[BRIEF NOTE] On squids in space

Charlie Stross linked to news that, on the final space shuttle flight, squid will be taken into space.

The Squids in Space project is a cohesive effort in which the full range of NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium supported categories work together on an experiment destined to fly on what will be the last flight of space shuttle Endeavour,” said Florida Space Grant Consortium Director Jaydeep Mukherjee. “This team, which is composed of Florida colleges and high school students and led by University of Florida PhD research scientist Jamie Foster, will connect the three tiers of education in an experiment studying the effects of microgravity on squid embryos.”

Let me just read that phrase again. "Studying the effects of microgravity on squid embryos." Yeah, that's got to be the coolest thing NASA has ever done.

To be perfectly accurate, though, the project is merely being facilitated by NASA. It's one of several student projects--some from high school and middle school kids!--that have found their home on this mission. (It's especially appropriate, I think, that the Endeavor, the only space shuttle to be named by K-12 schools, is now giving its precious shipboard space to student research projects.)

So, okay, the obvious question: why exactly would you want to put squids in space? I mean, besides the cool factor, what is there to be gained? I did a little more poking around, and, bless the internet, there's a webpage on the project. It turns out that the particular species of squid to be shipped off-planet is our old friend the bobtail squid.

What makes this squid unique is its light organ, which glows at night and hides its shadow from prey lurking underneath. The light is powered by a particular bioluminescent bacteria (Vibrio fishceri) that the squid draws in from the surrounding water. Every day it expels the old bacteria and takes in a new batch. Newly born squid can’t produce the light, but within several hours they become bioluminescent as they take in the bacteria. This development gives scientists a close look at morphogenesis, which is the biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape—one of the fundamentals of development biology. The squid experiment came about when Ned [faculty sponsor] learned about the work of Dr. Jamie S. Foster at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Dr. Foster’s work is focused on what happens to this morphogenesis process under micro-gravity conditions.

A-ha! So the real question is morphogenesis under micro-gravity, or, what is the effect of gravity on how an organism makes its shape? And the squid/bacteria symbiosis happens to be a good model system to answer this question.

Why does Charlie follow the link with the single sentence "Time to go home; our work here is done."? For this, we have to go to Vonda N. McIntyre's Squids in Space pages, which collect all manner of stories about those brilliant beings then cephalopods. He was thinking particularly of Stephen Baxter's short story. Sheena 5, a story about a genetically engineered launched into space to help guide an asteroid into Earth orbit but instead founds a space-based squid civilization. And this civilization returns to Earth.

As the water world approached, swimming out of the dark, Sheena 46 prowled through the heart of transformed Reinmuth.

On every hierarchical level mind-shoals formed, merged, fragmented, combining restlessly, shimmers of group consciousness that pulsed through the million-strong cephalopod community, as sunlight glimmers on water. But the great shoals had abandoned their song-dreams of Earth, of the deep past, and sang instead of the huge deep future which lay ahead.

Sheena 46 was practical.

There was much to do, the demands of expansion endless: more colony packets to send to the ice balls around the outer planets, for instance, more studies of the greater ice worlds that seemed to orbit far from the central heat.

Nevertheless, she was intrigued. Was it possible this was Earth, of legend? The home of Dan, of NASA?

If it were so, it seemed to Sheena that it must be terribly confining to be a human, to be trapped in the skinny layer of air that clung to the Earth.

But where the squid came from scarcely mattered. Where they were going was the thing.

Reinmuth entered orbit around the water world.

And:

He had sources which told him the signature of the squid had been seen throughout the asteroid belt, and on the ice moons, Europa and Ganymede and Triton, and even in the Oort Cloud, the comets at the rim of the system.

Their spread was exponential, explosive.

It was ironic, he thought. We sent the squid out there to bootstrap us into an expansion into space. Now it looks as if they're doing it for themselves.

But they always were better adapted for space than we were. As if they had evolved that way. As if they were waiting for us to come along, to lift them off the planet, to give them their break.

As if that was our only purpose.

Dan wondered if they remembered his name.

The first translucent ships began to descend, returning to Earth's empty oceans.

Potential wackiness ensues beyond the scope fo the story, I'm sure.

[LINK] "Tobacco economics"

I blogged in the past--once in 2008 and once in 2010--about the collapse of tobacco farming in southwestern Ontario and the horrible toll it was taking on the erstwhile farmers. (My uncle was lucky enough to get out of tobacco early and start up a successful aquaculture operation.) Spike Japan--happily again active!--has a brief post examining what seems to be the managed shrinkage of Japan's tobacco farming. It may not be a coincidence that Fukushima prefecture, sufferer of first the tsunami then of the nuclear meltdown, is a centree of the industry.

Japan Tobacco lays it out for the curious in its annual report (on p138-p139 here). Domestic tobacco grower numbers fell from 23,000 in 2001 to 12,000 in 2010. The area under tobacco cultivation fell from 24,000ha to 15,000ha. Domestic tobacco production volume fell from 60,000 tonnes to 36,000 tonnes. The value of the domestic tobacco leaf crop fell from Y117bn to Y68bn, even though the price per kilo remained roughly flat, at Y1,800-Y1900 or so. JT has managed to achieve this because, by its own admission, it stuffs the Leaf Tobacco Deliberative Council, the price and acreage setting commission, with members it appoints, as it admits on p59-60 of its annual report with a delicious footnote:

Contracts stipulate the area to be cultivated and the prices of leaf tobacco for the subsequent year, and in this regard JT respects the opinion of the Leaf Tobacco Deliberative Council*

(*Footnote: The Leaf Tobacco Deliberative Council is a council which confers on important matters concerning the cultivation and purchase of domestically grown leaf tobacco in response to inquiries by JT representatives. The council consists of no more than 11 members, appointed by JT with the approval of the Minister of Finance from among domestic leaf tobacco growers and academic appointees.)

