Magnets, Electricity, Headaches?

So. There was this article[nytimes.com] in the NY times earlier this week, on how headache and migraine research has been re-invented: this time, with the use of electricity and electromagnets. With around 30 million people in the US suffering from headaches and migraines, this might be a welcome change to the medications and pharmaceuticals that we currently have, especially if it works better. One method, called Occipital Nerve Stimulation, uses implanted electrodes and an electrical signal to alleviate the pain associated with migraines. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, on the other hand, uses "brief magnetic pulses" to alter the electrical signals being sent through inside your brain.
These electrical impulses attempting to alter your nerve signal... doesn't sound safe to me. There's a lot of things in my brain that I definitely wouldn't want "edited." I can just see things inside my brain having their momentums change due to these electrical and magnetic impulses. It's kinda like waving a magnet over a hard drive: nothing good can come of it. Hopefully, it's safe enough for use, but I'll prefer to have my traditional headache solution: eat a meal, turn on some soft music, and take a nap. Works every time.

Moving the Mississippi?

All right. Time for another science spotlight. This time, we sit right back at home.

The Mississippi River. Arguably one of the most importantant rivers in the world (3rd in length), they are thinking of moving [nytimes.com] the exit of the Mississippi from it's current home, and split the river past New Orleans, in the hopes of adding sediment to some of the areas at the end of the delta. This move will have to be planned out carefully, and the meeting they've scheduled for later this year is just to plan on the planning phase of this procedure.

I can see why they would want to do this: each year, the Mississippi dumps tons of sediment out of it's mouth. In order to build more marshlands and bird-wading areas, they want to direct the sediment outward. Implementing this would be difficult, though - it would involve a lot of complex calculation: how much force the water would push on a barrier, where the sediment should be dumped, how redirecting will change the velocity of the water, how much interference a barrier could create in the water, and other factors playing in and interconnecting.

I say we leave it be. Why should we, as humans, try to mess with something nature has been creating for the past thousands of years? It seems that the river knows what it's doing, as long as we keep out of it.

Pluto... What happened?

Well, guys: it's official. Pluto's no longer a planet. The IAU (International Astronomical Union) [iau.org] voted in the past couple weeks to demote it to a "dwarf planet;" I like to use the term planetoid, but that's just me. There are a couple other planetoids that they are now looking at as well. One of these, before known as 2003 UB313, is now to be known as Eris[slashdot.org]. Also, there are a lot of other objects flying around in space that can be classified as planetoids, that exist in an astronomical formation known as the Kuiper Belt[nytimes.com].

In physics, we had just finished talking about the different types of measurements, and how they are important to our society. In this case, since Pluto, Eris, and the other strings of planetoids that exist in the Kuiper Belt were too small by definition, they were all brought down into the status of "dwarf planet."

Personally, I think it's going to be hard for teachers the most. How many times can you remember one of your elementary school teachers telling you some form of mnemonic so you can remember the 10 planets? What are they going to do now, when there's only nine? Will the children of tomorrow suffer from a lessened education?

I doubt it. It still makes a fun argument though.

So.... Physics? Flying ants without wings!

So, on reading the NY Times Tuesday special - the Science Times - I found an article previously mentioned to me, about ants with a rather interesting means of transportation. Instead of just walking like everyone else, they use their mandible (jaw) to flip them up into the air. These jaws are powerful - they can fling as much as 300 times the weight of the ant, and can close at a speed of 200 meters per second. Meters per second is a measurement of velocity, which is a derived unit of length and time. Scientists keep and take track of measurements like this in order to keep some kind of fixed data on file for that species of ant.

Personally, I would like to know how that ant would take on that type of evolutionary path... What benefit do you see in flying from your face?

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Set this up for a couple reasons... Tired of the spam on my isidore bblog, and for my Physics class. Just putting up a filler post so I can preview things.