Politicians north of the border aren't the only ones struggling with gaffes this campaign season.
Mexico's leading presidential contender floundered in confusion for about four minutes when the audience at a book fair asked him to name three books that had influenced him. He was able to correctly name only one he has read "parts of:" the Bible.
Former Mexico State Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto holds a comfortable lead in opinion polls for Mexico's July 1 presidential election, but his appearance was reminiscent of the campaign-denting moment that Texas Gov. Rick Perry suffered at a Republican debate in November. The GOP hopeful he couldn't remember one of the three government agencies he pledged to eliminate if he were president and finally said, "Oops!"
The floundering by Pena Nieto, a strikingly handsome man married to a television actress, fed into the images critics have tried to spin around him: telegenic but hollow.
"I have read a number of books, starting with novels, that I particularly liked. I'd have a hard time recalling the titles of the books," Pena Nieto said during a question-and-answer session the weekend book fair in the western city of Guadalajara.
Pena Nieto said that as an adolescent, he had been influenced by the Bible, and had read "parts of" it.
He then rambled on and on, tossing out confused title names, asking for help in recalling the names of authors and sometimes mismatching the two.
He said he liked "La Silla del Aguila, a novel whose title roughly translates as "The Presidential Chair." But he said it was written by historian Enrique Krauze, one of Mexico's most famous historians. It was actually written by Carlos Fuentes, the country's most famous novelist.
That was about as close as the former governor came to correctly identifying a book he has read in the past decade.
"The truth is that when I read books, the titles don't really sink in," he said after several minutes.
Pena Nieto is the leading hope of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to return to the presidency it held for 71 years without interruption before losing the 2000 elections to conservative Vicente Fox.
Television images of Pena Nieto's struggles ignited glee among PRI critics on Twitter.
Several referred to him as "the Justin Bieber of the PRI," referring to Bieber's difficulty in naming all seven continents during a television appearance in November.
But Bieber was at least able to work out the answer with some prompting from host David Letterman.
Pena Nieto couldn't. He looked to his aides for help and drew laughter from the audience, saying at least twice "I can't remember the title." He mentioned he had read a political thriller by Jeffrey Archer.
Several demonstrators showed up at party headquarters in Mexico City on Monday to symbolically give him books on Mexican history.
"It's really very shameful that a person wants to be president and doesn't know a single book," said Hugo Giovanni Aguirre, a university law student.
Pena Nieto accepted the gaffe in Twitter posts Monday, apparently hoping that good grace would calm the controversy.
"I'm reading some tweets about my error yesterday, some are very critical, others are even funny. I thank you for all of them," he wrote. Later, he tweeted "Freedom of expression is a central pillar of democracy. Criticism of those of us who aspire to or hold political office is fundamental."
Members of Pena Nieto's PRI party has their own moments of fun mocking former president Fox, a fountain of verbal flubs who prompted hilarity by mispronouncing the name of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges during a speech before one of Spain's most important literary gatherings.
But some Mexican intellectuals, even longstanding critics of the PRI, were sympathetic:
"I myself, and I suppose all of us ... have moments when we forget authors, we forget books," said historian Lorenzo Meyer. "We can't jump on Pena Nieto because he forgets his writers."
Microscopic cells race to victory in first World Cell Race at ASCB meetingPublic release date: 3-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: John Fleischman jfleischman@ascb.org 513-706-0212 American Society for Cell Biology
World Cell Race pulls 70 entries for title of world's fastest cell
DENVER, CO, December 3, 2011--A "team" of fast-moving, bone marrow stem cells from a research laboratory in Singapore has run away with the first World Cell Race, finishing first with a cellular speed record of 5.2 microns per minute (or 0.000204 inches per minute) in results announced today at the 51st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB).
The mesenchymal bone marrow stem cells grown at the National University of Singapore by Yuchun Liu, PhD, were one of 70 cell lines entered by labs from all over the world and raced on specially designed micro-tracks, a few microns wide and 400 microns long. The micro-tracks, donated by CYTOO Cell Architects of Grenoble, France, were coated with fibronectin, a natural substrate on which the cells could get traction. The racing cell lines were frozen for shipment to one of six labs around the globe where they were thawed, stained with fluorescent dyes, and raced against the clock. The action was video recorded for 24 hours and the times were sorted by custom software created at the Institut Curie in Paris, according to Manuel Thry, PhD, who along with Ana-Maria Lennon-Dumnil, PhD, and Matthieu Piel, PhD, organized the World Cell Race. Piel and Lennon-Dumnil are at the Institut Curie. Thry is with the Institut de Recherche en Technologies et Sciences pour le Vivant (iRTSV) in Grenoble, France. The institute is part of the Commissariat l'Energie Atomique (CEA).
