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Science Tuesday - Drunk Driving Deaths, Risk, Mercury (the planet), and Solar Power
Vital Signs: Safety: Laws Reduce Drunken-Driving Deaths
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times, July 8, 2008
The policies — banning purchase or possession of alcohol by people under 21 and making it illegal to use false identification to buy alcohol — have been in effect in all 50 states since at least 1988, when Congress made them a condition for federal highway money.
Reporting in the July issue of Accident Analysis and Prevention, the scientists calculate that the possession and purchase laws reduced the ratio of drinking to nondrinking drivers involved in fatal crashes by about 11 percent. Laws requiring an automatic license sanction for the use of fake IDs resulted in a 7 percent decrease.
“Raising the drinking age to 21 does save lives,” said James C. Fell of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, lead author of the study, “and while every state makes it illegal to have a fake ID, they really should strongly consider a driver’s license sanction for the offender. That made a big difference in our analysis.”
The authors acknowledge that their study measured only the presence or absence of the laws, not the effect of lax or vigorous enforcement. But they add that the effect of the laws was independent of other factors, including auto safety improvements and the reduction in the allowable blood-alcohol level in drivers to 0.08 from 0.10.
Vital Statistics: Risk, From a Broader Perspective
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times, July 8, 2008
A 55-year-old man who smokes is as likely to die in the next 10 years as a 65-year-old who has never smoked. A 35-year-old woman is twice as likely to die in an accident as she is to die of breast cancer in the next 10 years.
And after 75, heart disease is the biggest killer of smokers and nonsmokers alike, though lung cancer and respiratory disease remain huge risks for smokers.
New risk charts in a paper last month in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute provide a broader perspective than most of the risk calculators available on the Internet, because they cover the risks for 10 causes of death and for all causes combined, while differentiating by age and among smokers, nonsmokers and former smokers.
At first glance, it may appear that smokers and nonsmokers die of heart disease at the same rate, but they do not. A 35-year-old smoker is seven times as likely to die of heart disease as a nonsmoker the same age. But as smokers age and as some survive the more common smokers’ diseases, the numbers begin to converge. By 75, their rate of death from heart disease is almost, but still not quite, the same.
“Often, numbers are presented as lifetime statistics, which make the risk look too large, or as one-year statistics, which make the risk look too small,” said Dr. Lisa M. Schwartz, a co-author of the paper and an associate professor of medicine at Dartmouth. “These charts provide the information you need to understand a risk, and whether to consider taking some action to reduce it. How big is my risk? And how does this risk compare to others?”
Images of Mercury taken during the flyby, from left: the Caloris basin, a volcano and a new view of the planet.
Flyby of Mercury Answers Some Old Questions
By KENNETH CHANG, The New York Times, July 8, 2008
Mercury, the smallest planet, bakes in the heat of the Sun, but it has water in some form. It has volcanoes. It appears to have an active magnetic field generated by a molten iron core. And it has shrunk more than scientists thought.
Those are some of the findings gleaned from the flyby of NASA’s Messenger spacecraft in January, the first close-up look since Mariner 10 flew by three times in the 1970s.
“After five months of analysis, we’ve got some fascinating new results, and some of them have resolved debates that are more than 30 years old that go back to the time of Mariner 10,” said Sean C. Solomon, the principal investigator for Messenger, during a NASA telephone news conference on Thursday. “All of which bodes very well for the rest of the mission.”
Messenger will make two more flybys, the next one on Oct. 6, before entering orbit around Mercury in 2011.
Eleven papers describing the Messenger findings on Mercury appear in the current issue of the journal Science.
The first flyby has already answered one question, about the presence of volcanoes, by discovering a huge one, 60 miles in diameter. “Which is larger than the state of Delaware and over twice the size of Rhode Island,” said James W. Head III, professor of geological sciences at Brown University and the lead author of one of the papers in Science.
Atop the volcano is a kidney-shaped crater 14 miles in diameter.
“This is equivalent to a huge hole in the ground extending from the Washington Monument out to well past the Beltway,” Dr. Head said. “Imagine lavas coming out of this vent and covering the surrounding suburbs out to about Baltimore and the West Virginia border. The greater Washington, D.C., region would be covered with lavas to depths that would bury the Washington Monument.”
The volcano appears to have been long dormant, perhaps last erupting three billion years ago, Dr. Head said. The scientists have not seen any signs of recent activity, but “You never know,” Dr. Head said. “That’s why we’re exploring Mercury.”
Mercury has a large iron core, believed to still be molten, that fills three-quarters of its radius and accounts for 60 percent its mass. Another longstanding question was whether Mercury’s weak magnetic field, about 1 percent as strong as Earth’s, is generated by the flow of the molten iron or whether it is leftover magnetism frozen into the rocks billions of years ago.
Magnetic fields measured during the flyby fit the pattern of a simple bar magnet, suggesting that they are being actively generated by the interior of Mercury, Dr. Solomon said. Frozen fields would likely have become fragmented and irregular, more like what is observed at Mars, he said.
