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op Goes the New Year: Popover Sciencehe champagne cork wasnt theonly thing popping at our house on New Years Eve. Our low-key, stay-at-home festivities included The Greatopover Experiment. Armed with eggs, milk, flour, butter, and dashes of salt and thyme, I conducted my own kitchen chemistry research m

the Time Lords gastronomic delight.ack in November, while giving a talk at Skepticon V in Missouri, we had a lovely dinner at a local steakhouse, which served freshly bakedopovers instead of the usual sourdough rolls. A popover is a puffed-up, eggy type of roll that is hollow, crispy on the outside and deliciously mnd airy on the inside. They make terrific breakfast fare with butter and jam, as well as an excellent dinner accompaniment, especially with roeats and gravies. The popovers at the steakhouse were sooooo good! I resolved to make some myself; our waiter assured me they were incremple and he made them at home all the time. (We take turns manning the kitchen in our house as our crazed schedules permit. The Time Loakes a mean osso buco. Me? I love to bake!)

o bright and early on the morning of New Years Eve, I whipped out my implements of construction:

ggs, butter, milk, and flour, plus a spiffy new popover pan.ooking is basically kitchen chemistry, and baking requires particular attention to mixing the ingredients in the correct proportions. The battopovers is pretty similar to crepe batter, except the latter produces ultra-thin flat pancakes. How do you get a high-domed puffy roll out of thme basic ingredients, and not a hint of yeast (the usual leavening agent used for bready things)?According to Busy Cooksat About.com, Yo

eed three things: good gluten formation, high heat, and a narrow, high container.s simple science: the liquid in the batter evaporates rapidly (thanks to the high heat) as it bakes and produces steam, which is trapped into aant bubble by the web of glutens, starches, and proteins also contained in the batter. Because that web forms so quickly, it prevents the steamom escaping, so the roll literally pops over (hence the name) without bursting, guided by the shape of the deep container cups. Lets breakcipe ingredients down for a bit more detail:2 cups all-purpose flour. Its important to use a high-protein flour for popovers, not a cake or pastry flour, because the low-protein varie

ont produce as rigid a gluten network. There are two key proteins in flour, glutenin and gliadin, and when you add liquid (see milk, below), two proteins combine into a new protein, gluten. Flour also contains starch (carbohydrates comprised of strings of glucose) that sets in responeat, providing more support for the batters structure during baking.elly Stewart, editor ofRoastmagazine,delved more deeply into this issueafter a failed attempt at baking cheesy gougeres, normally puffy exis one time, when they turned out as flat as cookies. It turns out she unwittingly used a low-protein flour. Apparently the labeling on vario

ours isnt especially precise; manufacturers round up or down quite a bit when it comes to assessing protein content. ewart consulted with Vanderbilt University biochemistry Shirley Corriher about this, who said the only way to find out for sure is to test you

our by putting 2 cups of flour in a bowl and stir while adding a cup of water. If you have a high-protein flour, its going to suck in water likeazy, Corriher told her, thereby forming a dough. Adds Stewart: Less protein-rich flour wont come together unless you add more flour.

6 eggs, lightly beaten. Popovers call for a lot of eggs: the liquid contributes to the steam released during baking, but mostly the eggs provts of protein for a firm structure to better trap that steam. The egg whites are the leavening agents: the proteins uncoil in response to heat anrce out moisture. The yolks act as an emulsifier, providing a smoother overall texture to the baked popovers.2 cups whole milk. Milk provides the main liquid component and also contains a sugar called lactose, which bonds to those two proteins

our to form gluten. As it evaporates during baking, it lets off steam, and this causes the batter to expand quickly in a hot oven. It also has prond starch to contribute to that all-important weblike structure.

1 teaspoon salt. According to MIT biochemistry Patti Christie another of Stewarts sources so many baking recipes call for a dash of conceal any bitter taste, and many cooks might not realize that it also aids in the formation of gluten Per Christie: Charged amino acids in

our are going to interact with the ions in the salt, and that helps line up the gluten fibers. (I addeda dash of thyme to my popover batter favor, but this is optional, and doesnt impact the chemistry.)4 tablespoons melted unsalted butter. There arent a lot of fats in popovers which doesnt make them particularly healthy, mind yo

ecause fats inhibit the formation of gluten, and with popovers you want that gluten (unlike for, say, scones, which contain tons of fats). But ta little bit of melted butter involved. Most of this gets spooned into the individual cups prior to baking, to ensure a crisp browned crust, withblespoon or so going into the batter.eres a trick a friend of mine revealed: once youve greased the popover pan and put a bit of melted butter in each cup, it s a good idea to brie

e-heat the pan until the butter sizzles a bit, then fill each cup halfway with batter before popping into the oven. Remember, that high heat is

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ally important to a quick formation of the gluten web for trapping in the steam, and the pre-heating is an effective way to make sure thisappens.l ready to pop into the oven!Finally,you need the right kind of pan. Sure, lots of folks use a standard cupcake tin, and they work just fine. But Im a sucker for new

ulinary toys theyre fun! and found a spiffynonstick popover panat Williams-Sonoma with six cups separated by rods, the better to let hrculate around each cup. (Ive used a scone pan from Williams-Sonoma for years, and it really does work well in terms of even heat distributnd nobody paid me to say that.)ut it all together, bake at 450 degrees for 15-20 minutes, then another 5-10 minutes at 325 degrees, and voila!