"We measured the position and speeds of all individual cells in each group," says Thry. "For each cell line, we then determined the fastest run over 400 microns."
Thry says the idea for a cell race came to them at last year's ASCB Annual Meeting in Philadelphia where the three French scientists were struck by the large number of papers and the lively discussions about cell migration. How cells move is one of the hottest fields in research today because of the implications in cancer where motilitythe ability of tumor cells to move autonomously--is critical to understanding how cancer metastasizes. Cell movement is also vital to normal biology including embryonic development and human growth. Thry says that the World Cell Race was a way to mix the fun of a scientific sporting event with serious research into how speed reflects the nature of certain cells.
The results of the race were announced in Denver as the climax of an ASCB Special Interest Subgroup titled, "Mechanisms for Rapid Cell Migration." More information on cell mobility can be found at: http://www.ascb.org/meetings/subgroup/subgroup.cfm#I
Finishing second and third place were cell lines provided by Odile Filhol-Cochet, PhD, of iRTSV/CEA in France. The second place winners were "wild type" normal mammary breast epithelial cells, clocked along the 400 micron track at 3.2 microns per minute. Third place award went to a cell culture of these mammary epithelial cells altered in the lab with a knocked-down casein kinase 2 and an overactive Ras pathway. The re-engineered cells roared down the track at 2.7 microns per minute.
In fourth place were human keratinocytes cultured from samples taken from patients suffering from Kindler syndrome, a rare genetic skin disorder, entered by Rumena Begum of King's College London, UK. Their speed over 400 microns was 2.5 microns per minute.
The winners will receive a Nikon camera and a World Cell Race medal.
In addition to being enjoyable, the first World Cell Race generated valuable data. "Data analysis revealed an unknown feature of cell migration," says Thry. "Fast cells were persistent?they rarely changed the direction of their migration. Slow cells were not persistent. They went back and forth." Correlating the speed of cells to their invasive behavior in cancer, for example, could uncover new approaches to treatment, Thry believes.
If the First World Cell Race is a success at ASCB, Thry hopes for a second running next year. "Maybe with additional games," he suggests. "Swimming and weightlifting."
###
Media contacts:
John Fleischman
ASCB Science Writer
513-706-0212
jfleischman@ascb.org
Cathy Yarbrough
ASCB Media Coordinator
858-243-1814
cyarbrough@ascb.org
In Denver, December 3-7, 2001
ASCB Newsroom, Room 204
Colorado Convention Center
303-228-8380
Manuel Thry
manuel.thery@cea.fr
(33) 6 6204 2122
http://www.worldcellrace.com/
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Microscopic cells race to victory in first World Cell Race at ASCB meetingPublic release date: 3-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: John Fleischman jfleischman@ascb.org 513-706-0212 American Society for Cell Biology
World Cell Race pulls 70 entries for title of world's fastest cell
DENVER, CO, December 3, 2011--A "team" of fast-moving, bone marrow stem cells from a research laboratory in Singapore has run away with the first World Cell Race, finishing first with a cellular speed record of 5.2 microns per minute (or 0.000204 inches per minute) in results announced today at the 51st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB).
The mesenchymal bone marrow stem cells grown at the National University of Singapore by Yuchun Liu, PhD, were one of 70 cell lines entered by labs from all over the world and raced on specially designed micro-tracks, a few microns wide and 400 microns long. The micro-tracks, donated by CYTOO Cell Architects of Grenoble, France, were coated with fibronectin, a natural substrate on which the cells could get traction. The racing cell lines were frozen for shipment to one of six labs around the globe where they were thawed, stained with fluorescent dyes, and raced against the clock. The action was video recorded for 24 hours and the times were sorted by custom software created at the Institut Curie in Paris, according to Manuel Thry, PhD, who along with Ana-Maria Lennon-Dumnil, PhD, and Matthieu Piel, PhD, organized the World Cell Race. Piel and Lennon-Dumnil are at the Institut Curie. Thry is with the Institut de Recherche en Technologies et Sciences pour le Vivant (iRTSV) in Grenoble, France. The institute is part of the Commissariat l'Energie Atomique (CEA).
"We measured the position and speeds of all individual cells in each group," says Thry. "For each cell line, we then determined the fastest run over 400 microns."
