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Wired has just published an article about The Year’s 10 Craziest Ways to Hack the Earth, and #8 is a concept I use in my book AVATAR.

When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991 (left), it sent 10 million tons of sunlight-blocking, planet-cooling sulfur into the atmosphere. Many scientists, among them Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, think we could duplicate nature’s feat. Using rockets, airplanes, giant guns and even man-made volcanoes to spew fine particles into the atmosphere could drop Earth’s temperatures to early-20th century levels within a decade.

(Photo taken from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the UCAR Office of Programs web site. Photographer: T. J. Casadevall, U.S. Geological Survey.)

In AVATAR the planet Ico exists in a binary star system, the larger sun being similar to Sol, while the smaller one is a long-period variable star that flares about every 20 years. That flare cycle is long compared to the year most are known to cycle, but I should be entitled to a little journalistic license, yes? The twist on this in AVATAR is that the particulates are made up of buckminster fullerene particles, which are hollow carbon spheres filled with good things for the environment. Supposedly. I guess you’ll have to read to find out.

The planet’s indigenous people, the Iconnu, aren’t particularly thrilled with this high-tech solution when their own low-tech one has been working for generations: take refuge in the multitude of caves that exist in the mountains. Plus, blocking all that radiation will actually upset the lifecycle of an important protective plant called bloodstar, a substance that has worked its way into almost every human, animal and plant on the planet.

Just when I think I never want to write another complicated story like this again, science reminds me how cool it is.

Salon has a great editorial by Shawn Lawrence Otto on the recent Science Debate 2008 initiative, of which I have joined in promoting.

This initiative calls for the U.S. Presidential candidates to “share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.”

Read the whole article, but this boils it down nicely for me:

Nearly all of America’s major policy issues, ranging from global warming to stem cell research, energy policy to pandemic-disease control, data privacy to healthcare, national defense to ocean management — or a manned mission to Mars — have science and technology at their heart, providing considerable dangers and immense opportunities. Successfully grappling with these issues, and more like them, will require policymakers to have vision and a more thorough understanding of science than ever before.

So, while you’re reading that, I’m going to get back to learning about polymer-laced scaffolds that mimic key neurotransmitters for nerves. Science research rocks.

By way of Pharyngula

A Call for a Presidential Debate on Science and Technology

Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we, the undersigned, call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Medicine and Health, and Science and Technology Policy.

I’m not big on jumping on bandwagons, but I’ll rattle that cage since I agree with Pharyngula that it would be great “to see a debate on any subject where the candidates had to deal with issues of some substance.”

Gee that’s a fun couple words to say if you have the right mindset. But why am I saying it? New Scientist Tech is reporting on some extroverted buckyballs caught on film:

Blink and you might miss it. Researchers have captured the rapid formation of buckyballs – carbon spheres just 1 nanometre in diameter – on film for the first time.

The footage shows how buckyballs, or C60 fullerenes, form in a new process where a thin sheet of graphite exposed to high temperatures shrinks and loses carbon atoms, says Boris Yakobson at Rice University in Houston, Texas, US.

Why am I so worked up over buckyballs? A while back I talked about how science inspires my stories and how buckyballs play a fundamental role in my novel AVATAR (previously titled RIVER OF STARS), where they’re used in a particulate radiation shield when a companion star is in flare.

I’ve been revising AVATAR lately, hence the new title and I even have a new blurb for it:

AVATAR blends post-cyberpunk espionage with the ecological and mystic themes akin to Frank Herbert’s Dune.

When dispatched to distant Ico, Kinship spy Jana Rajam is captured and forced to share her mind with the memories of a long-dead warrior queen. Once escaped, Rajam finds herself thrown between a far-reaching conspiracy to reclaim a lost golden age and a bid to control a narcotic that could enslave or liberate the Iconnu.

A queen must have a consort, and religious leader Brannon Bayne has spent a lifetime living up to the memories he carries of the ancient monarch’s renowned general. A half-breed caught between two cultures, Bayne must convince Jana to help him forge a peace before solar flares ravage the planet.

AVATAR tells the story of a spy’s redeeming mission, a revered leader’s desperate journey, and a warring planet’s only hope.

Read an excerpt of AVATAR.

So I was tooling around my favorite blogs and I started reading No Smoking in the Skull Cave’s Music Meme, where you go check what was a hit the year you graduated from high school and then wax on about it. I had no intention of actually doing this, but for a few minutes I was curiously nostalgic and checked my own year.

And then my brain shut down. Why?

I just freaking got that horrid Beach Boys “Kokomo” song out of my head — and now it’s back again after just reading the song title. (You do the math. I’m not telling you what year this was.) Make it stop! You do not know the lengths I’ve gone to in an effort to stop humming this song for years. I even listened to Wilson Phillips, whose whining excuse for singing at least made my brain stop saying “Aruba, Jamaica ooo I wanna take ya/Bermuda, bahama come on pretty mama.”

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Evidently this is called a “brain itch.” Some songs have an uncanny:

…ability to create a “cognitive itch,” according to Professor James Kellaris, of the University of Cincinnati College of Business Administration.

