AmSci sweep

The July-August issue of American Scientist is chock-full of interesting articles! For instance:

• Richard Seager of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory explains how “the notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth.” He does not question the obvious truth that England is far more temperate than New England (for instance, check the average temperatures in February). But is this the result of the famous Gulf Stream that picks up warm water around Mexico, briefly heads up the US East coast, then crosses over to western Europe, warming the atmosphere all the way? (After that, it has lost its heat and sinks, returning south halfway between the North American and European continents.)
  
  Seager began suspect something was fishy when he visited the North American northwest – Seattle and British Columbia—and noticed that they, like his native England, are far warmer during winter than their cross-ocean equivalents on the eastern edge of Asia (think about the Korean and Siberian winters). This is true despite the fact that oceanic currents in the Pacific are completely different from those in the Atlantic, and in particular there is no “Pacific Gulf Stream.”
  
  [By the way, Seager does not claim the ocean has no effect. He says the Gulf Stream is partly responsible for a warm Europe—after all, most myths contain a grain of truth—but it is not the whole story].
  
  So what are some other causes of the mild winters in Europe? Seager does climate modeling, and suggests that wind patterns play a significant role. In the North Atlantic, the mid-latitude westerlies veer south a bit, and then back north, rather than following the lines of latitude exactly. This “waviness” brings warm air from the south up to increase Europe’s temperature. And he even derives the source of this waviness: Conservation of angular momentum. This is why it applies across the Pacific as well as the Atlantic. And why it's not going away.
  
  He is not a fan of “sensationalist” journalism that suggests that a slowdown of thermohaline circulation will (soon) plunge Europe into an ice age. He states: “I would expect that any slowdown in thermohaline circulation would have a noticeable but not catastrophic effect on climate. [It] should bring on a cooling tendency of at most a few degrees across the North Atlantic – one that would most likely be overwhelmed by the warming caused by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases.”
  
  
• And then there is an article on something called constructal theory. This is a different approach to understanding macroscopic phenomena than the reductionist one often taken in traditional physics. The authors state: “Modern physics embarked on a course tailored to the principle that all things are built up from infinitesimal local effects, such as particle physics. Constructal theory is a jolt the other way, a means to rationalize macroscopic features, objectives, and behaviors…. For instance, locomotion can be considered to be a flow of mass from one location to another. Animals move on the surface of the Earth in the same way as rivers, winds, and oceanic currents. They seek and find paths and rhythms that allow them to move their mass the greatest distance per expenditure of useful energy while minimizing thermodynamic imperfections such as friction.”
  
  Wow! The article is about “constructing” locomotion in the air, on land, and in the water. At first, these can seem vastly different, but the researchers skillfully pull out the key features of such movements based on this concept of efficient flow. Suddenly a bird, a deer, and a dolphin look stunningly similar.
  
  What I find appealing about this—and here is where I take it beyond what the authors imply—is its resonance with the ideas of Taoism, qigong, and other philosophies that include a universal “flow” with which it is our job simply to connect. We don’t create the flow, we move with it—or at least that’s what we do if we want life to go smoothly. I suppose the fluffy version would be the California motto of “go with the flow,” but if you want a popular version that is perhaps less fluffy, think of the Star Wars concept of “The Force.”
  
  You don’t need physics to understand it, actually. Animals and children are much better attuned to it than adults who have been “educated” away from it. It’s that feeling of suchness that you get when you just know how to do something without any effort (or perhaps, using only effortless effort).
  
  One particularly beautiful expression of science is to observe and connect with the intrinsic flow of Nature. Constructal theory seems to reach for this beauty.
  
  
• Also interesting is an article about how sleep improves memory. The researchers showed that adequate sleep both before and after learning a task helps solidify the memory. You need to prepare your brain in advance and then let it rest and absorb the task afterward.
  
  Oh, and they checked whether caffeine is an adequate substitute – no way. So throw out the coffee, tea, and Coke. If you really want to learn that task, let it go and catch some Z’s.
  
  (And if you think you’re doing OK and this doesn’t really apply to you, they checked that too. People who are sleep-deprived tend to be much more deluded about how well they are performing. They believe they are doing fine, when in fact their performance is pretty poor. The authors note that this does not bode well for doctors, who often make key decisions on very little sleep—all the while believing they are fully competent.)
  
  
• And then there’s a whole article on the topology of soccer balls! And another one how to avoid shellfish poisoning (good for us sushi eaters).
  
  
• And this may be a science magazine, but Geoffrey Harpham – president and director of the National Humanities Center in Research Park – contributed an excellent editorial. Entitled “Science and the Theft of Humanity,” it is about how the newest branches of science, such as bioinformatics, advanced nanotechnology, and studies of consciousness, are beginning to “poach” into the traditional territory of humanists. These include the broad categories of autonomy, singularity, and creativity, epitomized by philosophy, history, and criticism of the arts.
  
  But he is not upset or threatened. Instead, he sees “the promise of dialogue and a new golden age… A rich, deep, and extended conversation between humanists and scientists on the question of the human could have implications well beyond the academy. It could result in the rejuvenation of many disciplines, and even in a reconfiguration of disciplines themselves.”
  
  Bring it on.