Thry says the idea for a cell race came to them at last year's ASCB Annual Meeting in Philadelphia where the three French scientists were struck by the large number of papers and the lively discussions about cell migration. How cells move is one of the hottest fields in research today because of the implications in cancer where motilitythe ability of tumor cells to move autonomously--is critical to understanding how cancer metastasizes. Cell movement is also vital to normal biology including embryonic development and human growth. Thry says that the World Cell Race was a way to mix the fun of a scientific sporting event with serious research into how speed reflects the nature of certain cells.
The results of the race were announced in Denver as the climax of an ASCB Special Interest Subgroup titled, "Mechanisms for Rapid Cell Migration." More information on cell mobility can be found at: http://www.ascb.org/meetings/subgroup/subgroup.cfm#I
Finishing second and third place were cell lines provided by Odile Filhol-Cochet, PhD, of iRTSV/CEA in France. The second place winners were "wild type" normal mammary breast epithelial cells, clocked along the 400 micron track at 3.2 microns per minute. Third place award went to a cell culture of these mammary epithelial cells altered in the lab with a knocked-down casein kinase 2 and an overactive Ras pathway. The re-engineered cells roared down the track at 2.7 microns per minute.
In fourth place were human keratinocytes cultured from samples taken from patients suffering from Kindler syndrome, a rare genetic skin disorder, entered by Rumena Begum of King's College London, UK. Their speed over 400 microns was 2.5 microns per minute.
The winners will receive a Nikon camera and a World Cell Race medal.
In addition to being enjoyable, the first World Cell Race generated valuable data. "Data analysis revealed an unknown feature of cell migration," says Thry. "Fast cells were persistent?they rarely changed the direction of their migration. Slow cells were not persistent. They went back and forth." Correlating the speed of cells to their invasive behavior in cancer, for example, could uncover new approaches to treatment, Thry believes.
If the First World Cell Race is a success at ASCB, Thry hopes for a second running next year. "Maybe with additional games," he suggests. "Swimming and weightlifting."
###
Media contacts:
John Fleischman
ASCB Science Writer
513-706-0212
jfleischman@ascb.org
Cathy Yarbrough
ASCB Media Coordinator
858-243-1814
cyarbrough@ascb.org
In Denver, December 3-7, 2001
ASCB Newsroom, Room 204
Colorado Convention Center
303-228-8380
Manuel Thry
manuel.thery@cea.fr
(33) 6 6204 2122
http://www.worldcellrace.com/
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Syracuse men's basketball coach Jim Boeheim apologized Friday night for questioning the motives of the men who accused his longtime assistant of molesting them as minors.
"I believe I misspoke very badly in my response to the allegations that have been made," an emotional Boeheim said in a postgame press conference. "I shouldn't have questioned what the accusers expressed or their motives. I am really sorry that I did that, and I regret any harm that I caused."
Fine has been accused by three men, including two former Syracuse ballboys, of molesting them as minors. Fine, who was fired Sunday, has denied the allegations.
When the accusations first were made public, Boeheim adamantly defended Fine and verbally disparaged the accusers, accusing them of lying for money.
"The Penn State thing came out, and the kid behind this is trying to get money," Boeheim said of accuser Bobby Davis in an interview with the Syracuse Post-Standard. "He's tried before. And now he's trying again. If he gets this, he's going to sue the university and Bernie. What do you think is going to happen at Penn State? You know how much money is going to be involved in civil suits? I'd say about $50 million. That's what this is about. Money."
Advocates for sex abuse victims had called for Boeheim to resign or be fired for his adamant defense of Fine and for his comments attacking the accusers.
Speaking after No. 4 Syracuse beat No. 10 Florida on Friday, Boeheim said his initial comments were insensitive to the individuals involved and especially to the overall issue of sex abuse.
"What I said last week was out of loyalty," he said. "I acted without thinking. I couldn't believe what I was hearing."
Boeheim insisted that his apology and his regrets came from the heart.
"No one said this is what you should say," he said. "This is what I feel."
He said he spent time this week at the McMahon Ryan House for child abuse in Syracuse and plans to get involved to help raise awareness.
"I'm going to do everything I can to do that," he said, no matter whether he's coaching or not. "I've always been committed to kids. There's no question in my mind the issue of abuse is the No. 1 thing we should all be concerned about in this community."
Davis, now 39, told ESPN last month that Fine molested him beginning in 1984 and that the sexual contact continued until he was around 27. A ball boy for six years, Davis said the abuse occurred at Fine's home, at Syracuse basketball facilities and on team road trips, including the 1987 Final Four. Davis' stepbrother, Mike Lang, 45, who also was a ball boy, told ESPN that Fine began molesting him while he was in the fifth or sixth grade.
