This Week in EPA Science

By Kacey Fitzpatrick

Are you in need of a good indoor activity this very snowy February? How about catching up on what’s been happening in EPA science!

Check out the research that we’ve highlighted this week.

• New Model for Mississippi Nutrient Pollution
  EPA researchers developed the Coastal General Ecosystem Model to address the nutrient pollution flowing from the Mississippi River watershed into the Gulf of Mexico. The state-of-the-art model provides a wealth of important information to scientists and stakeholders seeking to better understand and manage nutrient pollution in the Gulf.
  
  Read about the model in this “Around the Water Cooler” blog.

• Applying EPA Research to the Underworlds
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists are building on the work of EPA scientist Christian Daughton to study community health by monitoring sewage. Daughton published conceptual research in 2012 presenting his idea of Sewage Chemical Information Mining.
  
  Read about how an EPA Pathfinder Innovation Project inspired the MIT scientists.

• Precision Medicine: Treatments Targeted to the Individual
  President Obama has outlined his vision for a Precision Medicine Initiative, “a bold new research effort to revolutionize how we improve health and treat disease.” One EPA researcher has been at the forefront of this topic for more than a decade.
  
  Read more about that research in this blog.

• Chasing the “WOW!” With Citizen Schools and EPA Science
  EPA staff have been volunteering in the “Citizen Schools” program to teach hands-on, after school apprenticeships. Agency student contractor Andrew Murray experienced many “wow” moments leading one, called “Power Play,” focused on studying various energy generation methods, and their relations to pollution and climate change.
  
  Read about Murray’s wow experience.

• Breastfed Infants have Lower Arsenic Exposure than Formula-fed Infants
  A recently published study from the Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Center at Dartmouth College, jointly funded by EPA and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, has found that babies who are fed by formula rather than breastfeeding may be taking in higher levels of arsenic. The findings suggest that breastfed infants have lower arsenic exposure than formula-fed infants, and that both formula powder and drinking water can be sources of exposure for U.S. infants.
  
  Read Estimated Exposure to Arsenic in Breastfed and Formula-Fed Infants in a United States Cohort (Environ Health Perspect; DOI:10.1289/ehp.140878).

• Happy 20th Anniversary to EPA’s National Center for Environmental Research!
  EPA’s National Center for Environmental Research is celebrating 20 years of supporting high quality research by the nation’s leading scientists and engineers to improve the scientific basis for Agency decisions. EPA supports this research through the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, fellowships, and research contracts under the Agency’s Small Business Innovative Research Program.
  
  Learn more about Agency support for world-class research and innovation.

If you have any comments or questions about what I shared or about the week’s events, please submit them below in the comments section!

About the Author : Kacey Fitzpatrick is a student contractor and writer working with the science communication team in EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

from Science http://ift.tt/1DzYzLI

By Kacey Fitzpatrick

Are you in need of a good indoor activity this very snowy February? How about catching up on what’s been happening in EPA science!

Check out the research that we’ve highlighted this week.

• New Model for Mississippi Nutrient Pollution
  EPA researchers developed the Coastal General Ecosystem Model to address the nutrient pollution flowing from the Mississippi River watershed into the Gulf of Mexico. The state-of-the-art model provides a wealth of important information to scientists and stakeholders seeking to better understand and manage nutrient pollution in the Gulf.
  
  Read about the model in this “Around the Water Cooler” blog.

• Applying EPA Research to the Underworlds
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists are building on the work of EPA scientist Christian Daughton to study community health by monitoring sewage. Daughton published conceptual research in 2012 presenting his idea of Sewage Chemical Information Mining.
  
  Read about how an EPA Pathfinder Innovation Project inspired the MIT scientists.

• Precision Medicine: Treatments Targeted to the Individual
  President Obama has outlined his vision for a Precision Medicine Initiative, “a bold new research effort to revolutionize how we improve health and treat disease.” One EPA researcher has been at the forefront of this topic for more than a decade.
  
  Read more about that research in this blog.

• Chasing the “WOW!” With Citizen Schools and EPA Science
  EPA staff have been volunteering in the “Citizen Schools” program to teach hands-on, after school apprenticeships. Agency student contractor Andrew Murray experienced many “wow” moments leading one, called “Power Play,” focused on studying various energy generation methods, and their relations to pollution and climate change.
  
  Read about Murray’s wow experience.

• Breastfed Infants have Lower Arsenic Exposure than Formula-fed Infants
  A recently published study from the Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Center at Dartmouth College, jointly funded by EPA and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, has found that babies who are fed by formula rather than breastfeeding may be taking in higher levels of arsenic. The findings suggest that breastfed infants have lower arsenic exposure than formula-fed infants, and that both formula powder and drinking water can be sources of exposure for U.S. infants.
  
  Read Estimated Exposure to Arsenic in Breastfed and Formula-Fed Infants in a United States Cohort (Environ Health Perspect; DOI:10.1289/ehp.140878).

• Happy 20th Anniversary to EPA’s National Center for Environmental Research!
  EPA’s National Center for Environmental Research is celebrating 20 years of supporting high quality research by the nation’s leading scientists and engineers to improve the scientific basis for Agency decisions. EPA supports this research through the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, fellowships, and research contracts under the Agency’s Small Business Innovative Research Program.
  
  Learn more about Agency support for world-class research and innovation.

If you have any comments or questions about what I shared or about the week’s events, please submit them below in the comments section!

About the Author : Kacey Fitzpatrick is a student contractor and writer working with the science communication team in EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

from Science http://ift.tt/1DzYzLI

This Is Not What I Want As a Defense of “The Humanities” [Uncertain Principles]

Yesterday was Founders Day at Union, celebrating the 220th anniversary of the granting of a charter for the college. The name of the event always carries a sort of British-boarding-school air for me, and never fails to earworm me with a very particular rugby song, but really it’s just one of those formal-procession-and-big-speaker events that provide local color for academia.

This year’s event started, as always, with a classical music performance– a song by Aaron Copeland, this time, so we’ve at least caught up to the 20th Century. (I’m not sure I want to live long enough to see a Bob Dylan number performed at one of these…) The main point, though, was the talk by Laura Skandera Trombley, president of Pitzer College, on The Enduring Value of the Humanities.

Working where I do, I’ve heard a lot of these sorts of talks, but I still don’t really know what I want from a defense of “the humanities.” I’m pretty sure, though, that this wasn’t it.