“A cognitive itch is a kind of metaphor that explains how these songs get stuck in our head,” Professor Kellaris told BBC World Service’s Outlook programme.

“Certain songs have properties that are analogous to histamines that make our brain itch.

“The only way to scratch a cognitive itch is to repeat the offending melody in our minds.”

Maybe this list will clean out my brain. If not, I’m just going to keep singing “It’s a Small World” to try to counteract it.

Mr. Wizard has passed away.

As a suitable tribute, take a few minutes to think about your 7th grade science fair project. Mine was a representation of our solar system, where each planet was made out of styrofoam and mounted to a poster board and demonstrating their orbits. It may not have been an erupting volcano using goo for lava, but it did begin my interest in cosmology.

What was your favorite science fair project?

More information on how we can now imprint memories onto cultured neural tissue:

Researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel have demonstrated that neurons cultured outside the brain can be imprinted with multiple rudimentary memories that persist for days without interfering with or wiping out others.

The other day I mentioned how I used a cultured neural network in my novel Remembrancer. Oh, the possibilities…

I’m taking the recent science articles I’ve found on cultured neural networks and such that correlate to my novels as a sign that I’m doing something right. And it’s just happened again.

In today’s New Scientist article “Solar shield could be quick fix for global warming” Catherine Brahic outlines how a planetary sulphate shield might work:

. . .the shields are inspired by the cooling effects of large volcanic eruptions that blast sulphate particles into the stratosphere. There, the particles reflect part of the Sun’s radiation back into space, reducing the amount of heat that reaches the atmosphere, and so dampening the greenhouse effect.

In my novel River of Stars, a group of alien plutocrats decide they know what’s best for the home planet of my hero and decide to solve the problem of increased radiation expected to occur when its dwarf star flares by blasting particulates into the atmosphere. The particulates are actually buckminster fullerene particles — “bucky balls” — filled with fertilizing compounds that will give the plant life a boost. At least that’s the spin on their content. There are indigenous groups willing to do just about anything to stop the shield from being deployed; who fear most that the shield will destroy particular native flora with medicinal attributes. The heroine is the one with the power to stop it, but first the hero has to convince her to take his side.

I have to give credit to my friendly neighborhood rocket scientist who gave me the particulate shield idea to solve my problem of how the solar shield works. A science fiction writer should always hang out with even bigger geeks than herself.

Comp image from Fotolia. “Alien plutocrats” would make an excellent band name, don’t you think?

Ah c’mon, there’s at least twelve of us.

But there really are only about three people who will get this one (left).

Hint: my cat’s full name is Onyx Schrodinger Spindler The Hutt.

And he’s not that fat anymore. The guy is half the man he used to be.

Want more LOLCats?

I think we should start an LOLCthulhu.

When I started writing Remembrancer I was intrigued by cyberpunk, post-modernism and transhumanism. I still am, and I know that the future will be nothing like we imagine, but I still keep postulating.

One of the reasons I started reading the Neurophilosopher’s Blog is I was interested in how our brain capacity might evolve and how we might push that along. I was also conducting research for Remembrancer, a story where a small group of people have brain implants. The purpose of these implants is not to make them uber-soldiers or to interface with AIs, but to store other people’s memories. Think about how different we might view historical events if we could see them through Thomas Jefferson’s actual memories, or Einstein’s or Mother Theresa’s?

While I find that compelling, I’m a science geek at heart. I wanted the mechanism to be as organic as possible, not just a chunk of hardware shoved into brain tissue, and I came up with an idea for a cultured neural network using cells from the person’s own tissue. Now I read that scientists are indeed creating neural networks very similar to what I describe:

Cultured neurons seem like ants away from their colony: removed from their parent organ, dissociated from their fellow workers and placed into an unnatural environment. But neurons plated onto a culture dish connect to each other, forming simple neural networks that give rise to spontaneous electrical activity. And, in recent years, researchers have developed culture dishes containing arrays of microelectrodes embedded within them, such that the electrical activity of the cultured neurons can be recorded. These new techniques have revealed the remarkable functional properties of neurons in culture - the cultured networks of dissociated cells can “learn”. In other words, they can modify their initially spontaneous activity into something purposeful, such as controlling a flight simulator or controlling the movements of artificial animals in a virtual environment.

While some value Remembrancers, others fear them and in some cultures in this universe they’re considered Untouchable. A Remembrancer doesn’t copy a person’s memories, she takes them. The transfer is conducted at death, which is the outcome regardless of whether a person’s body is actually failing beforehand. The implant is organic; there’s very little outward indication that a person is a Remembrancer, a particular problem on worlds that consider them to be Untouchable. Also, an unexpected facet of the download is a witness to a person’s last moments when they depart for their own version of the afterlife.

As so often happens, scientific developments enable me to explore all sorts of inter- and intra-personal conflict. What happens to a shaman figure who witnesses death, and a kind of rebirth, over and over again? What happens if that power is abused? What kind of person would become a Remembrancer? Who are her friends and enemies and why?

Image Courtesy of 3DScience.com.