Then there is the matter of shrinking. As the planet’s interior core cooled, it contracted, causing the surface crust to fracture into a rugged topography including steep cliffs. The cliffs were first spotted by Mariner 10, leading to estimates that Mercury was once up to a couple of miles wider than its current diameter of 3,032 miles.
With better lighting and a sharper camera, Messenger spotted many more cracks. Mercury’s shrinkage is at least one-third greater than previously estimated, Dr. Solomon said. “The surface geology preserves the history of the cooling,” he said. “We have no other example in the solar system.”
An instrument aboard Messenger sampled Mercury’s surface composition by catching some of the charged atoms that have been knocked into space. Silicon, sodium and sulfur were detected. So was water.
“Which is a real surprise,” said Thomas H. Zurbuchen, an associate professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the University of Michigan and lead author of another paper in Science. “The first time we took a whiff of the planet, it’s right there.”
One possibility is that the water exists as ice in the shaded parts of craters in the polar regions.
The roof of a General Motors distribution plant in California is covered in solar panels.
Large Solar Energy Array Set for G.M. in Spain
By MATTHEW L. WALD, The New York Times, July 8, 2008
The project will use solar devices manufactured in rolls, like carpet runners. Installation will be completed this fall, according to the company, which is based in Rochester Hills, Mich. Energy Conversion will supply the equipment to Veolia Environment and Clairvoyant Energy, which will lease the rooftop space from G.M. and own and operate the installation, which will be two million square feet.
Spain has become a center of solar installations because it offers generous subsidies, 0.42 euro a kilowatt-hour (66 cents). That is about five times the average cost of a kilowatt hour to residential customers in the United States. The Spanish government is considering a reduction in the subsidy for installations after September.
Energy Conversion plans to produce about 150 megawatts of cells this year. Last month, the company raised $400 million in new capital and announced plans to raise its annual production to 1 gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts, by 2012. The company did not say what the Zaragoza installation would cost.
Solar cell arrays on houses are commonly a handful of kilowatts, or thousandths of a megawatt. On big commercial buildings, installations of one or two megawatts have become common. A one-megawatt installation will run about 1,000 window air-conditioners simultaneously, at least as long as the sun is shining.
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group based in Washington, the largest installation planned in the United States, announced in June, was in Atlantic City, where the convention center will have 2.36 megawatts, about one-fifth the size of the installation to be completed in Spain.
Southern California Edison announced in March that it would install 250 megawatts of rooftop solar arrays, spread over 100 or more roofs.
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times, July 8, 2008
The policies — banning purchase or possession of alcohol by people under 21 and making it illegal to use false identification to buy alcohol — have been in effect in all 50 states since at least 1988, when Congress made them a condition for federal highway money.
Reporting in the July issue of Accident Analysis and Prevention, the scientists calculate that the possession and purchase laws reduced the ratio of drinking to nondrinking drivers involved in fatal crashes by about 11 percent. Laws requiring an automatic license sanction for the use of fake IDs resulted in a 7 percent decrease.
“Raising the drinking age to 21 does save lives,” said James C. Fell of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, lead author of the study, “and while every state makes it illegal to have a fake ID, they really should strongly consider a driver’s license sanction for the offender. That made a big difference in our analysis.”
The authors acknowledge that their study measured only the presence or absence of the laws, not the effect of lax or vigorous enforcement. But they add that the effect of the laws was independent of other factors, including auto safety improvements and the reduction in the allowable blood-alcohol level in drivers to 0.08 from 0.10.
Vital Statistics: Risk, From a Broader Perspective
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR, The New York Times, July 8, 2008
A 55-year-old man who smokes is as likely to die in the next 10 years as a 65-year-old who has never smoked. A 35-year-old woman is twice as likely to die in an accident as she is to die of breast cancer in the next 10 years.
And after 75, heart disease is the biggest killer of smokers and nonsmokers alike, though lung cancer and respiratory disease remain huge risks for smokers.
New risk charts in a paper last month in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute provide a broader perspective than most of the risk calculators available on the Internet, because they cover the risks for 10 causes of death and for all causes combined, while differentiating by age and among smokers, nonsmokers and former smokers.
At first glance, it may appear that smokers and nonsmokers die of heart disease at the same rate, but they do not. A 35-year-old smoker is seven times as likely to die of heart disease as a nonsmoker the same age. But as smokers age and as some survive the more common smokers’ diseases, the numbers begin to converge. By 75, their rate of death from heart disease is almost, but still not quite, the same.
“Often, numbers are presented as lifetime statistics, which make the risk look too large, or as one-year statistics, which make the risk look too small,” said Dr. Lisa M. Schwartz, a co-author of the paper and an associate professor of medicine at Dartmouth. “These charts provide the information you need to understand a risk, and whether to consider taking some action to reduce it. How big is my risk? And how does this risk compare to others?”
Images of Mercury taken during the flyby, from left: the Caloris basin, a volcano and a new view of the planet.