There was a lot to not like, starting with the traditional cherry-picking of statistics to show that there’s a crisis in “the humanities”– quoting the Huffington Post on the 50% decline in the number of students majoring in the humanities. Of course, as has been noted nearly as many times as that statistic has been thrown out is the fact that it’s garbage. The apparent big decline comes from careful selection of a starting point at the peak of a giant bubble in “humanities” enrollments inflated by Baby Boomers desperate to stay out of Vietnam.

More than that, though, there’s a bunch of baiting and switching going on here. The case for the value of “the humanities” basically boils down to “You like art, don’t you? Wouldn’t it suck if we didn’t have art?” But, you know, to the extent that there’s a genuine crisis going on, it’s not because anyone’s threatening to stop producing art. Times have never been better for the production of art– in fact, the real crisis facing people who make art is that there’s too damn much of it, driving prices down and making it increasingly difficult to make a living making art.

But when we talk about “the humanities” in an academic context, we’re not talking about people who make art– only a tiny fraction of people in “humanities” departments are engaged in that. To the extent that “the humanities” are under threat in academia, what’s threatened isn’t the production of art, but comfortable faculty positions in which people are paid to talk about art. Which is a very different thing. The production of art is doing just fine, it’s the dissection of art that needs defending. But we didn’t get that.

(To be fair, there’s an exact parallel to this tactic in the sciences. See, for example, this Daily Beast piece which could be snarkily summarized as “Why should we spend $10 billion on the Large Hadron Collider? Well, you like radio, don’t you?” I don’t like that version of it any more than I like this one.)

There’s also a little sleight-of-hand when it comes to the selection of examples. The two most detailed examples given are the works of Aristotle, and a quote from a T.S. Eliot poem used at the opening of a TV show. But again, this isn’t really what “the humanities” are these days– they’re just safe and lazy signifiers that everybody will agree are Important in a sort of abstract sense. But if you were to suggest that every student at the college needs to read Aristotle and Eliot, there would be a revolt among the faculty (not without justification, though that’s a separate culture war).

Even the obligatory list of dropped names of great works ends up having problems:

More than ever we seek ways to feel connected to one another, and in the end it doesn’t matter if it’s the beauty of Strauss’ flowing “An der schönen blauen Donau,” or Bill T. Jones’ exploration of survival through dance in Still/Here, or Auden’s incomparable “Lullaby,” “Lay your head my darling, human on my faithless arm,” or Maxine Hong Kingston’s anguished admission in Woman Warrior, “You must not tell anyone what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well,” or our poet-bard, Kanye West’s love song to Kim, “Bound to fall in love, bound to fall in love (uh-huh honey)”; these are all expressions and interpretations of life and they tie us to those who came before as well as to our contemporaries.

On the page, that looks better than it sounded live. In person, the Kanye West reference was really grating, as it was delivered in a very showy deadpan manner, to deliberately highlight the vapidity of those lyrics, and make clear their inclusion was a joke. Because nothing is funnier than old white people making fun of rap.

And in a way, that’s sort of telling, because while the times have never been better for the production of art, the only appearance of art in one of the many modern, vital modes being produced today was brought in as a sneering joke. The art that was sincerely held up as having enduring value– even the opening song– was mostly drawn from fields that are on life support, propped up almost exclusively by the elite academic consensus that these are Important.

And in a way, that’s the biggest problem I have with this whole genre of speeches in defense of “the humanities” and academic disciplines in general: they are fundamentally elitist. These speeches aren’t for the students who are ostensibly the purpose of the institution, they’re to flatter the vanity of the faculty and wealthy alumni, and pat them on the back for their essential role in deciding what has value. Which is why the examples cited are always these ancient pressed-under-glass things. Everyone will agree that Aristotle and Eliot are Important, but the really active topics in “the humanities” are multicultural, and deal with critical theory and area studies and identity politics and intersectionality. But those don’t get talked about, because those topics upset people.

Even the obligatory pseudo-economic case is fundamentally kind of elite. The speech included the requisite shout-outs to “critical thinking” and the contractually mandated list of famous people with degrees in a “humanities” discipline. But that’s hugely problematic in a lot of ways, starting with the fact that it’s an argument based on “black swans”– telling students to major in philosophy because it worked for George Soros isn’t all that much different from telling people to buy lottery tickets because some lady in Arkansas hit the PowerBall jackpot.

More than that, though, the whole argument founded on the development of “critical thinking skills” is ultimately a sort of negative argument. It’s a familiar one in physics, because we’re one of the less obviously applied undergrad science majors, and I’ve used versions of it myself in talking to parents who ask what their kids might do after graduation. “You learn to think broadly about a wide range of problems, so you can go off and work in lots of other fields,” we say, but what we really mean is “Go ahead and major in our subject because you enjoy it; it won’t screw up your chances of getting a good job any more than any other major.” And that holds true for the argument applied to “the humanities.”

And, you know, that’s an easy case to make when you’re speaking at an elite private college like Union, because it’s probably true that the precise choice of major doesn’t make a great deal of difference for our students. We don’t quite have the cachet of Harvard or Williams, but we’re at the low end of the upper tier of elite colleges, and the name on the diploma will open enough doors in enough fields that our students will be able to get jobs, albeit not without some effort.

But move down the academic ladder a bit, and I’m not sure that argument works quite as well. A “humanities” degree from Union will carry a good deal more weight than a “humanities” degree from Directional State University. Those students are probably right to give more weight to immediately marketable and relevant credentials; as, for that matter, are many Union students who come from underprivileged backgrounds. Particularly in what remains a sort of dismal economic climate.

So, you know, a lot of stuff that bugged me packed into one short speech. I’m still not sure what I really want to see as a defense of the value of “the humanities,” but this very definitely was not it.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1vG076U

Yesterday was Founders Day at Union, celebrating the 220th anniversary of the granting of a charter for the college. The name of the event always carries a sort of British-boarding-school air for me, and never fails to earworm me with a very particular rugby song, but really it’s just one of those formal-procession-and-big-speaker events that provide local color for academia.

This year’s event started, as always, with a classical music performance– a song by Aaron Copeland, this time, so we’ve at least caught up to the 20th Century. (I’m not sure I want to live long enough to see a Bob Dylan number performed at one of these…) The main point, though, was the talk by Laura Skandera Trombley, president of Pitzer College, on The Enduring Value of the Humanities.

