Science Tuesday - Mortuary Art, Biometrics, Bad Science, Silver, and the physics of coffee

A Mystery, Locked in Timeless Embrace
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, December 20, 2005


When Egyptologists entered the tomb for the first time more than four decades ago, they expected to be surprised. Explorers of newly exposed tombs always expect that, and this time they were not disappointed - they were confounded.

It was back in 1964, outside Cairo, near the famous Step Pyramid in the necropolis of Saqqara and a short drive from the Sphinx and the breathtaking pyramids at Giza. The newfound tomb yielded no royal mummies or dazzling jewels. But the explorers stopped in their tracks when the light of their kerosene lamp shined on the wall art in the most sacred chamber.

There, carved in stone, were the images of two men embracing. Their names were inscribed above: Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep. Though not of the nobility, they were highly esteemed in the palace as the chief manicurists of the king, sometime from 2380 to 2320 B.C., in the time known as the fifth dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Grooming the king was an honored occupation.

Archaeologists were taken aback. It was extremely rare in ancient Egypt for an elite tomb to be shared by two men of apparently equal standing. The usual practice was for such mortuary temples to be the resting place of one prominent man, his wife and children.

And it was most unusual for a couple of the same sex to be depicted locked in an embrace. In other scenes, they are also shown holding hands and nose-kissing, the favored form of kissing in ancient Egypt. What were scholars to make of their intimate relationship?
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Findings: Is That a Finger or a Jell-O Mold?
By ERIC DASH, The New York Times, December 20, 2005


Identity thieves are always looking for new ways to pry out personal information, from trolling through trash cans to phishing for bank accounts online. But here is one method they may not have tried: using fake fingers made from Play-Doh and gelatin, or taking digits from a cadaver's hand.

In a study, researchers at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., tested 66 fake fingers to see if they could outwit biometric devices, which identify individuals based on the physiological properties of their fingerprints or other body parts. The fake fingers went undetected more than half the time.
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Global Trend: More Science, More Fraud
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN and WILLIAM J. BROAD, The New York Times, December 20, 2005


The South Korean scandal that shook the world of science last week is just one sign of a global explosion in research that is outstripping the mechanisms meant to guard against error and fraud.

Experts say the problem is only getting worse, as research projects, and the journals that publish the findings, soar.

Science is often said to bar dishonesty and bad research with a triple safety net. The first is peer review, in which experts advise governments about what research to finance. The second is the referee system, which has journals ask reviewers to judge if manuscripts merit publication. The last is replication, whereby independent scientists see if the work holds up.

But a series of scientific scandals in the 1970's and 1980's challenged the scientific community's faith in these mechanisms to root out malfeasance. In response the United States has over the last two decades added extra protections, including new laws and government investigative bodies.

And as research around the globe has increased, most without the benefit of such safeguards, so have the cases of scientific misconduct. Most recently, suspicions have swirled around a dazzling series of cloning advances by a South Korean scientist, Dr. Hwang Woo Suk.
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Old Curative Gets New Life at Tiny Scale
By BARNABY J. FEDER, The New York Times, December 20, 2005


Silver, one of humankind's first weapons against bacteria, is receiving new respect for its antiseptic powers, thanks to the growing ability of researchers to tinker with its molecular structure.

Doctors prescribed silver to fight infections at least as far back as the days of ancient Greece and Egypt. Their knowledge was absorbed by Rome, where historians like Pliny the Elder reported that silver plasters caused wounds to close rapidly. More recently, in 1884, a German doctor named C. S. F. Crede demonstrated that a putting a few drops of silver nitrate into the eyes of babies born to women with venereal disease virtually eliminated the high rates of blindness among such infants.

But silver's time-tested - if poorly understood - versatility as a disinfectant was overshadowed in the latter half of the 20th century by the rise of antibiotics.
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What a Pool Table Can Teach You About Unstirring the Coffee
By KENNETH CHANG, The New York Times, December 20, 2005


When cream is stirred into coffee, it is no surprise to see the swirls of white and brown become tan. It would be a shock if stirring in the opposite direction separated the liquid back to the original brown and white swirls.

Physicists describe the stirring of coffee, as well as the billowing of smoke, the flow of heat, the decay of buildings and many other phenomena as "irreversible."

The second law of thermodynamics essentially says that disorder increases. In the long term, this means that the universe will inevitably fall apart. In the short term, it means that you cannot unstir your coffee.

Yet the basic physics of the universe does not demand the second law; it includes no such notion of irreversibility. And an experiment, described in the current issue of the journal Nature, shows that stirred liquids can be unstirred in some cases.
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