Whoa! Those suckers really popped!mportant note: the baking times in recipes are often estimates, since temperatures vary from oven to oven. Also, we have a gas oven, whichoesnt distribute heat as evenly (another reason specialty baking cans are helpful). The first batch, frankly, was a teensy bit over-crisp on theutside; I followed the recipe instructions to bake for 20 minutes at 450 degrees F before reducing the heat, and this proved a bit too long,

pecially since I preheated the pan. Our oven runs hot.Youve got to be a bit flexible when cooking or baking: your kitchen is your laboratorymetimes you have to run the experiment more than once to figure out what it takes to get optimal results.

he Time Lord didnt have any complaints. We wolfed them down pretty quickly and spent the rest of the day in a popover-induced food coma

mm! Served with whipped butter, raspberry preserves and peach amaretto jam.opovers are closely related to Yorkshire pudding, a traditional dish served in the United Kingdom and associated with the northern town oforkshire (although it didnt necessarily originate there; people seem to differ in their opinions on this score). Yorkshire pudding incorporatend fatty meat drippings from various roasts to produce what my fellow science blogger Joe Hanson called a meat donut on Twitter.he dish was usually eaten before the main course, since it filled people up so the more expensive meats could feed more diners. Wikipediarected me to this 1737 recipe for dripping pudding in a book calledThe Whole Duty of a Womanby A Lady and one William Kenrick:ake a good batter for pancakes; put in a hot toss-pan over the fire with a bit of butter to fry the bottom a little then put the pan and butter

nder a shoulder of mutton, instead of a dripping pan, keeping frequently shaking it by the handle and it will light and savoury, and fit to tp when your mutton is enough; then turn it in a dish and serve it hot. he British take their Yorkshire pudding seriously. Back in 2008, the Royal Society of Chemistryactually issued a rulingon theprecise definita Yorkshire pudding, namely, that it cant be less than four inches tall. This came out of an appeal to its members on behalf of an ex-patriat

orkshireman named Ian Lyness, who found he couldnt make a decent pudding in his new home in Boulder, Colorado probably because ogh altitude (baking, even boiling water, is tricky in such regions because of the change in air pressure). Mr. Lyness, you see, is a purist:use batter mix that I pick up on my trips back to Blighty and my mums old Pyrex dish I do not go for the silly little ones on the plate witerything else, but a traditional, big long pudding. Colemans English mustard is also essential accompaniment, I find. ButI have beenruggling badly here. Sundays from my kitchen window here I can enjoy the sight of rearing snow-capped mountains but on my plate therpologetic little hillocks.he Royal Society couldnt just let him suffer, so they sent out a call for help to its members, thousands of whom work in the food and beveragdustry, and a fellow Yorkshireman, chemist John Emsley answered that call. Emsley also has strong feelings about what makes for a proper

orkshire pudding. I have seen many grim results from people who have tried to get their Yorkshires to rise. These are carbohydrates + H2otein + NaCl + lipids. Some amateurs even place the batter in the fridge first. What kind of foolish act is that?

msley is right on the refrigeration score. The batter for Yorkshire pudding and popovers mustntbe chilled. Adding cold eggs to butter ugar means they wont combine correctly. Chilling the batter actually causes the ingredients to separate again, until you warm it back up to rmperature and apply a brisk whisking to recombine them.

irst Meteor Shower of 2013 Peaks This Weekhe Quandrantid meteor shower should put on a show late Wednesday and early Thursday. The first meteor shower of 2013 will kick off the ght sky events this week, giving stargazers a chance to ring in the New Year with a celestial fireworks display.

heQuadrantid meteor showeris an annual meteor shower every January. While this year's "shooting star" show is not expected to outshine the morespectacular meteor showers of 2012, it may give stargazers with clear, dark skies a great start to the New Year.

Those who brave the cold might see up to 40 meteors per hour, although moonlight will make faint meteors harder to spot," officials with theubble Space Telescope explained in a January skywatching video guide.he waning gibbous moon will be out in full force during the shower's peak, but skywatchers in dark areas of the Northern Hemisphere durinee hours of Thursday morning might still get a decent show.cientists suspect that the meteors of the Quadrantids are debris from the asteroid 2003 EH1 the same source of the Geminid meteor showvery December. The asteroid itself may be a chunk from a shattered comet that broke into pieces several hundred years ago, NASA officials sstatement.he Quadrantid meteor shower occurs when the Earth passes through a stream of debris from the comet. The fragments slam into the atmosp90,000 mph (144,841 kph) and burn up 50 miles (80.5 km) above the planet in a dazzling display.

he meteor shower is named for the outdated Quadrans constellation, which is no longer recognized by astronomers, NASA officials said.Located between the constellations Bootes and Draco, Quadrans represents an early astronomical instrument used to observe and plot stars,dded.owever, the constellation was still relevant in 1825, when themeteor showerwas first documented by astronomers.omputational research in the era of open access: Standards and best practiceshis is an opinion piece I wrote for a new planned journal on open computational research that for one reason or another failed to take off.opefully the journal will be resurrected or another will take its place since this is an important topic. Simulation and modeling have now

ecome robust and frequent paradigms in almost every scientific endeavor and their continued relevance and use will depend on holdingmputational results to the same standards that are routinely applied to theoretical and experimental work. My piece tries to ask howmputational research can be communicated most effectively and honestly in an age of open scientific publishing. Feedback will be mostelcome since this is necessarily going to be a community endeavor.ew ways of doing science demand new standardsthe last three decades or so, along with theory and experiment, modeling and simulation have become enshrined as the third leg in the

ethodology of science[1]. Although not as hallowed in its history as theory and experiment, modeling is now widely used to complement accasionally supplement the results of theoretical and experimental investigations. As science has become both more complex and moreultidisciplinary, it has been essential to resort to models to explain, understand and predict. Many of the most pressing and exciting problemodern science, from understanding the brain to simulating biological networks to mapping the large-scale structure of the cosmos, involve

mplex, multifactorial phenomena that are not amenable to first-principles solutions. Analyzing such problems entails a judicious mix of rig