Flyby of Mercury Answers Some Old Questions
By KENNETH CHANG, The New York Times, July 8, 2008
Mercury, the smallest planet, bakes in the heat of the Sun, but it has water in some form. It has volcanoes. It appears to have an active magnetic field generated by a molten iron core. And it has shrunk more than scientists thought.
Those are some of the findings gleaned from the flyby of NASA’s Messenger spacecraft in January, the first close-up look since Mariner 10 flew by three times in the 1970s.
“After five months of analysis, we’ve got some fascinating new results, and some of them have resolved debates that are more than 30 years old that go back to the time of Mariner 10,” said Sean C. Solomon, the principal investigator for Messenger, during a NASA telephone news conference on Thursday. “All of which bodes very well for the rest of the mission.”
Messenger will make two more flybys, the next one on Oct. 6, before entering orbit around Mercury in 2011.
Eleven papers describing the Messenger findings on Mercury appear in the current issue of the journal Science.
The first flyby has already answered one question, about the presence of volcanoes, by discovering a huge one, 60 miles in diameter. “Which is larger than the state of Delaware and over twice the size of Rhode Island,” said James W. Head III, professor of geological sciences at Brown University and the lead author of one of the papers in Science.
Atop the volcano is a kidney-shaped crater 14 miles in diameter.
“This is equivalent to a huge hole in the ground extending from the Washington Monument out to well past the Beltway,” Dr. Head said. “Imagine lavas coming out of this vent and covering the surrounding suburbs out to about Baltimore and the West Virginia border. The greater Washington, D.C., region would be covered with lavas to depths that would bury the Washington Monument.”
The volcano appears to have been long dormant, perhaps last erupting three billion years ago, Dr. Head said. The scientists have not seen any signs of recent activity, but “You never know,” Dr. Head said. “That’s why we’re exploring Mercury.”
Mercury has a large iron core, believed to still be molten, that fills three-quarters of its radius and accounts for 60 percent its mass. Another longstanding question was whether Mercury’s weak magnetic field, about 1 percent as strong as Earth’s, is generated by the flow of the molten iron or whether it is leftover magnetism frozen into the rocks billions of years ago.
Magnetic fields measured during the flyby fit the pattern of a simple bar magnet, suggesting that they are being actively generated by the interior of Mercury, Dr. Solomon said. Frozen fields would likely have become fragmented and irregular, more like what is observed at Mars, he said.
Then there is the matter of shrinking. As the planet’s interior core cooled, it contracted, causing the surface crust to fracture into a rugged topography including steep cliffs. The cliffs were first spotted by Mariner 10, leading to estimates that Mercury was once up to a couple of miles wider than its current diameter of 3,032 miles.
With better lighting and a sharper camera, Messenger spotted many more cracks. Mercury’s shrinkage is at least one-third greater than previously estimated, Dr. Solomon said. “The surface geology preserves the history of the cooling,” he said. “We have no other example in the solar system.”
An instrument aboard Messenger sampled Mercury’s surface composition by catching some of the charged atoms that have been knocked into space. Silicon, sodium and sulfur were detected. So was water.
“Which is a real surprise,” said Thomas H. Zurbuchen, an associate professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the University of Michigan and lead author of another paper in Science. “The first time we took a whiff of the planet, it’s right there.”
One possibility is that the water exists as ice in the shaded parts of craters in the polar regions.
The roof of a General Motors distribution plant in California is covered in solar panels.
Large Solar Energy Array Set for G.M. in Spain
By MATTHEW L. WALD, The New York Times, July 8, 2008
The project will use solar devices manufactured in rolls, like carpet runners. Installation will be completed this fall, according to the company, which is based in Rochester Hills, Mich. Energy Conversion will supply the equipment to Veolia Environment and Clairvoyant Energy, which will lease the rooftop space from G.M. and own and operate the installation, which will be two million square feet.
Spain has become a center of solar installations because it offers generous subsidies, 0.42 euro a kilowatt-hour (66 cents). That is about five times the average cost of a kilowatt hour to residential customers in the United States. The Spanish government is considering a reduction in the subsidy for installations after September.
Energy Conversion plans to produce about 150 megawatts of cells this year. Last month, the company raised $400 million in new capital and announced plans to raise its annual production to 1 gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts, by 2012. The company did not say what the Zaragoza installation would cost.
Solar cell arrays on houses are commonly a handful of kilowatts, or thousandths of a megawatt. On big commercial buildings, installations of one or two megawatts have become common. A one-megawatt installation will run about 1,000 window air-conditioners simultaneously, at least as long as the sun is shining.
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group based in Washington, the largest installation planned in the United States, announced in June, was in Atlantic City, where the convention center will have 2.36 megawatts, about one-fifth the size of the installation to be completed in Spain.
Southern California Edison announced in March that it would install 250 megawatts of rooftop solar arrays, spread over 100 or more roofs.
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Ice on Mercury? Wow, that would definitely be something!
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