A third accuser, 23-year-old Zach Tomaselli of Lewiston, Maine, came forward Sunday. He said he told police that Fine molested him in 2002 in a Pittsburgh hotel room after a game. He said Fine touched him "multiple" times in that one incident.
The U.S. Attorney's Office and the U.S. Secret Service are leading an investigation of child molestation allegations against Fine.
Earlier Friday, , USA Basketball said Boeheim's spot on the coaching staff of the U.S. basketball team remained secure, though the U.S. Olympic Committee is monitoring the child sex abuse investigation of Fine.
Boeheim is the top assistant to Mike Krzyzewski on the team that will play at the 2012 London Olympics.
Asked about Boeheim's status, USA Basketball spokesman Craig Miller said, "Jim Boeheim is a member of the USA Men's National Team coaching staff.'"
The USOC declined comment, though a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press the federation is following the issue. The person spoke to The AP on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Two high-profile Olympic sports have dealt with allegations of child sex abuse in the past two years.
In 2010, USA Swimming was hit by a number of sex-abuse allegations by coaches. More recently, 1984 Olympic gymnastics coach Don Peters was banned for life by USA Gymnastics after being accused of sexually abusing two athletes in the 1980s.
Over the past 18 months, the USOC has increased efforts to ensure safe environments for children who participate in Olympic sports.
The federation adopted a task force that encouraged the national governing bodies to adopt standardized policies to prevent abuse. It also hired an attorney to serve as the director of ethics and safe sport.
Boeheim was on the U.S. coaching staff in 1990 and returned in 2006.
Because Boeheim does not fall under the USOC's umbrella until the Olympic team is officially named, the USOC does not consider his status on USA Basketball to currently be its issue.
Meanwhile, USA Basketball officials say the federal investigation of Fine doesn't affect Boeheim's status in their organization, but that they, too, continue to keep an eye on developments.
___
AP National Writer Eddie Pells in Denver contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Online game maker Zynga says it plans to raise up to $1.15 billion in an initial public offering of 115 million shares in the latest in a spate of Internet IPOs
The maker of popular games FarmVille and Mafia Wars says in a Securities and Exchange filing it plans to sell the shares at up to $10 a share.
Zynga Inc. said in July that it planned to go public. The proposed IPO follows other recent tech company IPOs including daily deal site GroupOn in November and professional networking site LinkedIn in June.
Tech IPOs aren't always hits. Shares of Groupon Inc., for example, are trading below their IPO price.
Zynga was founded in 2007 by CEO Mark Pincus. It has about 2,300 employees.
(Reuters) ? American Airlines wants to shed unwanted leases for 24 aircraft and engines as the third-largest U.S. carrier begins cutting costs after filing for bankruptcy.
AMR Corp, the parent company, said it has a large number of aircraft on order, and breaking leases on older equipment will allow it to speed up its fleet renewal.
American Airlines was the lone major U.S. carrier to avoid bankruptcy in the past decade. The company now seeks to catch up to competitors by using Chapter 11 to bring down labor and fixed costs.
The company said in court documents that it leased the equipment, mostly McDonnell Douglas DC-9 planes, when it anticipated greater demand for air travel.
However, "with the ongoing downturn in the economy and in travel, these same aircraft and engines have little if any marketable value and are no longer necessary to the debtors' operations."
It did not say in court papers how much it would save by shedding the leases.
American Airlines and the attorney who filed the papers did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
The company has a fleet of more than 600 jets.
The airline said the majority of the equipment has already been taken out of service and is stored in New Mexico.
The case is In re AMR Corp, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-15463.
(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, editing by Dave Zimmerman)
Lead-ion collisions recorded by the Large Hadron Collider's ALICE detector during this month's run show up in green on this graphic. Oxford physicist Frank Close says the LHC could solve cosmic puzzles.
By Alan Boyle
In his new book, "The Infinity Puzzle: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe," Oxford physicist Frank Close reviews decades' worth of brain-teasing theories and looks ahead to puzzles yet to be solved.
Close traces the decades-long effort to find the deep connections between the fundamental forces of nature and resolve the "infinity puzzle" ? that is, the fact that the mathematics of quantum theory came up with nonsensical numbers. That puzzle was eventually solved, as Close describes in the book, but?an even bigger puzzle remains: Why is the cosmos built the way it is?
Some clues could emerge from Europe's Large Hadron Collider, where physicists are looking for a mysterious particle known as the Higgs boson. Close delves into the strange role that the Higgs plays in contemporary physics, but he emphasizes that his latest book is about much more than the science.