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eorizing, statistical analysis and empirical guesswork, so it is inevitable that model building will play an increasingly important role ineciphering the workings of these real-world physical, biological and engineered systems.s with any philosophy of doing science, modeling has to conform to the time-honored principles and constraints that have contributed to moiences enormous growth and practical utility over the last five hundred years or so. Foremost among these constraints is the accurate andproducible communication of results which lies at the foundation of scientific inquiry. Accuracy is essential for understanding the mechanisorkings of a particular method and its causal connections to the observed result. Reproducibility is at the heart of the scientific method, a baquirement without which it becomes impossible to trust and validate any scientific study. As modeling and simulation have become mainstaodern scientific research, they have brought with them unique challenges pertaining to both these methodological aspects.alileo provided an early and striking instance of reproducibility in modern science when he constructed his telescope and made groundbreakbservations of the moons of Jupiter[2]. As the story goes, he painstakingly made several copies of the instrument and gave them to the crowneads of Europe so that they too could see what he saw. In Galileos work we witness two cardinal aspects of reproducibility. One is the duplic

the instrument of research; the other is the duplication of the results themselves, in this case in the form of observations.oth these metaphors lend themselves well to the demands for accuracy and reproducibility in simulation techniques. The instrumental analo

odeling would be the precise form of the hardware and software used for the study. The observational analog would be the specific method oathering, processing and presenting the data so that it appears the same to every observer. If we are to accurately reproduce and verify the re

modeling, we need to have standards for addressing both these aspects of data generation, analysis and presentation. Unfortunately, premiurnals still have to institute standard policies for code submission.Science for instance requires its authors to supply the actualde[3]whileNaturerequires only a description detailed enough to allow others to write their own code to do similar analysis[4]which cancipe for ambiguity. Ironically, as the use of simulation software has proliferated through graphical user interfaces and ease of operation, it h

ecome all too easy for non-expert users to treat the software as a black box and not worry about communicating under-the-hood details. Thecreasing availability of open-source programs and the undoubtedly propitious employment of simulation by experimentalists makes the mahaving standards and venues for the communication of computational results a particularly urgent one.

ven subtle changes in simulation protocols need to be trackedrst and foremost in this endeavor is a requirement for stating as many details of the hardware and software as possible. An anecdote from m

wn field of computational chemistry illustrates the reasons for doing this. A past research advisor of mine wanted to replicate a modeling stuone with a particularly interesting molecule so he contacted the scientist who had originally performed the study and processed the systemcording to the formers protocol. He appropriately adjusted the parameters and ran the experiment. To his surprise he got a very different re repeated the protocol several times but consistently saw the wrong result. Finally he called up the original researcher. The two went over th

otocol a few times and finally realized that the problem lay in a minor but overlooked detail the two scientists were using slightly differenrsions of the modeling software. This wasnt even a new version, just an update, but for some reason it was enough to significantly change tsults.

he anecdote clearly demonstrates a need for making clear every aspect of the software as well as its implementation. This includes versions,pdates, patches, operating system, input parameters, pre-processing steps and most crucially, expert tweaking. This last aspect is a crucial ond deserves some enumeration. Modeling can be as much of an art as a science. Expert modelers rarely use software in a default, out-of-the-carnation. Instead virtually every scientist doing computation tweaks and massages the program to varying extents in order to customize it e specific system under consideration. Much of this tweaking is based on expert knowledge, experience and intuition and can consist of mul

xes, including the incorporation of experimental data, the transformation of the algorithm into one used for a similar system in the past,dditional parameterization of parts of the algorithm to make it more conducive for the system under consideration and a hodgepodge of otheon-standard and often counterintuitive modifications. At least a few of these are inspired by guesswork and intuition, qualities which have aeen important players in scientific success. But most tweaks of this kind are never going to be apparent in the original code and not even in imments.ow then could we incorporate these essential but rather intangible parts of the scientific process into the communication of research resultsartial solution would be to make log files available along with the original code and software specifications. Some commercial programs alrea

ave such facilities built into their user interfaces. The drug discovery modeling suite from Schrodinger[5]for instance has, in addition to its uocess log files, a command script editor which keeps track of all the manipulations and minor tweaks that the user performs in the environmthe global user interface. Since multiple software applications can be accessed from this interface, the process valuably keeps track ofanipulations both within and across different modules. The command script can in turn be run by anyone with access to the software, and ifcluded with a list of inputs, it should faithfully reproduce the original algorithm. Having researchers upload such scripts along with the origde will allow a more or less accurate duplication of the protocol, compared to instructions in the English language. In a more general sense,uld also be meta-scripts which keeps track of all software and hardware details and user manipulations. Such scripts would ideally encapsu

comprehensive recipe for the entirety of the simulation protocol. In the absence of such global log files, insisting on application-specific log ould be a good start.ust like software, hardware should also be explicitly described. This is especially true these days when many computations are run on parallestributed and cloud-based systems which may well present a varying mix of hardware configurations. An accurate representation of hardwa

hould state details about processors, memory, graphic cards, pre-installed operating systems and monitors and should ideally also include veames. Naturally, the amount of detail would depend on the nature of a particular study. For instance, a GPU-intensive study would have to lany details of the graphic processing card as possible, while a more general study may not be constrained by this requirement. Ultimately,though it would not be possible for every reader to duplicate all hardware details, even knowing that one is using a different configuration al

