Science – Page 8 – Fooyah

August 20 2018October 13 2018

A Nice Touch

I’m having a short phase of ignoring Twitter on my phone, or rather just ignoring my general account where I follow too many people. Strangely the news hasn’t been getting me down, although it should, but I feel that it’s time to use other things to distract me. Because of this I was looking at Google News and spotted the weather box.

How cool is it that you can set the temperature to Kelvin? I thought that was a nice touch. It’s something I can explain to people and give them the knowledge of Kelvin as a temperature scale.

Then there’s the BBC and they default to a decent scale of temperature:

This is clearly that the BBC knows the correct units to use. Finally I give you the Daily Mail:

You can tell it’s the Daily Mail, partly by the insane length of the headline and the other reason is that they still use Fahrenheit as their measure of temperature. I’ve moaned about this before but the use of antiquated units is why this country CAN’T MOVE ON. It reinforces the idea that old people can have things the way they want. It continues to allow people to refuse to accept change. It is a deliberate attempt to force this country to stay in the past. The Daily Mail knows this. It is bullshit.

Celsius has been in use since 1995 in the UK because of alignment needed with the EU. There are some measurements which are allowed to be in Imperial units still and they are:

the mile, yard, foot and inch for road traffic signs, distance and speed measurement,
the imperial pint for the dispensing of draught beer and cider, and for the sale of milk in returnable containers,
the acre for land registration,
the troy ounce for transaction in precious metals.

These are almost acceptable. The implied cost of changing roads signs and the education to change to kilometres makes that something that is never going to happen. However, the pint, should go. All you have to do is order a large or small. Did you know that if you go to a pub and order a pint of lemonade you aren’t buying a pint? You’re buying the metric equivalent. There isn’t a good reason for this to have not changed but all you need is the image of that far right politician Nigel Farage with his pint to understand that the government was scared of those old people who go down the pub a lot and didn’t want to upset them. Not that the experience would have been any different to anyone visiting a pub.

Now, pubs are closing. They aren’t sustained by the changing use of society. They are losing money. There are campaigns to keep pubs open but these people don’t understand that society is changing. People don’t go down the pub anymore. Closing pubs might be sad but such is life.

July 29 2018July 29 2018

Therapeutic Massage

A short while ago I wrote about the Maidstone Sports Injury Clinic and Wellbeing, it was advertised at a gym in Maidstone. I explained that most of the stuff offered probably doesn’t work.

Today I look at Therapeutic Massage because I don’t really know what it is.

The Maidstone Wellness thingy has a page on the Massage and it explains what it is:

Therapeutic Body Massage works the soft tissue of the body, where knots, tension and muscle tightness can be found. It is from working into and around these areas that Therapeutic Body Massage can help ease stress and muscular tension.

To me that sounds like a massage. It seems that someone will massage you and you will feel better. I don’t think I have a problem with that unless there are specific medical claims made on the same page.

Guess what? There aren’t any specific medical claims. All the benefits are a bit shit and vague so that we don’t have to worry about them:

Reduction in muscle spasm, pain and tension
Release of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers
Promotes relaxation, therefore reducing stress and anxiety
Improves blood circulation
Improves lymphatic drainage
Improves mobility

I guess if you stimulate someone then you create more blood flow and most of these claims are probably not too bad. Whether that does any good I don’t know.

I’ve had a look in PubMed, here are some of the results discussed:

Comparison of blood flow changes with soft tissue mobilization and massage therapy.

Now, my comments. Firstly this was published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine so that automatically means it’s bollocks. However, here’s what they found: someone’s calf when rubbed with something warmer than air temperature warms up. The killer line in this study is “a rise in temperature THEORETICALLY indicates increased blood flow”. Amazing!

Therapeutic massage of the neck and shoulders produces changes in peripheral blood flow when assessed with dynamic infrared thermography.

I have the same criticisms for this paper. The journal is bollocks and the whole process is bollocks.