"'The Infinity Puzzle' is not just another story about the physics of the LHC," he told me this week. "It's focusing on the people. Science is a pure ideal, but the scientists who do it are people. And we all have the same desires and pressures. ... There are heroes and villains in science, as there are everywhere."
Close's tale illustrates that the course of true science doesn't always run smooth. It may well turn out that the long-sought Higgs boson?is a will-o'-the-wisp, and physicists will have to go back to square one. But even that won't render "The Infinity Puzzle" out of date.?
"If the Higgs boson turns out not to exist, and we have to completely rewrite everything, this book will show how we got to this conundrum,"?Close said. "And if it does exist, hopefully it will explain why it was so important."
The book is particularly timely, considering that?this year's?Nobel Prize ceremonies are due to take place in Stockholm and Oslo next week. During a wide-ranging interview, Close discussed his book?as well as the people and the puzzles that inspired it. Here's an edited version of the Q&A:
Cosmic Log: Could you explain what the "infinity puzzle" is?
Frank Close: The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is the biggest experiment that particle physics has ever set out to do. It's trying to find the answer to why there is structure in the universe. The buzzword you hear is the Higgs boson, and the question is, who is Higgs, what's the boson, what's it all about?
Well, what it's all about is what "The Infinity Puzzle" is trying to answer. In telling the story, the book focuses on the people who brought us to this remarkable point in history. And in particular it focuses on a group of scientists who discovered two separate things, half a century ago. First, how to unite the electromagnetic force, the force that holds you and me together and makes magnets work, with the weak force of radioactivity, which plays a very important part in how the sun burns. This is called the electroweak theory today.
The other part of the story is how to make a theory, which works beautifully if there is no mass in anything at all, work in a world where particles have mass. That has become known as the Higgs mechanism, and the consummate object we're looking for is the Higgs boson. The questions surrounding whether these things are named correctly, whether the people who won Nobel Prizes in the past were the right people, and whether there are going to be controversies over Nobel Prizes in the future for all of these things ? those?are the themes of the book. It's about the politics of science, the way that people are driven to want to get the big prizes. Scientists suffer the same emotions that everybody else does.
Q: You touch on many of those personalities ? some who received Nobels, and some who didn't but deserved to. Do those personalities actually shape the science? Are there things in the universe that we see in a particular way just because a scientist first described it in that way?
A: It's a very interesting question about the role of personality in being able to tease out the secrets of nature. There are some?people who are strong mathematical calculators but don't necessarily have great vision. There are other people who have got great vision, but aren't?particularly strong calculators. It's when these two types get together that rapid progress is often made.
Frank Close, author of "The Infinity Puzzle," talks about the story of the men whose breakthroughs led to the Large Hadron Collider.
Ultimately, there's a truth out there, and we're trying to find what it is. It's different for artists. If you're a Beethoven, if you're proposing some symphony and you don't publish it, the chance that somebody else will create the very same symphony someday ... well, that just doesn't happen. But in the case of science, nature has already constructed the symphony, and we're trying to find what it is.
The challenge is, suppose that you have uncovered a bit of the symphony, but you're not sure whether you want to go public with it, so you don't publish it. Then, a short time later, somebody else does publish it, a bit braver than you, and you realize that you were?right all along. You've lost the credit. There's a certain point where?you have to be brave enough to jump off the diving board and take the plunge, to mix in another metaphor. There are many examples of people who didn't take that last?step, for one reason or another. You know the names of the winners, but you don't know the ones who didn't quite make it.
Q: When it comes to the Higgs boson, the question has arisen as to whether it actually exists. One of my colleagues has joked that if it's found, that's worth a Nobel. And if it's ruled out, that's worth a Nobel as well. Is that the way it works?
A: The idea that has led to the Higgs boson is a piece of beautiful mathematics. Whether nature actually does it is a question that only experiments can answer. Although the theorists are the ones that get all the press ... the Einsteins and the other names that trip off the tongue ... it's ultimately the experiments that decide. That's where we are at the moment.
The idea that there should be a Higgs boson, or something else that masquerades as that particle, has been around for a long time. It's only now that are finally able to do the experiments that will tell us one way or the other if that is the case. And if it is?the case, we might find out exactly how nature plays?this particular?trick. When Peter Higgs?and a group of other people first put the idea forward, they were trying to solve a particular conundrum, and they came up with the simplest way of doing it?? that is, that there was a single particle known as the Higgs boson. That was 50 years ago. Since then, people have refined those original ideas, based on the discoveries we have made.