Working where I do, I’ve heard a lot of these sorts of talks, but I still don’t really know what I want from a defense of “the humanities.” I’m pretty sure, though, that this wasn’t it.

There was a lot to not like, starting with the traditional cherry-picking of statistics to show that there’s a crisis in “the humanities”– quoting the Huffington Post on the 50% decline in the number of students majoring in the humanities. Of course, as has been noted nearly as many times as that statistic has been thrown out is the fact that it’s garbage. The apparent big decline comes from careful selection of a starting point at the peak of a giant bubble in “humanities” enrollments inflated by Baby Boomers desperate to stay out of Vietnam.

More than that, though, there’s a bunch of baiting and switching going on here. The case for the value of “the humanities” basically boils down to “You like art, don’t you? Wouldn’t it suck if we didn’t have art?” But, you know, to the extent that there’s a genuine crisis going on, it’s not because anyone’s threatening to stop producing art. Times have never been better for the production of art– in fact, the real crisis facing people who make art is that there’s too damn much of it, driving prices down and making it increasingly difficult to make a living making art.

But when we talk about “the humanities” in an academic context, we’re not talking about people who make art– only a tiny fraction of people in “humanities” departments are engaged in that. To the extent that “the humanities” are under threat in academia, what’s threatened isn’t the production of art, but comfortable faculty positions in which people are paid to talk about art. Which is a very different thing. The production of art is doing just fine, it’s the dissection of art that needs defending. But we didn’t get that.

(To be fair, there’s an exact parallel to this tactic in the sciences. See, for example, this Daily Beast piece which could be snarkily summarized as “Why should we spend $10 billion on the Large Hadron Collider? Well, you like radio, don’t you?” I don’t like that version of it any more than I like this one.)

There’s also a little sleight-of-hand when it comes to the selection of examples. The two most detailed examples given are the works of Aristotle, and a quote from a T.S. Eliot poem used at the opening of a TV show. But again, this isn’t really what “the humanities” are these days– they’re just safe and lazy signifiers that everybody will agree are Important in a sort of abstract sense. But if you were to suggest that every student at the college needs to read Aristotle and Eliot, there would be a revolt among the faculty (not without justification, though that’s a separate culture war).

Even the obligatory list of dropped names of great works ends up having problems:

More than ever we seek ways to feel connected to one another, and in the end it doesn’t matter if it’s the beauty of Strauss’ flowing “An der schönen blauen Donau,” or Bill T. Jones’ exploration of survival through dance in Still/Here, or Auden’s incomparable “Lullaby,” “Lay your head my darling, human on my faithless arm,” or Maxine Hong Kingston’s anguished admission in Woman Warrior, “You must not tell anyone what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well,” or our poet-bard, Kanye West’s love song to Kim, “Bound to fall in love, bound to fall in love (uh-huh honey)”; these are all expressions and interpretations of life and they tie us to those who came before as well as to our contemporaries.

On the page, that looks better than it sounded live. In person, the Kanye West reference was really grating, as it was delivered in a very showy deadpan manner, to deliberately highlight the vapidity of those lyrics, and make clear their inclusion was a joke. Because nothing is funnier than old white people making fun of rap.

And in a way, that’s sort of telling, because while the times have never been better for the production of art, the only appearance of art in one of the many modern, vital modes being produced today was brought in as a sneering joke. The art that was sincerely held up as having enduring value– even the opening song– was mostly drawn from fields that are on life support, propped up almost exclusively by the elite academic consensus that these are Important.

And in a way, that’s the biggest problem I have with this whole genre of speeches in defense of “the humanities” and academic disciplines in general: they are fundamentally elitist. These speeches aren’t for the students who are ostensibly the purpose of the institution, they’re to flatter the vanity of the faculty and wealthy alumni, and pat them on the back for their essential role in deciding what has value. Which is why the examples cited are always these ancient pressed-under-glass things. Everyone will agree that Aristotle and Eliot are Important, but the really active topics in “the humanities” are multicultural, and deal with critical theory and area studies and identity politics and intersectionality. But those don’t get talked about, because those topics upset people.

Even the obligatory pseudo-economic case is fundamentally kind of elite. The speech included the requisite shout-outs to “critical thinking” and the contractually mandated list of famous people with degrees in a “humanities” discipline. But that’s hugely problematic in a lot of ways, starting with the fact that it’s an argument based on “black swans”– telling students to major in philosophy because it worked for George Soros isn’t all that much different from telling people to buy lottery tickets because some lady in Arkansas hit the PowerBall jackpot.

More than that, though, the whole argument founded on the development of “critical thinking skills” is ultimately a sort of negative argument. It’s a familiar one in physics, because we’re one of the less obviously applied undergrad science majors, and I’ve used versions of it myself in talking to parents who ask what their kids might do after graduation. “You learn to think broadly about a wide range of problems, so you can go off and work in lots of other fields,” we say, but what we really mean is “Go ahead and major in our subject because you enjoy it; it won’t screw up your chances of getting a good job any more than any other major.” And that holds true for the argument applied to “the humanities.”

And, you know, that’s an easy case to make when you’re speaking at an elite private college like Union, because it’s probably true that the precise choice of major doesn’t make a great deal of difference for our students. We don’t quite have the cachet of Harvard or Williams, but we’re at the low end of the upper tier of elite colleges, and the name on the diploma will open enough doors in enough fields that our students will be able to get jobs, albeit not without some effort.

But move down the academic ladder a bit, and I’m not sure that argument works quite as well. A “humanities” degree from Union will carry a good deal more weight than a “humanities” degree from Directional State University. Those students are probably right to give more weight to immediately marketable and relevant credentials; as, for that matter, are many Union students who come from underprivileged backgrounds. Particularly in what remains a sort of dismal economic climate.

So, you know, a lot of stuff that bugged me packed into one short speech. I’m still not sure what I really want to see as a defense of the value of “the humanities,” but this very definitely was not it.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1vG076U

What color is this dress?

This dress is all over social media. The world is divided about that color it is. What’s going on?

It’s not a hoax. Some people really do see this dress as gold and white (like me!) and other see blue.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1LQ0UUK

This dress is all over social media. The world is divided about that color it is. What’s going on?