ne to possible differences in output. What would truly be useful however would be to categorize these differences as a possible guide to futurmulations, and this will not be possible until controlled experiments are run in which the results from two simulations differing only in theirardware usage are compared. For a journal specializing in open computational research, there could be a separate section (perhaps online) wers can document interesting differences in results stemming from different hardware architecture.particularly valuable piece of information for duplication of computational studies would be the provision of positive and negative controls.ntrols have been a longstanding requirement for publication, especially in the biological community[6]and more generally in experimentalience, but the computational community doesnt seem to have adopted them on a large scale. In case of computational studies, running thegorithm in question on a test system would provide confidence in the integrity of the protocol. The test system could be a well-studied one fhich an accurate answer is known for instance by way of experiment and has been replicated several times. Any new algorithm that failsovide this answer would be suspect. Then, even if the real system described in a paper cannot be exactly duplicated by another worker eithe

ecause of its complexity or due to lack of resources, he or she could have confidence in the workings of the procedure by duplicating its succee robust test system which would serve as a control. A test system as a negative control would serve a similar purpose.ood models should be explicitly tagged and showcased.ataloging all this information is a challenge in itself, and a possible way to do it would be to build a central repository of code that contains aariety of different protocols along with their attendant parameters. As a recent article inScience suggests, this repository could be called

odeMedCentral[7]. Just as PubMedCentral provides the details of scientific publications, CodeMedCentral could provide supporting softwa

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nd hardware details for every published study. Carefully annotating the website and categorizing information on it would be important forcurate reproduction of models. TheScience article also suggests tagging articles with a qualifier that indicates the degree of confidence in thudy based on whether it was successfully reproduced or not. Studies which have been successfully duplicated could be tagged with a R qualhis policy has already been fruitfully adopted by the journalBiostatistics[8], which indicates that the possible stigma of having your article neing tagged is not dissuading eager scientists from publishing their articles in the journal, preferably with an R stamp.At the very least, suctegorizing of articles according to the extent of code submission and validation will allow researchers to realistically judge the integrity of thudy, especially in comparison studies.

We would be remiss in discussing standards for code distribution and reproduction without addressing the problem of proprietary code.epending on the context, it may or may not be possible to divulge all details of the input and the precise methods of analysis. This is especialse in industries like the pharmaceutical and aerospace industries. While the constraints on proprietary code inevitably make accurate data

uplication difficult, even proprietary data can be amenable to partial reproducibility. In a cheminformatics study for instance, molecularructures which are proprietary could be encoded into special organization-specific formats that are hard to decode. One could still run a set odeling protocols on this cryptic data set and generate statistics without revealing the identity of the structures. The duplication of the statis

ould provide confidence in the integrity of the study. Naturally there will have to be safeguards against the misuse of any such evaluation buay not be very hard to implement.resentation, presentation, presentation.s important as the accurate description of software and hardware is, it will fail without a uniform standard for the analysis and presentationata. This is a problem that typically plagues every field at its conception, when different researchers choose to present the results of their stuing their favorite statistical technique, data processing software and graphical depiction. Such a presentation may hide as much detail as itveals since it often relegates outliers, failed results and inherent biases to the side. Not only does this wide variability in analysis and reportiislead but it also crucially impedes the comparison and meta-analysis of different studies, making it very difficult to vindicate successfulchniques and discard unsuccessful ones. What is paramount is the establishment and reporting of standard benchmarks and metrics. A cogample is provided from the field of virtual screening wherein algorithms are tested for their ability to identify potentially valuable new drugndidates[9]. The confusion arising from the lack of common protocols for setting up test systems and running the relevant algorithms on thas compounded by the dissimilar metrics used for assessment, some of which artificially inflated the significance of the results. It is only in tst few years that we have seen the proposal and use of careful benchmarks for both setting up and assessing virtual screening studies usingnbiased statistical metrics[10],[11].goes without saying that an accurate description of the system under consideration and the methods used for analysis, including a proper

esentation of statistical software, methods and error bars, is key to faithful reproduction of the study. In case of statistics-heavy modeling, tsults should ideally also include an estimation of model uncertainty, expressed through figures establishing the numerical accuracy of estimnsitivity of the model to boundary conditions, confidence intervals etc. The establishment of these standard metrics for reporting studies ca

e overemphasized; without them it would be inherently impossible to separate the true scientific wheat from the chaff of illusory success.ltimately the need for making computational details available is no different from the need from making any other theoretical or experimentetails available. Modeling and simulation are undoubtedly going to play an increasingly important role in scientific research. Gaining an accuea of their pitfalls and promises will be paramount for accurately assessing their place in the pantheon of future scientific inquiry.eproducibility will illuminate the path.

Gratitude" Map Invites Users to Accentuate the Positivenew online map encourages users to document and celebrate the good things in life, a practice that some research suggests may bolster

mmune system function and increase feelings of well-being. As the new year begins, good things, however small, are happening.omeone's loved one got a new job in San Francisco. In Charlottesville, a canceled reservation allowed someone else to get a seat on a sold-ouain and arrive in time for a wedding. The storybook characters Pooh and Piglet made someone in East Sussex, England, happy, and in Colorprings,ever-reliable baconbrightened someone's day.rateful people have posted these bright spots on theWorld Gratitude Map, a crowd-sourcing project with an uplifting mission.