Basic Books
Oxford physicist Frank Close's book traces the decades-long quest to solve one of the biggest puzzles of quantum physics.
There are several possible ideas as to how nature might actually do this conjuring trick. It might be there's a whole family of particles called Higgsinos and other weird names. It might not be a simple particle. It might be a compound?? just as an atom has a nucleus that's made of protons and neutrons, which are made of smaller things called quarks, there might be new sorts of particles waiting to be found, called techniquarks, which collectively act as if they were a single boson.
It might be those, it might be something else. We simply don't know. And that's the exciting thing. Nature knows the answer at the moment, and we're trying to find out at last what it is.
Q: Is the Higgs boson the only door to new physics, or are there other routes to?going beyond the Standard Model of?physics?
A: We certainly know that the Standard Model cannot be the final answer. It describes everything that we currently have explored, but there are?many things we have to put in by hand. The mass of the electron is put in by hand. Why it is what it is, we don't know. But if it were different, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You start by putting in all these measured numbers, and then we can describe a vast amount of stuff. But there must be some richer theory out there that?will show why the Standard Model is?as it is.?
An analogy is Newton's laws of mechanics, which worked perfectly for hundreds of years. They were later incorporated inside Einstein's theory of relativity, which is a much richer, more powerful theory that includes Newton in it. We suspect there is a "theory of everything" out there which will contain the Standard Model. We are hoping we'll get close to the nature of that theory at the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC is exploring regions of nature we've never been able to explore before. We've seen them from afar?? it's a bit like knowing there's somebody around the corner but you haven't seen them yet.
We are entering new territory. We're creating in the laboratory the conditions that the universe experienced about a trillionth of a second after the big bang. There are observations that have taken us to a billionth of a second after the big bang, so we've been pretty near. You might think, "Oh, why would we want to get nearer?" It's because the stuff that you and I are made of was created in that cauldron of the big bang's aftermath, and there are puzzles yet to be solved.
For example, why is anything left today? Antimatter is real, and matter and antimatter annihilate when they meet. So why didn't the newborn universe annihilate itself after the big bang. There must be something that tipped the balance. What that is, we don't know for sure, but some hints are beginning to emerge from the Large Hadron Collider.
The real thing is, we're exploring a new continent, and the LHC will show us what is there. That will then answer?many of these?questions ?and if I knew the answers now, I'd be riding off to Stockholm.
Q: You mentioned the?fact that some of the values in the Standard Model have to be put in by hand, and that scientists are trying to find out if there's a deeper theory that explains why those values are as they are. Some physicists have said that it might just be a lucky break that we have those values, and that our universe might be merely one of the "bubbles" sitting on the wider landscape?of the multiverse. Do you subscribe to that landscape view of the multiverse?
A: Well, of course, the simple answer is, I don't know. And to be honest, nobody knows. I feel sometimes it's a bit of a cop-out. The universe I find myself in is difficult enough to describe. The idea that it is one of a huge number of universes ... that might indeed be true, but if we cannot experimentally answer whether it is true or not, I'm not sure whether the question is actually scientific.?It's interesting philosophically. It's possible that someday we might be able to come up with an experiment that can answer whether there are other universes, but then you get into interesting tautological questions. The "universe" is presumably everything we can be aware of. If there are other universes that we cannot be aware of, then they're beyond the capability of science to investigate. But if they are investigatable through science, they are in a sense part of our universe.
The real question is this: Are the masses of electrons and other fundamental particles essential numbers in their own right, or are they no more fundamental than the radii of the planets around the sun??We don't know yet.?I can't imagine anything that the Large Hadron Collider will?discover that will give us a clear insight as to why?particles have the?masses that they do. But if we discover the Higgs boson, or whatever it is, we may well find out where mass comes from. And there may be some interesting quirk that comes out of that discovery that will give us a clue as to why the masses are as they are. The excitement of science is that until you've done it, you don't know.
Q: It seems to me that you were on a BBC program some years ago that?touched on this whole discussion over whether a particle collider could destroy the world.
A: Yes, and the world hasn't ended yet.
Q: Some people would say the controversy was actually good for physics because it was a "teachable moment" that got people interested in physics. How do you see it?