It’s not a hoax. Some people really do see this dress as gold and white (like me!) and other see blue.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1LQ0UUK

Another breathtaking view of Comet Lovejoy

Comet Lovejoy on December 27, 2015 from the Fermi Dark Energy Camera. Image via Fermilab’s Marty Murphy, Nikolay Kuropatkin, Huan Lin and Brian Yanny

Fermilab’s Dark Energy Camera took a break from studying one of the greatest mysteries in modern cosmology – dark energy – to capture this stunning view of Comet Lovejoy – an extremely photogenic comet – on December 27, 2014. At the time this image was taken, the comet was passing about 51 million miles from Earth – a short distance for the Dark Energy Camera, which is sensitive to light up to 8 billion light-years away.

The camera was in the midst of scanning the southern sky for the Dark Energy Survey, which is designed to help uncover the nature of dark energy – a mysterious gravitational force opposite to the attractive gravity – which is causing the observed expansion of the universe to speed up.

The Fermilab Dark Energy Camera is a 570-megapixel camera, said by Fermilab to be the world’s most powerful digital camera. The camera is mounted on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, high in the Chilean Andes.

This camera captured the image above of Comet Lovejoy, which was visible in late 2014 and early 2015. Each of the rectangular shapes above represents one of the 62 individual fields of the camera.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Bottom line: The Fermilab Dark Energy Camera took a break from studying dark energy to capture this shot of Comet Lovejoy in December 2014. The comet was about 51 million miles from Earth at the time.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1ARblEy

Comet Lovejoy on December 27, 2015 from the Fermi Dark Energy Camera. Image via Fermilab’s Marty Murphy, Nikolay Kuropatkin, Huan Lin and Brian Yanny

Fermilab’s Dark Energy Camera took a break from studying one of the greatest mysteries in modern cosmology – dark energy – to capture this stunning view of Comet Lovejoy – an extremely photogenic comet – on December 27, 2014. At the time this image was taken, the comet was passing about 51 million miles from Earth – a short distance for the Dark Energy Camera, which is sensitive to light up to 8 billion light-years away.

The camera was in the midst of scanning the southern sky for the Dark Energy Survey, which is designed to help uncover the nature of dark energy – a mysterious gravitational force opposite to the attractive gravity – which is causing the observed expansion of the universe to speed up.

The Fermilab Dark Energy Camera is a 570-megapixel camera, said by Fermilab to be the world’s most powerful digital camera. The camera is mounted on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, high in the Chilean Andes.

This camera captured the image above of Comet Lovejoy, which was visible in late 2014 and early 2015. Each of the rectangular shapes above represents one of the 62 individual fields of the camera.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Bottom line: The Fermilab Dark Energy Camera took a break from studying dark energy to capture this shot of Comet Lovejoy in December 2014. The comet was about 51 million miles from Earth at the time.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1ARblEy

Are a star’s brightness and luminosity the same thing?

This Renaissance woodcut is called Empedocles Breaks through the Crystal Spheres.

The ancient astronomers believed the stars were attached to a gigantic crystal sphere surrounding Earth. In that scenario, all stars were located at the same distance from Earth, and so, to the ancients, the brightness or dimness of stars depended only on the stars themselves.

In our cosmology, the stars we see with the eye alone on a dark night are located at very different distances from us, from several light-years to over 1,000 light-years. Telescopes show the light of stars millions or billions of light-years away.

Today, when we talk about a star’s brightness, we might mean one of two things: its intrinsic brightness or its apparent brightness. When astronomers speak of the luminosity of a star, they’re speaking of a star’s intrinsic brightness, how bright it really is. A star’s apparent magnitude – its brightness as it appears from Earth – is something different and depends on how far away we are from that star.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Astronomers often list the luminosity of stars in terms of solar luminosity. The sun has a radius of about 696,000 kilometers, and a surface temperature of about 5800 Kelvin, or 5800 degrees above absolute zero. Freezing point of water = 273 Kelvin = O^o Celsius

For instance, nearly every star that you see with the unaided eye is larger and more luminous than our sun. The vast majority of stars that we see at night with the eye alone are millions – even hundreds of millions – of times farther away than the sun. Regardless, these distant suns can be seen from Earth because they are hundreds or thousands of times more luminous than our local star.

That’s not to say that our sun is a lightweight among stars. In fact, the sun is thought to be more luminous than 85% of the stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Yet most of these less luminous stars are too small and faint to see without an optical aid.

A star’s luminosity depends on two things:

1. Radius measure

2. Surface temperature

Radius measure

Let’s presume a star has the same surface temperature as the sun, but sports a larger radius. In that scenario, the star with the larger radius claims the greater luminosity. In the example below, we’ll say the star’s radius is 4 solar (4 times the sun’s radius) but has the same surface temperature as our sun.

We can calculate the star’s luminosity – relative to the sun’s – with the following equation, whereby L = luminosity and R = radius:

L = R²

L = 4² = 4 x 4 = 16 times the sun’s luminosity

Although the star VY Canis Majoris in the constellation Canis Major has a much cooler surface temperature than our sun, this star’s sheer size makes it a super-luminous star. Its radius is thought to be around 1400 times than of our sun, and its luminosity 270,000 greater than our sun.

Surface temperature

Also, if a star has the same radius as the sun but a higher surface temperature, the hotter star exceeds the sun in luminosity. The sun’s surface temperature is somewhere around 5800 Kelvin (9980^o Fahrenheit). That’s 5800 degrees above absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible anywhere in the universe. Let’s presume a star is the same size as the sun but that its surface temperature is twice as great in degrees Kelvin (5800 x 2 = 11600 Kelvin).

We use the equation below to solve for the star’s luminosity, relative to the sun’s, where L = luminosity and T = surface temperature, and the surface temperature equals 2 solar.

L = T⁴

L = 2⁴ = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16 times the sun’s luminosity

Luminosity of Star = R² x T⁴

The HR Diagram categorizes stars by surface temperature and luminosity. Hot blue stars (>30,000 Kelvin) at left and cool red stars (<3,000 Kelvin) at right. The most luminous stars (1,000,000 solar) are at top and the least luminous stars (1/10,000 solar) at bottom.