That is what drove the World Gratitude Map, the idea of giving people the chance to create small moments for themselves to make themselvech through their own action," said Jacqueline Lewis, one of the project's creators. Lewis is a writer with an interest in resilience, otherwise kbouncing back.

he compares the map to a journaling exercise in which a person writes down three things for which he or she is grateful every day. Over timeid, this practice shifts a person's mindset. [7 Tips to Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude]t is moving your mind over to this place where I think we should all be, which is to keep our eyes on all that is good, beautiful and possible inorld," she said.he science of feeling goodositive emotionsare challenging to study, because they are difficult to define, "and anything that is hard to define is hard to study," said Emimon-Thomas, science director at the University of California, Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center.spite of the challenges, psychologists have begun collecting evidence of the benefits of positive emotions, including gratitude. Psychologist

obert Emmons of the University of California, Davis, has studied gratitudeand defines it in two parts: First, gratitude is an affirmation ofoodness in the world, and second, gratitude requires the recognition that the sources of this goodness exists outside of individuals.mmons' work suggests not only that gratitude is associated with greater well-being, but that the sentiment and those benefits can be cultivator instance, a study he and a colleague published in 2003 showed that those who recorded things that had made them grateful had an impronse of well-being, slept better and more, felt a greater sense of optimism and connectedness to others. [7 Things That Will Make You Happy

Results suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits," Emmons and colleague MichaelcCulloughwrote in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. They noted that the benefits are most pronounced when compared to acus on complaints and hassles.general, research has associated the regular practice of gratitude with physical benefits, such a stronger immune system, and higher levels oad positive emotions as well as social benefits, such as being more forgiving, outgoing and feeling less lonely and isolated, Emmons writest of benefits compiled by the center is long.)

haring with others is an important aspect of gratitude, other research indicates. Sonja Lyubomirsky, of the University of California, Riversideeoplewrite letters expressing thanksto someone who had a positive impact on them. Some sent their letters to the person; others kept theirtters. Those who shared their letters experienced stronger mental-health benefits than those who just wrote the letter, Simon-Thomas said.he center, in collaboration with UC Davis, has awarded $3 million in grants to improve thescientific understanding of gratitude, includingojects that examine the biology of gratitude.

atron saint for resiliencehe remarkable story of one woman's life and death refined Lewis' interest in resilience and inspired the World Gratitude Map.

guess the most amazing thing about my mom is she lived a very small life" she wasn't famous, never had a great job or money, never madgh-profile accomplishments "but people loved her," Lewis said of her mother Joan Zawoiski Lewis, otherwise known as Joannie from Pri

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn8http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn8http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn8http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn9http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn9http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn9http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn10http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn10http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn11http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn11http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn11http://www.livescience.com/23476-bacon-pork-shortage.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/23476-bacon-pork-shortage.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/23476-bacon-pork-shortage.htmlhttps://gratitude.crowdmap.com/https://gratitude.crowdmap.com/https://gratitude.crowdmap.com/http://www.livescience.com/25900-7-tips-gratitude-happiness.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/25900-7-tips-gratitude-happiness.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/25900-7-tips-gratitude-happiness.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/15409-overcoming-depression-positive-thinking.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/15409-overcoming-depression-positive-thinking.htmlhttp://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_goodhttp://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_goodhttp://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_goodhttp://www.livescience.com/17511-7-happy.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/17511-7-happy.htmlhttp://greatergood.berkeley.edu/pdfs/GratitudePDFs/6Emmons-BlessingsBurdens.pdfhttp://greatergood.berkeley.edu/pdfs/GratitudePDFs/6Emmons-BlessingsBurdens.pdfhttp://greatergood.berkeley.edu/pdfs/GratitudePDFs/6Emmons-BlessingsBurdens.pdfhttp://www.livescience.com/9824-5-happier.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/9824-5-happier.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/9824-5-happier.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/17145-gratefulness-benefits-thanksgiving.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/17145-gratefulness-benefits-thanksgiving.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/17145-gratefulness-benefits-thanksgiving.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/17145-gratefulness-benefits-thanksgiving.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/9824-5-happier.htmlhttp://greatergood.berkeley.edu/pdfs/GratitudePDFs/6Emmons-BlessingsBurdens.pdfhttp://www.livescience.com/17511-7-happy.htmlhttp://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_goodhttp://www.livescience.com/15409-overcoming-depression-positive-thinking.htmlhttp://www.livescience.com/25900-7-tips-gratitude-happiness.htmlhttps://gratitude.crowdmap.com/http://www.livescience.com/23476-bacon-pork-shortage.htmlhttp://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn11http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn10http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn9http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/01/02/computational-research-in-the-era-of-open-access-standards-and-best-practices/#_edn8

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he nickname refers to the small borough in Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania where Joan Lewis was born. "She retained that small-townmplicity," Jacqueline Lewis told LiveScience.oan Lewis' life had no shortage of hardship. Her brother was killed in an accident, her sister committed suicide, she nearly died from a massiemorrhage while giving birth, her husband abused her and her children, and on May 7, 2011, she diedof pancreatic cancer.ut it was how her mother died that caught Lewis attention. When Joan Lewis was diagnosed, shewas told she would have weeks to live.

My mom says, 'Oh don't make a fuss, just do something nice for somebody today and tell them to think of me,'" Lewis said.amily and friends throughout the worldreported doing good deedsin her name, including feeding the homeless, translating instructions foron-English speaker, helping a stranger pay for groceries, and other small acts.While dying, her focus on these good deeds done by others kept her alive with end-stage pancreaticcancerpast all reasonable prognosis," Lew

id. "The [World Gratitude Map] gives the rest of us a chance to move our eyes in the same direction, perhaps derive the same benefit."er mother lived 20 months after her diagnosis. Over this time, "I had a chance to marvel about what it was about my mom that made herfferent than everybody else," Lewis said.

he noted that even during doctors' visits while she was dying, Joan Lewis found a way to move her attention "to what is good and beautiful a

ossible in the world, and away from what is dismal," Lewis said.he just created a good life," Lewis said.ould Transformer-level Batteries Shield the Grid from the Next Super Storm?his is a guest post by Robert Fares, a graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin researching the benefits of grid energy storageart ofPecan Street Inc.songoingsmart grid demonstration project. Robert is contributing a series of guest posts discussing grid storagechnologies, and how storage could benefit the electric grid. You can read the first and second posts in his serieshereandhere.uring the last days of October 2012, what has become colloquially known as Super Storm Sandy plowed into the eastern United States. The sas one of the most damaging in U.S. history, causing over 250 fatalities and more than $65 billion in damage. Our fragile electric gridacerbated the impact of the storm. High-speed winds tore down power lines and flooding damaged electric substations, causing power failuseventeen states and leaving over one million electric customers without power.