[. . .]

It doesn’t take a supersleuth to work out what is happening: JT, faced with a domestic market that is shrinking dramatically, is trying to get rid of the domestic leaf tobacco industry as fast as it can without causing too many political hiccups, or—to be fair—too much domestic grower dislocation, as tobacco farmers are no doubt mostly on the far side of 60. It’s a very orderly arrangement in many ways, but it does nothing to help the economy of Fukushima’s Tamura, which is where we came in.

Go, read the whole thing.

[DM] "A fresh look at US population trends"

My Demography Matters co-blogger Scott Peterson reports on the United States Census Bureau's analysis of the changing dynamics and distribution of the American population, and the consequences of said.

The decade ending in 2010 saw the US population increase by 9.7 percent, the lowest rate of increase since the Depression decade of the 1930's. It seems quite possible that the current decade may see even slower growth. Another US government agency, the National Center for Health Statistics reported in Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for 2009, that births in the US declined in 2008 and 2009 (the most recent data available). Well known analyst Calculated Risk noted here that "it is common for births to slow or decline during tough economic times in the U.S. - and that appears to be happening now." Combining this trend with the fact that a large segment of the "baby boom" population will reach 65 years of age by 2020 (with the associated higher mortality due to age-associated factors) provides grounds for a prediction of slower population growth.

The Census divides the US into four regions for comparison purposes: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. By 2010 the population of the West region (at 71.9 million) surpassed that of the Midwest region (at 66.9 million), of course for the first time. Political power will shift due to the transfer of House seats out of states in the Midwest; and in economic terms the Midwest has weakened significantly.

Go, read the whole thing.

[DM] "Holiday in Fukushima: To the zone of exclusion"

I've a post up at Demography Matters linking to a recent Spike Japan photo-essay, "Holiday in Fukushima: To the zone of exclusion", wherein the blogger travels into northern Japan to see the havoc caused by the tsunami and the nuclear meltdown. The scale of the catastrophe is immense.

Go, read.

[BRIEF NOTE] On the import of Sean Avery's support for same-sex marriage

Pickering-born New York Ranger Sean Avery recently attracted a lot of attention when he recorded a clip supporting the New York Campaign for Marriage Equality's push for same-sex marriage in new York State. From Towleroad:

"Crossing the Bloor Viaduct, facing south" (Watch on YouTube)

A Toronto-based hockey agency made the mistake of criticizing Avery's move on Twitter, and, well the expected wackiness ensued.

The National Hockey League has been making considerable progress towards being gay-friendly. Although there are no queer out hockey players yet, the support given to Brendan Burke--the out gay son of Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke--before his death does seem to augur well. In the Toronto Star, Cathal Kelly suggests

When gay rights became part of the hockey discussion after the coming out of Leafs GM Brian Burke’s son, Brendan, many supportive notes were sounded by players. They may have been timid at times and framed as a stand against prejudice, rather than support for homosexuality, but it was a good start.

When Brendan Burke died in a car accident, the tragedy lent strength to those voices. None were as unequivocal as Avery’s.

He volunteered to fly anywhere in North America to be at the side of any player who wished to reveal his homosexuality to his teammates. It was a canny as well as open-hearted suggestion. Avery redefined the issue in terms any locker room can understand — Us vs. Them. The “them” in this case being the cause of bigotry.

Avery’s quirks of personality and many professional controversies make him outstandingly — perhaps uniquely — qualified as a spokesperson.

On the ice, he’s a goon and, often, a buffoon. His silly and strangely brilliant stick-waving trick in front of Martin Brodeur in the ’08 playoffs shows that Avery sees hockey through his own skewed lens. He’s a savant in reverse, disassembling the game and its traditions.

But he’s been criticized so often, it no longer fazes him. He appears to enjoy it. In some ways, his whole hockey career has been training to lead an outsider movement.

Avery also understands something most athletes never get hold of — that the game is about theatre.

His conspicuous role has always been the enlightened thug, or the dandy bruiser. He interned at Vogue. He claims to have played with dolls as a child. He’s fully embraced the hetero opportunities the athletic life provides, trailing a string of actress and model girlfriends. When he chooses to act the boor — as with his “sloppy seconds” comment directed at Dion Phaneuf — it comes off as totally calculated. If Avery is an idiot, he’s the smartest one in hockey.

Here’s the proof: his principled stand on gay rights. Leave the issue of marriage out of it for a moment. It’s still taboo to talk about being gay in a clubhouse, but out in the real world we’ve all agreed that homosexuality isn’t a big deal any more.

By moving from supportive thought to real action, Avery claims the high ground for himself in one of the last places where there’s any ground to claim at all.

Then someone went and laid some down for him. Burlington hockey agent Todd Reynolds, who helps rep guys like Predators forward Mike Fisher, did Avery the favour of taking a swipe at him on Twitter. In the hours after his post calling Avery’s position vis a vis marriage “very sad” and “wrong,” Reynolds was the one being raked online and forced to defend himself on radio. The territory in this culture war is changing hands quickly.

All this, Kelly argues, will help make Avery a hockey player who'll be remembered well into the future. While I'm not a fan of Avery's style, I have to agree with Kelly that he's a memorable player--I know who the guy is, even--and an interesting personality. Said personalities tend to be memorable for a long wile.