The luminosity of any star is the product of the radius squared times the surface temperature raised to the fourth power. Given a star whose radius is 3 solar and a surface temperature that’s 2 solar, we can figure that star’s luminosity with the equation below, whereby L = luminosity, R = radius and T = surface temperature:

L = R² x T⁴

L = (3 x 3) x (2 x 2 x 2 x 2)

L = 9 x 16 = 144 times the sun’s luminosity

Color and surface temperature

Have you ever noticed that stars shine in an array of different colors in a dark country sky? If not, try looking at stars with binoculars sometime. Color is a telltale sign of surface temperature. The hottest stars radiate blue or blue-white, whereas the coolest stars exhibit distinctly ruddy hues. Our yellow-colored sun indicates a moderate surface temperature in between the two extremes. Spica serves as prime example of a hot blue-white star, Altair: moderately-hot white star, Capella: middle-of-the-road yellow star, Arcturus: lukewarm orange star and Betelgeuse: cool red supergiant.

How astronomers learn the masses of double stars

Bottom line: Some stars look bright because they’re near Earth. Others are truly extremely bright members of our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers call the true, intrinsic brightness of a star its luminosity. The luminosity of any star depends on size and surface temperature. Some extremely large and hot stars blaze away with the luminosity of a million suns!

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1vxg8sj

This Renaissance woodcut is called Empedocles Breaks through the Crystal Spheres.

The ancient astronomers believed the stars were attached to a gigantic crystal sphere surrounding Earth. In that scenario, all stars were located at the same distance from Earth, and so, to the ancients, the brightness or dimness of stars depended only on the stars themselves.

In our cosmology, the stars we see with the eye alone on a dark night are located at very different distances from us, from several light-years to over 1,000 light-years. Telescopes show the light of stars millions or billions of light-years away.

Today, when we talk about a star’s brightness, we might mean one of two things: its intrinsic brightness or its apparent brightness. When astronomers speak of the luminosity of a star, they’re speaking of a star’s intrinsic brightness, how bright it really is. A star’s apparent magnitude – its brightness as it appears from Earth – is something different and depends on how far away we are from that star.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Astronomers often list the luminosity of stars in terms of solar luminosity. The sun has a radius of about 696,000 kilometers, and a surface temperature of about 5800 Kelvin, or 5800 degrees above absolute zero. Freezing point of water = 273 Kelvin = O^o Celsius

For instance, nearly every star that you see with the unaided eye is larger and more luminous than our sun. The vast majority of stars that we see at night with the eye alone are millions – even hundreds of millions – of times farther away than the sun. Regardless, these distant suns can be seen from Earth because they are hundreds or thousands of times more luminous than our local star.

That’s not to say that our sun is a lightweight among stars. In fact, the sun is thought to be more luminous than 85% of the stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Yet most of these less luminous stars are too small and faint to see without an optical aid.

A star’s luminosity depends on two things:

1. Radius measure

2. Surface temperature

Radius measure

Let’s presume a star has the same surface temperature as the sun, but sports a larger radius. In that scenario, the star with the larger radius claims the greater luminosity. In the example below, we’ll say the star’s radius is 4 solar (4 times the sun’s radius) but has the same surface temperature as our sun.

We can calculate the star’s luminosity – relative to the sun’s – with the following equation, whereby L = luminosity and R = radius:

L = R²

L = 4² = 4 x 4 = 16 times the sun’s luminosity

Although the star VY Canis Majoris in the constellation Canis Major has a much cooler surface temperature than our sun, this star’s sheer size makes it a super-luminous star. Its radius is thought to be around 1400 times than of our sun, and its luminosity 270,000 greater than our sun.

Surface temperature

Also, if a star has the same radius as the sun but a higher surface temperature, the hotter star exceeds the sun in luminosity. The sun’s surface temperature is somewhere around 5800 Kelvin (9980^o Fahrenheit). That’s 5800 degrees above absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible anywhere in the universe. Let’s presume a star is the same size as the sun but that its surface temperature is twice as great in degrees Kelvin (5800 x 2 = 11600 Kelvin).

We use the equation below to solve for the star’s luminosity, relative to the sun’s, where L = luminosity and T = surface temperature, and the surface temperature equals 2 solar.

L = T⁴

L = 2⁴ = 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16 times the sun’s luminosity

Luminosity of Star = R² x T⁴

The HR Diagram categorizes stars by surface temperature and luminosity. Hot blue stars (>30,000 Kelvin) at left and cool red stars (<3,000 Kelvin) at right. The most luminous stars (1,000,000 solar) are at top and the least luminous stars (1/10,000 solar) at bottom.

The luminosity of any star is the product of the radius squared times the surface temperature raised to the fourth power. Given a star whose radius is 3 solar and a surface temperature that’s 2 solar, we can figure that star’s luminosity with the equation below, whereby L = luminosity, R = radius and T = surface temperature:

L = R² x T⁴

L = (3 x 3) x (2 x 2 x 2 x 2)

L = 9 x 16 = 144 times the sun’s luminosity

Color and surface temperature

Have you ever noticed that stars shine in an array of different colors in a dark country sky? If not, try looking at stars with binoculars sometime. Color is a telltale sign of surface temperature. The hottest stars radiate blue or blue-white, whereas the coolest stars exhibit distinctly ruddy hues. Our yellow-colored sun indicates a moderate surface temperature in between the two extremes. Spica serves as prime example of a hot blue-white star, Altair: moderately-hot white star, Capella: middle-of-the-road yellow star, Arcturus: lukewarm orange star and Betelgeuse: cool red supergiant.

How astronomers learn the masses of double stars

Bottom line: Some stars look bright because they’re near Earth. Others are truly extremely bright members of our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers call the true, intrinsic brightness of a star its luminosity. The luminosity of any star depends on size and surface temperature. Some extremely large and hot stars blaze away with the luminosity of a million suns!

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1vxg8sj

In Which I Am Outwitted by a Six-Year-Old [Uncertain Principles]

SteelyKid has developed a habit of not answering questions, whether because she’s genuinely zoning out, or just not acknowledging adults, it’s not clear. (She’s going to be a real joy when she’s a teenager, I can tell…) In retaliation, I’ve started giving imaginary answers for her, which generall snaps her out of it, but I’ve been waiting to see what the next step was.

Which was taken last night: in the car on the way to taekwondo sparring class, I asked “What are you guys doing in art class these days?” silence.

“Hey, [SteelyKid]? What are you doing in art these days?”

Silence

“Oh, rattlesnake painting? That sounds pretty cool.”

Silence.

“So, is that painting on rattlesnakes, or with rattlesnakes?”

“Well, it would have to be a dead rattlesnake.” (Finally, a response!)

“I guess. Though I suppose if it were asleep, you could paint on it. You might not want to be around when it woke up, though.”

