consume any caffeine after 3pm, and I ate nothing after 7pm each day. That seems to help. In addition, I only go to bed when I feel sleepy - eyes drooping, yawning - instead of trying to force an artificial sleep schedule on my brain stem.

Here is the overview for the month - showing that I get slightly under 6 hours of sleep, on average, each night:

Here is the breakdown, with comparisons to others in my age bracket. On the minus side, I seem to be getting less total sleep than most (by almost an hour), but I do get quite a bit more REM sleep. Does that compensate? Not sure...

Some secondary statistics here - showing that I tend to fall asleep quite quickly (6 minutes). It also shows that I am something of a night owl, going to bed after midnight on a regular basis. But at least I am consistent!

Here is the chart of my total amount of sleep:

Here is my time in REM sleep:

The data collection will continue - although I'm not yet ready to make any radical changes or look for some pathology in these results. I'm mostly just fascinated by the data.

First week of sleep results with My Zeo

It has been just over a week since the arrival of my Zeo Personal Sleep Coach device, and to be completely honest, the results were a total surprise to me.

For the longest time, I had believed and would frequently claim that it took me hours and hours to fall asleep at night. My belief was so strong that I would frequently regale listeners with tales of my sleep woes. The only problem is that I was completely wrong. My average 'Time to Onset of Sleep' this last week has been about 4 minutes.

The second Jason Sleep Myth to be busted is the claim that I never dream. I based this on the fact that I rarely if ever remember dreams of any kind. Well, if dreaming is what occurs during REM sleep. then I appear to be getting pleny of opportunity - almost 2 hours each night.

I plan to continue the experiment for a while, but below is a summary of my first week: 

Chances of getting my Typ1 increased a bit, I think

With the news of Aptera's next round of funding (see here and here), it seems as though my chances of getting my all-electric Typ1 have improved a bit. The lease on my current vehicle expires in early January 2009, and I am hoping to not have to extend it. This also means that I will need to sign-up for and complete a course in motorcycle safety so that I get the required license certification.  And for some reason I had been under the mistaken belief that the range of the electric model was only 40 miles between charges, but recent statements from Aptera have been quoting 120 miles as the official figure. That was a nice surprise.

In the most recent email that I received from Aptera about how the Typ1 wold be delivered, I was told only that new owners would be invited down to the Santa Monica headquarters for and introduction and brief training course before they hand over the keys. Now I just have to get that solar array installed here at home and I'll be all set.

Brian Greene's explanation of special relativity

After coming across this amazing  video presentation of the physics double slit experiment on Reddit.com earlier today:

I was reminded of what I consider the best explanation of Einstein's special theory of relativity, and in particular the adage that "when objects travel near the speed of light, time slows down". The full explanation goes from page 47-51 of The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.

What I find so remarkable about Professor Greene's explanation is the way in which it gradually sets up the punch line like a long and elaborate joke (minus the funny ending). Each step along his explanatory pathway is simple to the point of obviousness. Yet if you follow along closely you reach one of those 'Aha!' moments at the end where suddenly the entire concept becomes clear in your mind.

The crux of his explanation is that all things are constantly traveling in one of four dimensions - three of which are spatial and one is the time dimension. So an object that appears to be at rest in the three spatial dimensions is actually moving forward at the speed of light, but only in the time dimension. With this idea as the foundation, the remainder is easy to explain: When an object is traveling through one of the three spatial dimensions, it has to 'borrow' some of that speed from the time dimension. If you add up the total speed of an object through the 3 spatial and 1 time dimensions, that number always adds up to the speed of light.

When you apply this reasoning to a particle such as a photon of visible light - which travels through space at the speed of light - you can think of it as using up all of its speed to travel the three spatial dimensions. This leaves no remaining speed for it to spend in the time dimensions. Because of this, photons never grow old. They simply have no speed left to spare for the time dimension, so they do not experience passage of time. If photons wore wrist watches, the hands would never move.

To be honest, I'm not sure why I feel the need to constantly refresh my understanding of this concept. In fact I feel a mild sense of panic anytime I find myself unable to recall the explanation. It is of absolutely no practical value to me. I am sure that most real physicists would laugh at such a simple explanation and all of the details that it omits. Some part of me is waiting for the day when one of my four nieces/nephews asks the question "Uncle Jason, why is it that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light?"  I'll then run to my bookshelf, re-read pages 47-51 again to refresh my memory, then walk them through it. When the light bulb of understanding appears, and a grin comes across their face, I'll remember why it was worth the effort.

Looks like the all-electric Aptera will be first to ship

A few months ago I decided to make good on my threat ("My next vehicle will be zero emissions!") by sending off a down payment for an all-electric Aptera Typ-1. At the time the payment was made, I was informed by email that I was  #2506 in line. According to the Aptera website, they are planning to go into production sometime around 'Late 2008'. I guessed at the time that it would be late 2009 by the time I received mine.

This morning I received an email from Aptera letting me know that they are splitting their waiting list into two groups: Those who selected the all-electric model and those who selected the gas-electric hybrid. The most interesting line from the email was this:

switch to the all-electric and potentially be driving an Aptera a year earlier than they would otherwise

That is a one year lag time between the introduction of the all-electric vs. the gas-electric hybrid models. Not entirely surprising I suppose - building a vehicle with two motors is more complicated than building a vehicle with just one.  Hopefully though I'll be moved up in the queue now that they are dividing the current list into two parts. Who knows, I might get mine before the lease on my current car expires.

Pascal's Wager as an Argument for Environmental Responsibility

I came across a comment from a digg.com user today that sounded remarkably like Pascal's Wager applied to environmentalism. The comment was in response to the new TED.org talk by Al Gore in which he updates his now famous Inconvenient Truth slide deck with more recent data. While the talk itself is definitely worth spending 30 minutes to watch, this commenter on digg.com is, in my opinion, doing a disservice to the scientific community and scientific evidence accumulated to date.

Wikipedia does a good job of explaining what Pascal's Wager is and when it was originally made, so I'll not revisit that. Here is what I think the Environmentalist's Wager might look like:

	Global Warming is Real	Global Warming is Not Real
Live as if Global Warming is Real	You Win Big	You lose very little
Live as if Global Warming is not Real	You Lose Big	You lose very little

What bothers me about such a formulation is that it cheapens the scientific evidence. The findings are quire clear and unambiguous - the earth is getting warmer. In the most recent IPCC report this assertion was assigned a confidence rating of 'Greater than 99%'. So to argue in favor of being environmentally responsible 'on the off chance that there is a problem' seems to be doing a disservice to the movement. An alternative formulation of this could be based on the more conservative (given a 'Greater than 90%' confidence rating in the IPCC report) and controversial claim that humans are the cause of the warming. A Wager version of that might look like:

	Humans Cause Global Warming	Humans Do Not Cause Global Warming
Live as if Humans Cause Global Warming	You Win Big	You lose very little
Live as if Humans Do Not Cause Global Warming	You Lose Big	You lose very little

So what is the cause of the lack of political motivation among American's to do something significant about this? My guess is that for many people, their version of the wager looks like this instead:

	Humans Cause Global Warming	Humans Do Not Cause Global Warming
Live as if Humans Cause Global Warming	You Win Big	You lose very little
Live as if Humans Do Not Cause Global Warming	Everyone Else But Me Loses Big	You lose very little

Seems like wishful thinking to me.