The anatomical study of the major signal points of the court-type Thai traditional massage on legs and their effects on blood flow and skin temperature.

This one is from a different journal, this time the Journal of Integrative Medicine, which is a bollocks journal. Note that in the conclusion they state that the results might not be clinically relevant. Quelle surprise.

This next paper seems more realistic although the abstract is barely abstract it does say that it’s all a bit vague really.

The mechanisms of massage and effects on performance, muscle recovery and injury prevention.

Well, it seems that massage and blood circulation are common claims but there isn’t really anything to it as no-one is able to define what circulation means. This is classic alternative “medicine”. They make deliberately vague claims because those claims aren’t medically recognised terms and therefore don’t need medical evidence.

I reckon that having a massage won’t do you any particular harm. It might even make you feel better and more relaxed. Much like reading a book or having a glass of wine. I doubt there are particular health benefits to having a massage but if it feels good, do it.

July 26 2018

Quite Warm

Well, with temperatures hitting 33C today it’s time to write some stuff about this. I mean it’s so hot I have adjusted my plans for the day to keep indoors as much as possible. The hot weather is lovely. There, I said it. I can’t remember feeling cold and I am wondering about all my cold weather clothes, but it is nice to finally have a proper summer.

It feels as though the last many years have had summers where the skies have been mostly grey. While it’s been warm, the cloudiness has detracted from the feel of a proper summer and the country has looked dull. This year, the weather has been blue skies and proper clouds. It’s been good. While I was alive in 1976 I don’t remember anything about that summer. I broke my arm and the plaster kept going soft. That is all I know, but I have zero direct memories. Having looked it up on Wikipedia that summer seemed vicious. Worse than the current one in terms of temperatures.

My main problem with this heat is social. People are going to die. There will be a bump in the total deaths because heat kills people. We know the grass is pretty brown at the moment but those human deaths will come. Whether there’ll be a big news thing about it I don’t know.

The biggest problem with this weather is it highlights the problem of anthropogenic global climate change. Humans are causing a massive change in the way the Earth’s weather systems work and it will quite likely cause wars. The current heatwave pretty much covers the entire northern hemisphere. Everywhere is having a massive issue with the heat. The 1976 heatwave was pretty localised. While weather does not equal climate we should be aware that these events seem to be coming far more prevalent than they were. most predictions tell us that the extreme weather events are becoming more common. So while those stupid fuckers in the right wing press keep saying this isn’t as bad as 1947 or 1976 they don’t seem to realise that isolated events are now more common.

In this country the winters are going to become more extreme along with the summers and it doesn’t really look like there’s a massive move to try and counter this. When we study the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere we can see that we are already past the point of no return. There will be utter damage to the climate. Humans have caused this. Humans have also known for about 50 years that we are causing this. There are heavy metal songs from the 1980s going on about climate change FFS.

Eventually these changes are going to cause a massive change to the way of life. Governments around the world should be preparing their populations for this. Everyone needs nudging in the correct direction. There needs to be less individual transport. Flying needs to be reduced. Consumption needs to be reduced. Power consumption needs to be reduced. It all needs to change. Everyone needs to understand that the things they take for granted and assume they are entitled to will be gone. The world needs to change.

I am not an optimist about any of this. I don’t think that any of the political systems currently in use around the world will do anything because of the way they work. I don’t think anyone is properly preparing for this. If I expect the worst then maybe I’ll feel very slightly less bad when the billion displaced people can’t find acceptance in any country once their land disappears below sea level. I mean we can’t even accept those refugees and asylum seekers currently displaced by the shit in the current world.

Hopefully I’ll be dead before the water wars start.

July 24 2018July 24 2018

About 5 Miles

Spent a lovely time yesterday at the beach at Seasalter. It’s just west of Outer-London-Whitstable. The horizon fascinated me because of the things that can be seen.

Whitstable - the view form Seasalter — Whitstable – the view form Seasalter

Now the iPhone panorama feature didn’t leave the horizon quite as wanted but I have made an annotated version for you to explain what can be seen – just.