“Hmmm… OK, here’s what I would do. I would get the snake, and put it to sleep. Then I’d give it to a museum, and they’d keep it until it grew enough to shed its skin. Then they’d give me the skin, and let the snake go.”

“OK.”

“And then I’d paint on the skin– on one side oft he skin. Then I’d take a piece of paper, and press the skin onto the paper, and the paint would go off on the paper and look just like the snake. And then all I’d have to do is draw the head, and color it in.”

“Yeah, I guess that would work. Very clever.”

So, once again, I have lost a battle of wits to a first-grader. Happily, this got her out of the not-answering-questions mode, and she chattered happily about what she’s really doing in art class these days (a project involving a picture of a snowman that sounds a little Calvin and Hobbes), pop music, and various other things. I’m going to have to think up some new absurd activities for future car rides, though, if she’s going to go and raise the bar on me like this.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1LPxYML

SteelyKid has developed a habit of not answering questions, whether because she’s genuinely zoning out, or just not acknowledging adults, it’s not clear. (She’s going to be a real joy when she’s a teenager, I can tell…) In retaliation, I’ve started giving imaginary answers for her, which generall snaps her out of it, but I’ve been waiting to see what the next step was.

Which was taken last night: in the car on the way to taekwondo sparring class, I asked “What are you guys doing in art class these days?” silence.

“Hey, [SteelyKid]? What are you doing in art these days?”

Silence

“Oh, rattlesnake painting? That sounds pretty cool.”

Silence.

“So, is that painting on rattlesnakes, or with rattlesnakes?”

“Well, it would have to be a dead rattlesnake.” (Finally, a response!)

“I guess. Though I suppose if it were asleep, you could paint on it. You might not want to be around when it woke up, though.”

“Hmmm… OK, here’s what I would do. I would get the snake, and put it to sleep. Then I’d give it to a museum, and they’d keep it until it grew enough to shed its skin. Then they’d give me the skin, and let the snake go.”

“OK.”

“And then I’d paint on the skin– on one side oft he skin. Then I’d take a piece of paper, and press the skin onto the paper, and the paint would go off on the paper and look just like the snake. And then all I’d have to do is draw the head, and color it in.”

“Yeah, I guess that would work. Very clever.”

So, once again, I have lost a battle of wits to a first-grader. Happily, this got her out of the not-answering-questions mode, and she chattered happily about what she’s really doing in art class these days (a project involving a picture of a snowman that sounds a little Calvin and Hobbes), pop music, and various other things. I’m going to have to think up some new absurd activities for future car rides, though, if she’s going to go and raise the bar on me like this.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1LPxYML

The Wellness Warrior, Jess Ainscough, has passed away [Respectful Insolence]

Two months ago, I took note of a somewhat cryptic blog post by a young woman named Jess Ainscough. In Australia and much of the world, Ainscough was known as the Wellness Warrior. She was a young woman who developed an epithelioid sarcoma in 2008 and ended up choosing “natural healing” to treat her cancer. Among the “natural healing” modalities touted by the Wellness Warrior included that quackery of quackeries, the Gerson protocol, complete with coffee enemas and everything. She even did videos explaining how to administer coffee enemas and posted them on YouTube, although that video is now private. In fact, most of her videos appear to have disappeared from her YouTube channel, and there is nothing but a notice on her website announcing this:

Sadly, yesterday Jess Ainscough passed away. There’s no information on what took her life, but it’s hard not to assume that it was her cancer. Given this development, Ainscough’s words from two months ago make more sense:

When I left you back in June to begin a period of self-care hibernation, my plan was to get my health back in tip top shape and then spend some time creating some awesome new stuff for you. The reality, however, is that I’ve spent the whole time focused on my health. For the last few months, I’ve been pretty much bedridden. Let me fill you in on what’s been going on with me …

This year absolutely brought me to my knees. I’ve been challenged, frightened, and cracked open in ways I never had before. After my mum died at the end of last year, my heart was shattered and it’s still in a million pieces. I had no idea how to function without her, and it turns out my body didn’t either. For the first time in my almost seven year journey with cancer, this year I’ve been really unwell. I’ve lived with cancer since 2008 and for most of those years my condition was totally stable. When my mum became really ill, my cancer started to become aggressive again. After she died, things really started flaring up.

I’ve had scans to detect what’s going on in my body, and I can report that the disease is still contained to my left arm and shoulder, however I do have a big fungating tumour mass in that shoulder that’s causing me dramas. Over 10 months of non-stop bleeding from the armpit has rendered me really weak (and uncomfortable) and as a result I’ve had no choice but to stop absolutely everything and rest. Tallon, my freaking hero, has had to step up and help me with everything from making food and juices, doing all of our housework and laundry to doing my hair.

At the time, I noted that Ainscough’s health had clearly taken a turn for the worse and couldn’t help but wonder whether she was doing even worse than she was letting on. Indeed, at the time, her admission seemed rather amazing, given how jealously she had guarded any hint that she wasn’t doing very well and how careful she was to hide her arm in publicity photos. Of course, this being the age of smartphone cameras, where almost everyone has a camera on herself at nearly all times, she couldn’t always succeed, and photos of her showing how bad her arm was did appear. I also speculated at the time that maybe Ainscough had finally decided to return to “conventional” treatment, possibly even an amputation.

I’ll explain.

I first encountered the Wellness Warrior a year and a half ago when her mother, Sharyn Ainscough, died tragically of breast cancer. Her mother, it turns out, had treated her breast cancer with the same sorts of useless treatments as her daughter treated her sarcoma. Now, I can understand why Jess would choose woo. She was unfortunate enough to develop a cancer that was, paradoxically, both very nasty and very indolent. (After all, she survived seven years with it.) Moreover, because her tumor involved her shoulder, the first line treatment recommended consisted of a very disfiguring amputation that sounded like a forequarter amputation. It’s an amputation that involves removing not just the arm, but removing the entire shoulder joint and the shoulder blade. It would have left her not just without an arm, but without a shoulder as well. It’s a seldom-performed operation these days (indeed, I’ve never done one or even seen one performed in my entire career stretching back to my residency beginning in the late 1980s), and with good reason. Still, sometimes it is necessary. It’s hard not to feel for Ainscough, who, at age 22 was facing such an awful choice.