A: Well, to be fair, it was a controversy that no scientist really subscribed to. It was something that somebody dreamt up, and it created an interesting sensation. But it does give the opportunity to explain what the Large Hadron Collider is and is not. The idea that we are doing things in the Large Hadron Collider that have never been done before is not the case. It's the first time that we have been able to do them. But the universe at large has collided particles together at energies far in excess of anything we do at?the LHC or will ever be able to do. Cosmic rays in outer space are subatomic particles whipped into violent motion by magnetic fields in the cosmos ? and they hit the upper atmosphere at energies far in excess of anything at?the LHC.
Nature has done the experiments before, and we're still here. It's just the first time that we have been doing them under controlled conditions to tease things out. There are more things in life to worry about than that.
More about the puzzles of physics:
Close will make an appearance at Town Hall Seattle at 7:30 p.m. PT Friday to talk about his book and the Large Hadron Collider, and is due to visit Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, Calif., at 7 p.m. PT Dec. 6.
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Residents, including shopkeepers and businessmen, hit the ground with their sandals to express their anger while shouting anti-American slogans during a demonstration in Lahore on Thursday.
By Amna Nawaz, NBC News Producer
American gunships launch a strike across the Afghan border into Pakistan, hitting a Pakistani check post and killing 11 soldiers. U.S. officials say the attack was in response to insurgent firing. Pakistan calls the attacks "unprovoked and cowardly."? That was in June of 2008.
Three Pakistani soldiers are killed at their border post as a result of an American helicopter strike. U.S. officials say they were targeting insurgents who were launching mortar rounds into Afghanistan. Pakistan protests by blocking the supply route for U.S. and NATO convoys. That was in September of 2010.
The details of exactly what happened during Saturday's early morning hours in Pakistan's Mohmand tribal agency, on the border with Afghanistan, are still unclear, but the story line is familiar.
This time, U.S. officials say they took fire from across the border in Pakistan and called in air support, reportedly checking with their Pakistani counterparts before authorizing a strike. Pakistani officials say they were never consulted, that their pleas to NATO to stop the attack once it had started were ignored, and responded by again shutting down the supply routes.
One thing that is certainly different this time is the death toll: 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in this latest incident, including two officers, making it the deadliest incident of its kind since Pakistan and the U.S. declared an alliance in 2001. The higher death toll, according to analysts, means more pressure on Pakistan's military and civilian leaders to react strongly.
There is no debating that U.S.-Pakistan relations have taken a beating over the last year. But have they hit rock bottom? Or is this just the new "all-time low?"
Ispr / AFP - Getty Images
An image released by Pakistan's Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) on Nov. 30, 2011 shows a Pakistani army post reportedly targeted by NATO helicopters resulting in the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers.
Last straw in a tough year The condemnation from Pakistan over the latest attack has been swift and unrelenting.
Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan's Army Chief, called the attack "unacceptable." Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said it was "an assault on the sovereignty of Pakistan," and pledged to conduct a complete review of all diplomatic, political, military and intelligence cooperation with the U.S. In addition Pakistan announced it would boycott next month's Bonn Conference on Afghanistan.
Amid the rising anger,?Pakistan's military released a set of images Wednesday?which it says shows the remote border posts attacked by NATO helicopters and fighter jets on Saturday.
"They're taking a tougher line than they have before," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based defense analyst. "They're staking out a strong position to demonstrate within a domestic context that they can protect Pakistan's interests."
That, according to Rizvi, is even more important to the government and military establishments now, in a year when they've both lost credibility following a series of humiliating actions by the U.S.
Back in March, U.S. pressure to release CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who shot and killed two Pakistanis, forced Pakistan to take the domestically unpopular action of negotiating his exit in the face of intense public anger.
Then came the unilateral, American operation in May to capture and kill Osama Bin Laden within miles of Pakistan's premier military academy which forced Islamabad to choose between confessing involvement or admitting incompetence.
Former U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen's September accusation that Pakistan's largest intelligence agency uses the militant Haqqani network as a "veritable arm" to launch attacks on U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan left the relationship even further strained, and Pakistan's Army brass feeling "betrayed," according to military sources.
This latest incident, according to multiple Pakistani officials, has forced the country to rethink its engagement with the U.S. "We cannot be just a subject of abuse and attack," said one military official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Both of these entities ? the government and military ? have been discredited," said Rizvi. "Within Pakistan they are discredited because of U.S. actions across their borders. Outside, they are discredited because the U.S. is saying they are helping the Taliban."
Public relations problem But according to some, the government and military's credibility problem may be partly their own making.
"The problem is that there's not really a source of information that's geared to inform," said Dr. Christine Fair, who focuses on South Asian political and military affairs at Georgetown University. "They're geared to massage perceptions of events, and the Pakistani government love taking their citizens for a ride on the victim bus."