Seasalter Annotated – click to enlarge, should open in new tab

I suggest you get the full size picture by clicking on the picture above and then refer back to this page.

A

Shellness – A beach, a naturist beach, and some posh houses on the Isle of Sheppey. 3.3 km away. There is a statue here of the Short Brothers, of aircraft fame [note to self – must visit].

B

Shoeburyness and Southend – Towns in Essex across the Thames Estuary. 23.5 km away. Other things of note would be Southend Pier and the Shoeburyness Boom, an anti-submarine device.

C

The Redsands Fort – an Army defence structure in the Thames Estuary, 14.5 km, one of the Maunsell Forts – [note to self – must visit].

By Russss – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

D

The Kentish Flats Offshore Windfarm, 15 km, – a 139 MW wind power generation station, which has produced little energy during this heatwave as winds are too low.

By Charlesdrakew – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

E

Whitstable, 4 km away. The tower is part of Brett Aggregates.

The title of this communication essentially deals with the question of how far you can see to the horizon if you stand on the beach. If you are about 6 foot tall you can see about 5 miles, there’s mathematics to get this.

July 16 2018

Probably Not

I went for a swim after work today, it was nice to get out of the heat for a while and get my arms moving. However, I was a little perturbed by one of the posters in the cafe area of the gym. To be honest there are many gym-type posters that are disturbing showing body shapes and types that are not achievable by most. This does seem to be changing over time as the advertising world recognises that people are who they are and don’t really buy into the perfect body. Unless you watch Love Island.

So, on first inspection this poster seems pretty good. It’s for a sports injury clinic and that should be a good thing. A special place for all to go to ensure that those niggles get sorted out. But, let’s look a little closer at some of the treatments offered:

Osteopathy – not a fucking thing and doesn’t do anything. Read my previous, controversial, communication.
Sports Massage – could be OK, I don’t really know what it entails.
Therapeutic Massage – again, I’m not sure what this is and I should probably discuss this in a future communication. I’ll look into it. I doubt it’s anything good.
Aromatherapy – massage with nice smells. Doesn’t do anything.
Physiotherapy – probably the only legitimate treatment on this advert. Go see a physiotherapist for those sorts of things. Don’t see woo.
Nutritional Therapy – most likely bollocks. If you want diet advice see a DIETICIAN, they are a proper profession. Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist.
Acupuncture – bollocks squared.

Look, the issue with this clinic is not that they offer some legitimate therapies the problem is that they also offer a load of bollocks and so you can’t assume they will be good at any part of their job. It’s the company you keep that defines who you are.

Don’t go here.

I’ve just had a look at the website for this clinic and it is a beauty. I will add it to my communication drafts with the hope that I one day complete writing about it.

July 11 2018July 11 2018

Fixed Now

When I got back from cadet camp a while ago I noticed, somehow, that my internet connection bandwidth had dropped quite considerably. I think I had to restart the modem/router for some reason and when I logged into it I noticed that it was getting a download bandwidth of only 20Mb/s. Now, I say only, because I was getting 60Mb/s before I went away.

I restarted the hub a few times but this didn’t increase the capacity and I also left it for 24 hours thinking it might pick itself up. It didn’t. So I contacted BT. The low upload bandwidth was noticeable when attempting to upload pictures to the cloud and the download was affect some streaming services, although 20Mb/s was still good enough for most things.

I tried to use an online tracking fault thing the BT have on their website but navigating it was pretty terrible. Eventually I chose to use the online chat. They performed the same tests that the website interface had performed and then they asked me if I wanted to raise a fault.

Yes please.

When I managed to log in to the fault tracker it registered a voice-fault. I found this curious as I had a data fault but because they travel down the same line it was a voice-fault. BT also do mobile and TV and stuff so maybe that’s another reason for their curious naming of the fault. But, I didn’t know that so I phoned BT and said it was a broadband fault. They explained the previous bit to me and then said the engineer [who is really a technician] had found three problems at the exchange and fixed them. I should head home and restart the modem/router.