In my original account I noted that Ainscough actually reported herself to have steeled herself up to undergo the surgery, but apparently her doctors came to her at the last minute with an alternative, which was to do isolated limb perfusion. Basically, this is a technique sometimes used for soft tissue sarcomas of the extremity or multifocal melanoma that can’t be resected without amputation to try to destroy the tumor. As its name implies, isolated limb perfusion involves isolating the limb from the body’s circulation and infusing it with very (and I do mean very) high doses of chemotherapy. That’s what necessitates the isolation of the limb’s circulation; the dose of chemotherapy is so high that if it leaked back into the rest of the circulation the consequences could be disastrous. Isolated limb perfusion can often cause seemingly near miraculous results, and apparently that was the case for Ainscough. Unfortunately, tumors tend to recur, and that’s exactly what happened to Ainscough about a year later, which led to the doctors recommending an amputation of her arm at the shoulder again.

It was at that point that Ainscough rejected that option and was reborn as the Wellness Warrior. Over the years, she became quite the media figure in Australia, enabled by credulous reporting. She had many advantages in this. She was young. She was telegenic. She was very likable and very media-savvy. Over seven years, she built up an impressive empire of “natural healing” modalities, enabled, of course, by credulous reporting. She wrote books. She appeared on television. She sold cookbooks, cooking supplies, and various other implements necessary for a “natural” lifestyle. She promoted, as I said, that cancer quackeries of cancer quackeries, the Gerson therapy. Indeed, she even listed the various supplements she took as part of the Gerson therapy (and in addition to the at least daily coffee enemas), which she described thusly:

Some of you might think the list is a bit extreme, but I assure you that it is totally manageable. It’s nowhere near as much of a pain in the ass to get through as the medicine cabinet full of pills and potions I was taking prior to Gerson. I swear, as soon as we heard that a supplement had anti-cancer properties, I was all over it. I’ve taken everything from sea cucumbers to bovine cartilage. This list is like a trip to the beach in comparison.

The supplements a Gerson patient must take generally varies to suit the individual. But all the medications are designed to support the diet therapy by increasing the energy capacity of the cell and by increasing the rate of detoxification.

She also advocated eating clay to “detoxify” herself:

When we eat clay, the positively charged toxins are attracted by the negatively charged edges of the clay mineral. An exchange reaction occurs where the clay swaps its ions for those of the other substance. Electrically satisfied, it holds the toxin in suspension until the body can eliminate both.

You get the idea. Jess Ainscough was a seemingly unending fountain of woo, making Food Babe-like appeals to the “natural” over the “synthetic” and promoting her version of “wellness.”

So what happened? As I explained before, epithelioid sarcoma is a rare sarcoma, with an incidence on the order of 0.1 to 0.4 per million. It’s primarily a tumor of young adults, and it nearly always appears on the upper extremities, and wide surgical excision is the only known effective treatment. It also tends to be indolent as well. Its ten year survival overall is on the order of 61%, and for patients between 17 and 30 years (i.e., patients like Jessica Ainscough), it’s approximately 72%. Of course, that is with treatment with surgery; without surgery, five year survival is 35% and ten year survival is 33%. Sadly, Jess Ainscough’s survival of seven years with her disease in essence untreated is thus within the expected range of survival time based on her disease that I discussed the last time I discussed her.

I have no idea what finally took her life. It was the cancer, of course. Given her description of frequent bleeding from her tumor mass to the point where she was anemic suggested to me that the tumor was fungating, eating through the skin. At the time, she said her scans indicated that the cancer hadn’t spread beyond the arm, but that didn’t mean it still couldn’t kill her. I’d suspect a combination of unrelenting chronic blood loss and perhaps necrotic tumor becoming infected and leading to sepsis. If such sepsis were not recognized and treated promptly it could certainly have killed her in her weakened state. But this is just speculation, an educated guess. I have no idea what the immediate cause of Jess Ainscough’s death was. Whatever her immediate cause of death was, though, it was almost certainly the cancer that killed her.

Cancer deaths like this always sadden me. Jess Ainscough had a shot, one shot. She didn’t take it. What saddens me even more is that I can understand why she didn’t take it, as, through a horrible quirk of fate, her one shot involved incredibly disfiguring surgery and the loss of her arm. Still, I wish she had taken it and hadn’t instead decided to become an icon of “natural healing.” (If she had, there’s about a 70% chance she’d still be alive today.) In her role as the Wellness Warrior, and in her promotion of Gerson quackery, Ainscough, with the noblest of motivations in the beginning, did great harm and led cancer patients down the path of quackery and death.

All the more sad. I just wish she could have found something less harmful to do with the years that remained to her after her diagnosis.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1Ag7CNb

Two months ago, I took note of a somewhat cryptic blog post by a young woman named Jess Ainscough. In Australia and much of the world, Ainscough was known as the Wellness Warrior. She was a young woman who developed an epithelioid sarcoma in 2008 and ended up choosing “natural healing” to treat her cancer. Among the “natural healing” modalities touted by the Wellness Warrior included that quackery of quackeries, the Gerson protocol, complete with coffee enemas and everything. She even did videos explaining how to administer coffee enemas and posted them on YouTube, although that video is now private. In fact, most of her videos appear to have disappeared from her YouTube channel, and there is nothing but a notice on her website announcing this:

Sadly, yesterday Jess Ainscough passed away. There’s no information on what took her life, but it’s hard not to assume that it was her cancer. Given this development, Ainscough’s words from two months ago make more sense:

When I left you back in June to begin a period of self-care hibernation, my plan was to get my health back in tip top shape and then spend some time creating some awesome new stuff for you. The reality, however, is that I’ve spent the whole time focused on my health. For the last few months, I’ve been pretty much bedridden. Let me fill you in on what’s been going on with me …

This year absolutely brought me to my knees. I’ve been challenged, frightened, and cracked open in ways I never had before. After my mum died at the end of last year, my heart was shattered and it’s still in a million pieces. I had no idea how to function without her, and it turns out my body didn’t either. For the first time in my almost seven year journey with cancer, this year I’ve been really unwell. I’ve lived with cancer since 2008 and for most of those years my condition was totally stable. When my mum became really ill, my cancer started to become aggressive again. After she died, things really started flaring up.

I’ve had scans to detect what’s going on in my body, and I can report that the disease is still contained to my left arm and shoulder, however I do have a big fungating tumour mass in that shoulder that’s causing me dramas. Over 10 months of non-stop bleeding from the armpit has rendered me really weak (and uncomfortable) and as a result I’ve had no choice but to stop absolutely everything and rest. Tallon, my freaking hero, has had to step up and help me with everything from making food and juices, doing all of our housework and laundry to doing my hair.