ew Jersey and New York were most affected. In New Jersey, over 500,000 PSE&G electric customers and over 400,000 Jersey Central Poweght customers were without power for more than six days. In New York, over 280,000 Long Island Power Authority customers and over 185

onsolidated Edison customers were without electricity for the same period.he present grids top-down architecture makes it especially vulnerable to storms. Even highly localized damage can affect electricity customever an entire region. Dr. Alexis Kwasinski, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, studies how natural disasters affect power and

mmunications systems. Hisanalysis of hurricane Ikeshows just how vulnerable the grid is to damage. Although most of the gulf coast regiotle damage from Ike, a vast swath of the region lost power for more than a week after the storm.

espite its present limitations, the grid is showing signs of a transition to a more distributed and robust architecture. Rooftop solar generatioe United States has grown enormously since 2000. The National Renewable Energy LaboratorysOpen PV Projecttracks the installation of

anels in the United States. ItsMarket Mappershows the history of photovoltaic installs and prices for all 50 states. To date, more than 168,0oftop solar systems have been installed in the United States. Thestate rankingsshow that New Jersey and New York have the third and fourghest number of solar installs, respectively. New Jersey has 7,602 systems installed with a total capacity of nearly 360 MW, and New York h494 systems with a total capacity of 87 MW.id New Jersey and New Yorks strides towards a distributed grid make a difference during Sandy? Unfortunately, no. Althoughrooftop solar

urvived the worst of Sandy, solar panels dont work when the grid is down. Without the rest of the grid, there is no power to back up deficitslar production and nowhere to send excess solar power, so solar panels cant provide safe, high quality electricity. Thus,IEEE Standard47forces photovoltaic panels to totally disconnect during an outage.

dding distributed battery systems to the grid could change this. A number oftransformer-level battery systemswill be installed in northeastolumbus, OH as part ofAmerican Electric Powers gridSmart initiative.In addition to applications like load shifting and frequency regulatio

merican Electric Powers community energy storage could work with rooftop photovoltaic panels to formmicrogridsduring an electric outransformer-level batteries would charge and discharge to instantaneously balance local solar power production with electric demand, so thatermittent solar generation could be turned into high quality power. Coupled with an energy management system, these isolated transformevel microgrids could be controlled to power vital loads using available solar electricity indefinitely, or until the rest of the grid recovers.

With many utilities investing inincentivesfor rooftop solar generation, it would be mindful for them to weigh the costs and benefits of communergy storage. Community energy storage would increase the value of existing solar assets during an outage, and help utilities shift solarectricity production to when it is most needed. Especially in regions like New York and New Jersey, wherethey are already planning for the ajor storm, community storage could work with existing, plentiful rooftop solar to make the grid more resilient, and lessen the impact of the

uper storm.hoto credit: The photos are provided courtesy of Dr. Alexis Kwasinksi, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineerine University of Texas at Austin. Learn more about his ongoing work at hisresearch webpage.

arnessing Tornados for Energy and More: The Radical Projects Funded by Peter Thiel

he eccentric PayPal billionaire doesn't just invest in Silicon Valley tech companies. He's giving money for crazy projects that do everything f

et power from the weather to find ways to program human cells like computers. The eccentric PayPal billionaire doesn't just invest in Silicon

alley tech companies. He's giving money for crazy projects that do everything from get power from theweatherto find ways to program hum

lls like computers.

aypal co-founder Peter Thiel isn't the kind of guy who invests in mindless smartphone apps that make lots of cash. He's not anti-software by

eans; he has sunk millions intoaccounting software company Xero. But Thiel also doles out cash to companies doing things that aren't just

orld-changing--they seem insane (in a good way). Could we expect anything less from the guy that'sfunding a floating startup incubatorfor

reign entrepreneurs?

hiel's latest investment--a $300,000 bet-- is inAVEtec, a startup from Canadian engineer Louis Michaud that wants to harness the energy

eated by tornados. Michaud doesn't want to chase tornados a laTwister; he plans to generate man-made tornados that can be safely switch

necessary.

ouis Michaud Michaud's design features warm air blown into a hollow cylinder, where it turns into a "controlled vortex" (aka a tornado) tha

upported by the temperature difference between the heated air in the cylinder and the atmosphere. No carbon emissions are produced, no en

orage is required, the device can produce 200 megawatts of electrical power (the same as a coal power plant) and power can potentially be

oduced at just three cents per kilowatt hour.