Which I did and nervously anticipated the result.

Well, that seems a lot better. I checked it using some external speed testers, although it’s bandwidth and not speed.

I’m happy now. I have the broadband service that I pay for. It’s all fixed and the whole process was pretty simple. Well done BT.

July 8 2018

More Comparisons

Having calculated [or rather tested] that my house uses 2kWh of energy per day when nearly everything is turned off I thought I ought to work out how far that would drive my car.

In this communication I wrote about the energy usage of my car, Bora Horza Gobuchul. I use 50kWh of energy for every 100km I drive, on average.

So, the energy I use to power my house; the fridge, a few clocks and the ADS-B receiver, would drive my car about 4km. That’s not quite enough to get me to work, but it would get me to the nearest supermarket.

June 24 2018June 24 2018

Busy South East

A few weeks ago when I was in the Lake District I would occasionally look at 360Radar to see what was flying close by. I found it curious that there was quite a lack of aircraft flying compared to Kent, where I live normally. Now, the south east does have the three London main airports and most air traffic heading to the continent. Have a look at the two following views and decide for yourself. Both are the same area of land and they are taken within a minute of each other. I think the difference is striking.

Of course, this communication could be entitled:

There’s a lot more planes where there’s a lot more airports

June 24 2018June 24 2018

Baseline

I recently had my electricity and gas meters upgraded to “smart” meters. They aren’t that smart. All they do is upload my meter reading to the utility company at regular intervals along with this information being displayed on a screen. I look at the screen now and then but I do think that eventually I will turn it off. I know roughly how much I spend each day and it’s not really a surprise.

This graph shows the energy use each day with the lower darker bar being electricity and the light blue being gas. I have a gas boiler for water and heating along with a gas hob. The oven is electric. This can be translated into costs [at current market rates]:

At the end of May I went away for a while and I normally try to shut-down most of the energy using devices in the house. The physical process can take about 5 minutes walking around the house making sure that everything is shut down in the correct order.

If you look at the last week of May you can see low and consistent energy costs. Although no gas was used in this time period the monetary costs is the standing charge that I pay for the privilege of having a gas supply.

My daily energy use in a house that is mostly turned off is 2kWh. This accounts for the following items:

Fridge
Microwave clock
Oven clock
Modem / Router
ADS-B aircraft tracker in the loft
Alarm clock
That extension lead orange light

It is taking a while for my head to get around this bizarre and stupid unit the kWh. But here goes:

My house’s power usage at baseline is 83 Watts. A human during the normal day runs at about 100 Watts [as does a 100W incandescent light bulb]. Over the course of the day this ends up being 7.2 MJ. My house needs to consume about the same amount of food as a human to run at its lowest power consumption levels.

Wolfram Alpha has some lovely comparisons for energy usage, so 2 kWh is the same as:

≈ 1.7 × energy released by explosion of one kilogram of TNT ( 1 kilogram of TNT )
≈ 0.57 × average electrical energy required by an Apple iPhone 5 per year (≈ 1.3×10^7 J )

And my favourite is:

Relativistic mass m from E = mc^2: 80 ng (nanograms)

When I next go away it would be interesting to see how low I could get the consumption. To be fair, I could just turn the electricity off at the mains. But the only thing I could still power down is the ADS-B receiver and I like to keep that going because I can log into it from around the world.

June 24 2018June 24 2018

Probably Magic

This place was heading east early one morning [probably to Frankfurt] and the colour of the sky and the line of the contrails caught my eye. It looked lovely.

Then there was this Chinook. It passed right over my work place and was such a lovely sight and sound. It amazes me just how technologically amazing we are as a species. Now although I know how these things work it does seem like magic at times!

Finally, yesterday this Spitfire flew over my village. I keep trying to remind people that one day they will be gone and we won’t see them flying anymore. It’s a lesson I have learnt from seeing many planes in the 80s at various airshows without really appreciating just how special they all were.