At the time, I noted that Ainscough’s health had clearly taken a turn for the worse and couldn’t help but wonder whether she was doing even worse than she was letting on. Indeed, at the time, her admission seemed rather amazing, given how jealously she had guarded any hint that she wasn’t doing very well and how careful she was to hide her arm in publicity photos. Of course, this being the age of smartphone cameras, where almost everyone has a camera on herself at nearly all times, she couldn’t always succeed, and photos of her showing how bad her arm was did appear. I also speculated at the time that maybe Ainscough had finally decided to return to “conventional” treatment, possibly even an amputation.

I’ll explain.

I first encountered the Wellness Warrior a year and a half ago when her mother, Sharyn Ainscough, died tragically of breast cancer. Her mother, it turns out, had treated her breast cancer with the same sorts of useless treatments as her daughter treated her sarcoma. Now, I can understand why Jess would choose woo. She was unfortunate enough to develop a cancer that was, paradoxically, both very nasty and very indolent. (After all, she survived seven years with it.) Moreover, because her tumor involved her shoulder, the first line treatment recommended consisted of a very disfiguring amputation that sounded like a forequarter amputation. It’s an amputation that involves removing not just the arm, but removing the entire shoulder joint and the shoulder blade. It would have left her not just without an arm, but without a shoulder as well. It’s a seldom-performed operation these days (indeed, I’ve never done one or even seen one performed in my entire career stretching back to my residency beginning in the late 1980s), and with good reason. Still, sometimes it is necessary. It’s hard not to feel for Ainscough, who, at age 22 was facing such an awful choice.

In my original account I noted that Ainscough actually reported herself to have steeled herself up to undergo the surgery, but apparently her doctors came to her at the last minute with an alternative, which was to do isolated limb perfusion. Basically, this is a technique sometimes used for soft tissue sarcomas of the extremity or multifocal melanoma that can’t be resected without amputation to try to destroy the tumor. As its name implies, isolated limb perfusion involves isolating the limb from the body’s circulation and infusing it with very (and I do mean very) high doses of chemotherapy. That’s what necessitates the isolation of the limb’s circulation; the dose of chemotherapy is so high that if it leaked back into the rest of the circulation the consequences could be disastrous. Isolated limb perfusion can often cause seemingly near miraculous results, and apparently that was the case for Ainscough. Unfortunately, tumors tend to recur, and that’s exactly what happened to Ainscough about a year later, which led to the doctors recommending an amputation of her arm at the shoulder again.

It was at that point that Ainscough rejected that option and was reborn as the Wellness Warrior. Over the years, she became quite the media figure in Australia, enabled by credulous reporting. She had many advantages in this. She was young. She was telegenic. She was very likable and very media-savvy. Over seven years, she built up an impressive empire of “natural healing” modalities, enabled, of course, by credulous reporting. She wrote books. She appeared on television. She sold cookbooks, cooking supplies, and various other implements necessary for a “natural” lifestyle. She promoted, as I said, that cancer quackeries of cancer quackeries, the Gerson therapy. Indeed, she even listed the various supplements she took as part of the Gerson therapy (and in addition to the at least daily coffee enemas), which she described thusly:

Some of you might think the list is a bit extreme, but I assure you that it is totally manageable. It’s nowhere near as much of a pain in the ass to get through as the medicine cabinet full of pills and potions I was taking prior to Gerson. I swear, as soon as we heard that a supplement had anti-cancer properties, I was all over it. I’ve taken everything from sea cucumbers to bovine cartilage. This list is like a trip to the beach in comparison.

The supplements a Gerson patient must take generally varies to suit the individual. But all the medications are designed to support the diet therapy by increasing the energy capacity of the cell and by increasing the rate of detoxification.

She also advocated eating clay to “detoxify” herself:

When we eat clay, the positively charged toxins are attracted by the negatively charged edges of the clay mineral. An exchange reaction occurs where the clay swaps its ions for those of the other substance. Electrically satisfied, it holds the toxin in suspension until the body can eliminate both.

You get the idea. Jess Ainscough was a seemingly unending fountain of woo, making Food Babe-like appeals to the “natural” over the “synthetic” and promoting her version of “wellness.”

So what happened? As I explained before, epithelioid sarcoma is a rare sarcoma, with an incidence on the order of 0.1 to 0.4 per million. It’s primarily a tumor of young adults, and it nearly always appears on the upper extremities, and wide surgical excision is the only known effective treatment. It also tends to be indolent as well. Its ten year survival overall is on the order of 61%, and for patients between 17 and 30 years (i.e., patients like Jessica Ainscough), it’s approximately 72%. Of course, that is with treatment with surgery; without surgery, five year survival is 35% and ten year survival is 33%. Sadly, Jess Ainscough’s survival of seven years with her disease in essence untreated is thus within the expected range of survival time based on her disease that I discussed the last time I discussed her.

I have no idea what finally took her life. It was the cancer, of course. Given her description of frequent bleeding from her tumor mass to the point where she was anemic suggested to me that the tumor was fungating, eating through the skin. At the time, she said her scans indicated that the cancer hadn’t spread beyond the arm, but that didn’t mean it still couldn’t kill her. I’d suspect a combination of unrelenting chronic blood loss and perhaps necrotic tumor becoming infected and leading to sepsis. If such sepsis were not recognized and treated promptly it could certainly have killed her in her weakened state. But this is just speculation, an educated guess. I have no idea what the immediate cause of Jess Ainscough’s death was. Whatever her immediate cause of death was, though, it was almost certainly the cancer that killed her.

Cancer deaths like this always sadden me. Jess Ainscough had a shot, one shot. She didn’t take it. What saddens me even more is that I can understand why she didn’t take it, as, through a horrible quirk of fate, her one shot involved incredibly disfiguring surgery and the loss of her arm. Still, I wish she had taken it and hadn’t instead decided to become an icon of “natural healing.” (If she had, there’s about a 70% chance she’d still be alive today.) In her role as the Wellness Warrior, and in her promotion of Gerson quackery, Ainscough, with the noblest of motivations in the beginning, did great harm and led cancer patients down the path of quackery and death.

All the more sad. I just wish she could have found something less harmful to do with the years that remained to her after her diagnosis.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1Ag7CNb