A growing sense of anti-Americanism in Pakistan over the last decade has been fanned by a dominant, conservative Islamic, public discourse, said Rizvi ? a sentiment the establishment has tapped into from time to time to pursue its own national interests. That's how a discussion about a potential U.S. aid package devolves into talk-show debates about America respecting Pakistan's sovereignty. Or the discovery of al Qaida's leader hiding in Pakistan turns into national outrage that the borders were breached by the U.S.
"In Pakistan, there are only two entities that publicly support good relations with the U.S.: One is the military, the second is the federal government," said Rizvi. "You don't find any other political party or major society group openly supporting the ?War on Terror? or relations with the U.S."
What about the billions in U.S. aid? One question many Americans ask is: ?Why do Pakistanis hate us so much if we give them so much money? ? Despite the fact that billions of dollars in U.S. aid and reimbursements have gone to Pakistan in the last decade, anti-U.S. feelings within the population are running higher than ever.
Opposition leader Imran Khan has capitalized on those frustrations, channeling them into a groundswell of political support in recent months and a 68 percent approval rating, according to one recent poll. Separately, a poll conducted exclusively in Pakistan's tribal regions last year found almost 80 percent opposed the ?war on terror.? The Pew Research Center's 2010 Global Attitudes project showed a mere 17 percent of all Pakistanis polled held a favorable view of the U.S. and nearly 60 percent described the U.S. as an enemy. ? American money has been used to fund everything from education projects to agricultural development, but money has been slow to hit the ground and has not been used in ways that directly affect most Pakistanis.
According to the Congressional Research Service, of the $20.7 billion allocated for Pakistan between FY2002 and FY2012, only $6.5 billion was "economic-related." The vast majority, $14.1 billion, was "security-related," and the lion's share of that, $8.8 billion, was military reimbursement for operations supporting the US/NATO mission across the border in Afghanistan, known as "Coalition Support Funds," or CSF.
Asif Hassan / AFP - Getty Images
Supporters of Pakistani cricketer turned politician Imran Khan's party, the Movement for Justice, shout slogans during a protest in Karachi on Thursday against the cross-border NATO air strike on Pakistani troops.
Rizvi said that most Pakistanis fail to benefit from U.S.-funded projects, and very little is known among the everyday citizenry about just how American money is being used on the ground ? a problem, he says, that is one of "public relations."
"Over the last few years, a lot of funding has gone to state educational facilities, to improve facilities, enable professors to go to other countries for conferences, but very few people know that its American money," said Rizvi. "The [Pakistani] government doesn't tell them it?s American money, they create the impression that the government is making this possible for them."
That same "public relations" strategy has meant that the establishment has failed to mobilize domestic support for the war on terror, despite the fact that 30,000 Pakistanis have died in terror-related incidents since 2001. Losses in that war ? accidental or deliberate ? are therefore met with greater public anger, by a population that believes its military is fighting an American war.
Treading lightly In the days since the latest tragic border clash, there has been a flurry of high-level efforts made by U.S. diplomatic, military, and intelligence officials to reach out to their Pakistani counterparts.
The U.S. and NATO are using careful language. NATO called the incident "tragic and unintended." A joint statement by the U.S. Departments of Defense and State expressed "deepest condolences" and "sympathies" from Secretaries Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton. Officials have pledged to fully investigate what actually transpired on the ground.?
Following the incidents in 2008 and 2010, the U.S. and Pakistan found enough common ground to continue working together. The strong language being used and decisions being taken by Pakistani officials suggest it won?t be as easy this time around.
Prime Minister Gilani has already made clear that "business as usual will not be there." But U.S. officials and analysts express confidence that, with enough time and enough concessions, the two sides will ultimately be forced to find a way forward once again.
Pakistan relies on U.S. money and international support to bolster its economy, said Rizvi, and the U.S. relies on Pakistan's cooperation to stabilize Afghanistan.
"They will both realize that they need each other. They will have to tolerate each other," he said.
That may come at a price. Some believe the U.S. will have to take steps to pacify elements that have supported it in the past ? issuing a public apology, or agreeing to not publicly rebuke Pakistan any longer, among other possibilities.
Despite ongoing investigations, Georgetown?s Fair believes both sides' dependence on one another means the focus will be on moving forward, not definitively determining the facts.
"There is no answer to this that's going to be helpful," says Fair. "I don't believe we're ever going to get to the bottom of what actually happened."
See a Photo Blog: Pakistan releases first images of border posts attacked by NATO
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Public release date: 3-Dec-2011
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