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llion-in-accounting-software-company-xero/http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/29/peter-thiel-and-existing-investors-put-another-49-million-in-accounting-software-company-xero/http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678902/blueseed-a-floating-startup-incubator-off-the-california-coasthttp://www.fastcoexist.com/1678902/blueseed-a-floating-startup-incubator-off-the-california-coasthttp://www.fastcoexist.com/1678902/blueseed-a-floating-startup-incubator-off-the-california-coasthttp://vortexengine.ca/index.shtmlhttp://vortexengine.ca/index.shtmlhttp://vortexengine.ca/index.shtmlhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117998/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117998/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117998/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117998/http://vortexengine.ca/index.shtmlhttp://www.fastcoexist.com/1678902/blueseed-a-floating-startup-incubator-off-the-california-coasthttp://techcrunch.com/2012/11/29/peter-thiel-and-existing-investors-put-another-49-million-in-accounting-software-company-xero/http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=weatherhttp://users.ece.utexas.edu/~kwasinski/research.htmlhttp://www.npr.org/2012/12/13/167075395/new-york-planners-prep-for-a-new-normal-of-powerful-stormshttp://www.npr.org/2012/12/13/167075395/new-york-planners-prep-for-a-new-normal-of-powerful-stormshttp://www.dsireusa.org/solar/index.cfm?ee=0&RE=0&spf=1&st=1http://galvinpower.org/microgridshttp://www.aep.com/about/IssuesAndPositions/Distribution/SmartGrid/CES.aspxhttp://www.gridsmartohio.com/http://www.sandc.com/products/energy-storage/ces.asphttp://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc21/1547/1547_index.htmlhttp://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc21/1547/1547_index.htmlhttp://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/rooftop-solar-stood-up-to-sandy/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=112112http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/rooftop-solar-stood-up-to-sandy/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=112112https://openpv.nrel.gov/rankingshttp://openpv.nrel.gov/visualization/index.phphttps://openpv.nrel.gov/indexhttp://users.ece.utexas.edu/~kwasinski/ikegrid.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/31/nyregion/where-the-power-is-out-and-returning.htmlhttp://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2012/12/26/guest-post-the-value-of-short-term-energy-storage-for-renewable-energy/http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2012/12/19/guest-post-can-we-store-electricity-to-transform-the-grid/http://www.pecanstreet.org/projects/smart-grid-demonstration/http://www.pecanstreet.org/http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2013/01/02/could-transformer-level-batteries-shield-the-grid-from-the-next-super-storm/http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=cancerhttp://www.caringbridge.org/visit/joanniefrompringle/journal/6/createdAt/aschttp://www.livescience.com/8845-pancreatic-cancer-shown-surprisingly-slow-killer.html

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ow Michaud just needs to build the proof of concept--a project that will be helped along by Thiel's cash. He's working on a 131 foot-tall, 26-f

-diameter prototype at Lambton College in Ontario.

VEtec is one of 12 startups that Thiel is funding throughBreakout Labs, a program of the Thiel Foundation that the organization calls "a

volutionary, revolving funding model through which successful projects fund the next generation of daring scientific exploration." Some of o

her favorites are listed below.

odern Meadow An alligator purse that doesn't require killing an animal. A burger that keeps cows intact. That's the far-out dream ofModer

eadow, a startup that could have test tube leather ready for large-scale production in five years. To make leather, the startup biopsies a livin

nimal, isolates the necessary cells, multiplies them in a bioreactor, centrifuges them into spheres of thousands of cells, layers and fuses cell

ggregates, matures the cells in a bioreactor, and harvests the skin tissue. All for your guilt-free leather accessory.

At this point, the goal is to create products that are both biomimetic--very, very similar to real leather--and also to look at ways that we can

mprove upon it and make products that are superior to traditional leather," CEO Andras Forgacs told Co.Existin an interviewearlier this yea

own the line, Modern Meadow will move into test tube meat. Why buy a cow when you can get the meat from a lab?spirotec This company has the ambitious goal of creating a universal system for gathering and identifying airborne toxins. The research for

oject is being conducted at the Northwestern University Department of Biomedical Engineering.

spirotecis working on two different models: a portable air collector that collects samples which can be analyzed in a lab (available in 2013),

more-ambitious sounding next generation portable collector that allows for real-time monitoring. The Inspirotec website explains that "It is

ased on well-established biological detection methods and connects with smart devices allowing for mobile applications." Funding from Bre

ill be used to create a proof-of-concept device.

mmusoft Corporation This startup, founded by a computersecurityexpert, is taking a programmer's approach to disease treatment: the com

ants to program patients' cells to become tiny drug factories. The websiteexplains: "Within 50 years, we will program human cells like we

ogram computers. Envision a stand-alone device capable of modifying a patient's cells to manufacture biologic-based therapies for a wide ra

disease including cardiovascular disease, cancers, infectious diseases, and lysosomal storage diseases. Programming a patient's cells to

anufacture their own treatments could dramatically reduce therapy costs." With the price for certaincancertreatments hovering over $100,

er year, that's a big deal.Within 50 years, we will program human cells like we program computers. Immosoft is testing its methods first with a rare genetic disease cal

PS I. If the company is successful, it will program the human immune system to generate cells that secrete enzymes to treat the disease, firs

netically modified mice before moving on eventually to humans. Immusoft has already conducted a proof of concept for its treatment where

lls were modified from a healthy human to create antibodies that neutralize HIV.

rigos Biomedical Organ transplants are tricky, time-sensitive things--if an organ isn't transplanted within hours, there'sa decent chance it w

jected. That doesn't bode well for patients, who may have a perfectly good organ waiting for them--on the other side of the world. Arigos

omedical is working on high-speed methods to cool organs for long-term preservation. One day, patients may be able to receive organs that

een preserved for months or even longer.

rigos doesn't have a website (that we can find, anyway), but co-founder Tanya Jones told theSilicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal: "We

one all the math that we can do to prove that this method will work, ... now it's a matter of actually beginning to use organs. We are hoping to

asically have all the pictures and all the proof necessary." First up: testing the technology with animal organs.

