The World's Most Popular Class

What do you get when you combine a top-tier institution, a fun technology topic, Google's research director and completely open enrollment? An end to anyone else being able to complain about their class size.

With 98,435 students signed up and counting, the Artificial Intelligence class appears very excited about providing global access to one of Stanford's most popular courses (normal enrollment ~200). They didn't  expect this hoopla, and I'll be amazed if even 0.1% of those enrolled get anything positive out of the course. The recommended textbook (coauthored by one of the instructors) has not increased in sales as the class size ballooned. I would guess 98,400 of the enrolled students do not know what the prerequisite "solid understanding of linear algebra" means. Still, it's a brave venture and an interesting experiment. The class is free, no credit, and utilizes FAQ "discussion" periods and online homework/quiz/tests. And for the few people enrolled with legitimate interest and ability, it should be a pretty amazing class.

NNT

"The NNT" is a great example of taking very complicated scientific studies and presenting them in a compelling, easy to understand format. This group of doctors picks a particular treatment, reads all the studies, and then provides some very straightforward conclusions. The NNT (number needed to treat) is statistically how many patients have to be given a treatment to benefit. For example, steroid treatment for asthma attacks helps 1 out of every 8 patients,  while aspirin to prevent heart attacks helps 1 out of 50 patients. Then they provide a simple stoplight review: green is good (more benefit than harm) yellow is 'we can't tell yet', red is 'no benefit found'. They follow up with some quick statistics on benefit / risk, and also translate the statistics into words for the arithmophobic, then some specific details about the studies and how they drew their conclusions.

I like the startling factoids (1 in 2 women got a false positive mammogram result - definitely not a test worth taking). I think it's useful to know how ineffective treatments are (even for the best treatments, usually more than 90% of patients are not helped.) But more generally, I think it's amazing that I can't even decipher the titles of most of the studies they present, but I couldn't find a single thing on The NNT.com that I didn't understand. There are definitely some down sides to people getting medical advice from the web, but this site is reliable, straightforward and useful.

Giant Crystals

This isn't a movie set, those are actual people exploring fascinating Naica crystal caves in Mexico. These selenite crystals formed under water as oxygen diffused down and reacted with minerals in the water. A mish-mash of interdisciplinary projects are underway involving geochemists, astrophysists, photographers and many others. They've invented special ice suits to survive the sweltering environment, documented crystal formations found no where else on earth, and are working to conserve unique cave environments throughout the region. 

Burning Ice

Japan's latest energy investment is apparently burning ice. Burning ice (methane clathrate hydrate in chemistry-speak) is natural gas trapped in a solid form. Japan is always looking for new energy resources, especially since the tsunami/Fukushima accident, so they're spending over $150 million to try mining burning ice.

The good thing about burning ice is that it is a plentiful resource with a lot of stored energy. We used to think it only formed in outer space, but there's actually an immense amount. Conservatively, there is twice as much carbon in burning ice as all other fossil fuels combined.

The bad thing, though, is that it could be really dangerous mining burning ice. This is exactly what caused BP so many headaches trying to end the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The sudden release of methane from burning ice might have triggered the earth's most severe extinction event. Methane is a far worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. In addition, the burning ice deposits seem to be doing a pretty important job of holding the sea floor stable.

Mining burning ice as a response to Fukushima seems ironic. It's just saying "Playing with knives is dangerous. Here, play with a gun instead."

Video of undergraduates burning ice they made.
Roald Hoffman's essay on methane and burning ice.

Measuring Intelligence

In a lot of ways, I'm considered smart. I have a Ph.D. in organometallic chemistry, brain teasers are my idea of fun, and I'm currently reading the Decameron just because I've never read it. In a lot of other ways, I am (to put it politely) dumber than a dust-bunny. About once a week, I lose important things (keys, wallet, phone). I recently poked myself in the eye with a knitting needle while trying to make a scarf. I've been known to pass out simply because I forgot to eat for several days.

So I definitely understand the idea that intelligence is hard to define and incredibly hard to quantify. I view IQ tests suspiciously, and I don't find them helpful in terms of helping me understand how I think, or how most people think.

However, that was before I saw the UK Medical Research Council's Ultimate Intelligence Test. These prominent neuroscientists have identified 12 "Pillars of Wisdom" (including visiospatial memory, planning, verbal reasoning, etc). They are analyzing all sorts of things; how these different kinds of thinking fit together, how test performance relates to brain activity (functional MRI), the correlation between smoking or being left-handed and test performance, etc.

The tests are simple (like True/False: the circle is bigger than the square) but much more challenging than most  versions I've seen. Many are free, and if you register you can take part in the study. This is much more useful than most "Learning Styles inventories" I've used. It provides actual measures of what you're best at, which can be really useful when thinking about how you learn. Go play with them here.

The awesomeness of bacteria

io9 (Gawker's science blog) has a fun list today of things bacteria can do that humans can't. Essentially, the list points out that bacteria can evolve to handle extreme environments and competitive pressures. But Ingles-Arkell's  writing is clever, snarky, and straightforward. My textbooks never made claims as thought-provoking as  "Humans shrink from Uranium. Bacteria pick it up and use it as armor" or "That's right. The goop in your stomach fought cancer today. And what did you do?"