ppy New Year: Pick Up a New Skill

w Years Eve is a time for reflection about the year that passed and a time to set goals for the future. Should we keep doing what are we doing, or should we tackle new challenges? If yven, or twelve, or twenty, its easy to think about new ambitions: learn Spanish, learn to paint, do a flip off your skateboard. But what if youre older?r me, much of the past year revolved around discussions prompted by a book of mine that was published in January, called Guitar Zero, about the science of learning and my own adv

learning guitar at the age of forty. The basic premise was that the scientific evidence for a widespread view called the critical-period effect was far weaker than widely supposed.e critical-period effect is the idea that you cant do certain thingslike learn a language, or learn an instrumentunless you start early in life. Its a discouraging thought foranyone paolescence. But, recently, the evidence for this idea had started to unwind. Barn owls have, for years, been a model illustration of critical periods. Young barn owls could readily adapt to

virtual-reality experiment in which a prism distorted their perception of the world; older owls couldnt. Or so the textbooks all say. But Brian Knudsen, a neuroscientist at Stanford, kep

obing and found that there was, in fact, a simple way of teaching old owls new tricks: by breaking up a difficult job into small, bite-size pieces. Old owls couldnt learn as fast as young

t they could come a long way ifthey took things incrementally, rather than all in one bite. I fancied myself as an adult owl and did the best I could to tackle the guitar bit-a-bit, keeping

pectations low and my persistence high.

hile I was writing, I imagined that I was alone in my quest; the conceit was that I was going to practice for ten thousand hours, because nobody else my age would ever be willing to invend of time. But in the past year, Ive been deluged with e -mails from other adult learners. A journalist wrote to say that her seventy-six-year-old father had learned the guitar late in life, d just told her that he was starting a band with his friends called The Three Grandfathers. In Portland I met (and jammed with) Rick King, an engineer who was keeping an Excel spre

cking every hour of his practice, having returned to the guitar in his sixties after surviving a heart attack. Looking back, it was silly to think that there was anything unique about what I

ing.e central premise, however, turned out to be more right than I imagined: the suggestive evidence that I saw from the studies on barn owls was taken to a new level in human studies. Co

example, amblyopia, another long-standing example in the literature on critical periods. Amblyopia is a visual disorder in which the two ey es dont properly align; sometimes its calle

e. The standard medical advice is to treat your child early, by getting them to wear an eye patch over the good eye (in order to strengthen the weak one). If you dont treat the problem

u can just forget about ever fixing it. Just after my book went to press, however, Dennis Levi, the dean of the School of Optometry at Berkeley, conducted a brilliantly simple study thatsy to conduct, yet would have seemed like a waste of time to anybody steeped in critical-period dogma. Levi and his collaborator stuck eye patches on the good eye of adult amblyopics

teen to sixty-one, whom everyone else had written off on the presumption that they could not learn anything new. He then set his subjects down at a video gamea first person shooter

edal of Honor: Pacific Assault, to be exactand told them to have fun. Levi found that his subjects got better at virtually every aspect of visual perception he could measure. It wasnt t

s too late for adults to overcome amblyopia, it was that the myth of critical periods had kept people from trying.

arning a new skill can also have unexpected benefits. Recently, the neuroscientist Nina Kraus published a pile of new studies that show that learning about music can facilitate getting b

her things, like language skills and hearing in noisy placesand can do so in ways that last for decades. (Her first studies were with children; other studies are now in progress to see if tme holds true for lessons taken by adults). Music training can help the brain better decompose the elements of soundin ways that Kraus was able to directly measure in the laband s

prove working memory, too. And, in another recent study, a team of Canadian researchers found evidence that a mere twenty days of music lessons can lead to better scores on a test ofelligence.oreover, whether or not picking up a new skill makes you smarter, it can certainly make you happier. We cant all be rock stars. But, as the clich goes, the journey can be every bit as

warding as the destination.New Years resolution shouldnt just be about becoming great at something. It should be about becoming a better or happier or more fulfilled person. Whether your dream is to play piaok steaksous-vide, or finally learn to speak French, the lesson from all this new research is clear: there is no better time than now to take on something new. Happy New Year!

https://www.breakoutlabs.org/https://www.breakoutlabs.org/https://www.breakoutlabs.org/http://modernmeadow.com/http://modernmeadow.com/http://modernmeadow.com/http://modernmeadow.com/http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680605/in-five-years-you-may-be-wearing-a-lab-grown-leather-jackethttp://www.fastcoexist.com/1680605/in-five-years-you-may-be-wearing-a-lab-grown-leather-jackethttp://www.fastcoexist.com/1680605/in-five-years-you-may-be-wearing-a-lab-grown-leather-jackethttp://inspirotec.com/technology/http://inspirotec.com/technology/http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=securityhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=securityhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=securityhttp://immusoft.com/http://immusoft.com/http://immusoft.com/http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=cancerhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=cancerhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=cancerhttp://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2011/10/07/timing-can-be-everything-in-organ-donation/http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2011/10/07/timing-can-be-everything-in-organ-donation/http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2011/10/07/timing-can-be-everything-in-organ-donation/http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2011/10/07/timing-can-be-everything-in-organ-donation/http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/print-edition/2012/04/20/program-boosts-breakout-companies.html?page=allhttp://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/print-edition/2012/04/20/program-boosts-breakout-companies.html?page=allhttp://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/print-edition/2012/04/20/program-boosts-breakout-companies.html?page=allhttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v419/n6904/abs/nature01002.htmlhttp://www.soc.northwestern.edu/brainvolts/http://www.soc.northwestern.edu/brainvolts/http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v419/n6904/abs/nature01002.htmlhttp://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/print-edition/2012/04/20/program-boosts-breakout-companies.html?page=allhttp://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2011/10/07/timing-can-be-everything-in-organ-donation/http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2011/10/07/timing-can-be-everything-in-organ-donation/http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=cancerhttp://immusoft.com/http://www.scientificamerican.com/topic.cfm?id=securityhttp://inspirotec.com/technology/http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680605/in-five-years-you-may-be-wearing-a-lab-grown-leather-jackethttp://modernmeadow.com/http://modernmeadow.com/https://www.breakoutlabs.org/