The Beautiful Planet Meets The Immortal Cassini

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Carl Zimmer

Cassini HD. Thinx Media. Published Saturday 9/15. iPad. Free on 9/15, then $1.99.

Reviewed by Carl Zimmer

Mars Curiosity, with its sky crane and all, is certainly impressive. But I'm a Cassini fan myself. It left Earth in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004. It has winged around the ringed planet ever since, hurtling by Saturn's many, many moons along the way. Every year it has delivered images back to Earth that are not simply gorgeous but deeply informative about the outer zone of our Solar System. Its success and its stamina have gotten its mission extended twice. It will keep snapping pictures of Saturn and its moons until 2017, when it crashes into the planet.

I've tried to keep up with the flow of images at the Cassini web site, but after eight years of daily footage, there is just too much to handle. To appreciate everything it has found, we need curation.

One form of curation can be found at sites like Bad Astronomy, where Phil Plait regularly posts Cassini images that he finds particularly worthy. Thinx Media now provides curation of a different sort, by loading some 840 images into an app they call Cassini HD.

The images are organized into categories–starting with the planet itself, followed by images of its moons, and then its rings, and finally by false-color pictures. You can plow through the photos one at a time, swipe after swipe, or jump to two navigation systems: either a drop-down menu, or a gallery linked to a diagram of Saturn and its moons.

I preferred jumping around the Saturnian system. At the moment, my favorite moon of Saturn is Daphnis, a five-mile-wide rock that draws a thin path of ice and dust out of the planet's rings. If you like what you see, you can use Cassini HD's nicely integrated functions to email or tweet a photo, save it to the iPad's photo app, or send it to Tumblr or Facebook.

There are two big shortcomings of Cassini HD. For one thing, it's not particularly HD. You can't zoom in on details of the photos on the app. For a closer look at Titan or Enceladus, you will need to look at NASA's biggest versions of their images on their web site.

The other shortcoming is the text–the reason that I'm reviewing this app at Download the Universe. Each section of Cassini HD kicks off with a paragraph, or a few. Each photo comes with a one sentence caption, which you can expand into a longer version. But, as far as I can tell, all the text comes verbatim from NASA's web sites. I won't call this plagiarism, but I will call it disappointing. Every caption comes with an identical paragraph about the Cassini mission. One caption I came across informs you what Cassini will be doing in 2005–because it was written by someone at NASA in 2004. The captions point you to other pictures for further information, but they include the original links, so that you end up on NASA's web site instead of jumping to other images in the app. There's useful information to be gathered the text, but you will get little pleasure along the way. In this respect, Cassini HD is a far cry from The Solar System, which featured original text by the science writer Marcus Chown.

On balance, however, Cassini HD is a good value. The Solar System will set you back $13.99. Cassini HD will cost you just $1.99–and it's free tomorrow, when the app goes live. I like to know that even if I'm out of Wi-Fi range, I can always take a trip through Saturn's rings. The text may not sing, but the pictures are still transporting.

Zimmer author photo square Carl Zimmer writes frequently about science for the New York Times and is the author of 13 books, including Evolution: Making Sense of Life.

Deep Water: A Pretty Good TED Ebook (Really!) About Climate Change

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Carl Zimmer

Deep Water: As Polar Ice Melts, Scientists Debate How High Our Oceans Will Rise, by Daniel Grossman. TED 2012. TED App for iPhone/iPad, Kindle, Nook. Book web site

[Editor's note: John Dupuis, the author of this review, is the Acting Associate University Librarian at York University in Toronto. He's joined me and other Download the Universe editors on several panels about science ebooks, and he's tempered our optimism with thoughtful skepticism about how ebooks can add to civilization's body of knowledge. (What happens when no one makes Kindles anymore?) Recently, Dupuis wrote about a new ebook from TED on his own blog, Confessions of A Science Librarian. I asked him if he could write an expanded version for Download the Universe.–Carl Zimmer]

Guest review by John Dupuis

I feel a little weird reviewing this book. It's a TED book, you see. What's a TED book, you ask? I'll let TED tell you:

Shorter than a novel, but longer than an magazine article–a TED Book is a great way to feed your craving for ideas anytime. TED Books are short original electronic books produced every two weeks by TED Conferences. Like the best TEDTalks, they're personal and provocative, and designed to spread great ideas. TED Books are typically under 20,000 words–long enough to unleash a powerful narrative, but short enough to be read in a single sitting.

They're like TED talks, in other words, but they provide longer, more in-depth treatment than is possible in a short talk. On the surface, that's a really great idea. In practice, it can be a bit problematic–just like TED talks.

Carl Zimmer and Evgeny Morozov have gone into fairly extensive detail about the dark side of TED talks and TED books. Basically, the format encourages a kind of hip superficiality and fame-mongering. Ideas want to be famous, to paraphrase the famous saying that information wants to be free. In fact, ideas should be deep and well thought-out. And, you know, even perhaps a little on the valid side, too.

Which brings me to this particular TED book: Daniel Grossman's Deep Water. Here's how TED describes it:

As global warming continues, the massive ice caps at Earth’s poles are melting at an increasingly alarming rate. Water once safely anchored in glacial ice is surging into the sea. The flow could become a deluge, and millions of people living near coastlines are in danger. Inundation could impact every nation on earth. But scientists don’t yet know how fast this polar ice will melt, or how high our seas could rise. In an effort to find out, a team of renowned and quirky geologists takes a 4,000-mile road trip across Western Australia. They collect fossils and rocks from ancient shorelines and accumulate new evidence that ancient sea levels were frighteningly high during epochs when average global temperatures were barely higher than today. In Deep Water veteran environmental journalist, radio producer and documentary filmmaker Daniel Grossman explores the new and fascinating science — and scientists — of sea-level rise. His investigation turns up both startling and worrisome evidence that humans are upsetting a delicate natural equilibrium. If knocked off balance, it could hastily melt the planet’s ice and send sea levels soaring.

Continue reading “Deep Water: A Pretty Good TED Ebook (Really!) About Climate Change” →

The Science of Sports: An eBook Goes for the Gold, Gets A Bronze

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Carl Zimmer

The Science of Sports: Winning in the Olympics. Scientific American $3.99 Kindle, iBook, Nook, Sony Reader

Guest review by Jaime Green

I love the Olympics, although I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the special-occasion feel, or the every-two-years anticipation–a longer wait than for next Christmas. (I do remember when both summer and winter games were held in the same year, though not well enough to recall whether the four-year wait heightened the thrill or if the crush of excitement was too much, gymnastics and archery only six months from figure luge and ski jump.)

The exotic sports at the Olympics also add to its thrill. Sure, people will snark about the two weeks a year we care about synchronized diving –“Where were you during world championships last year!?”–but for those two weeks we do care! We cram our brains with obscure knowledge. Every four winters we learn about triple axels and the salchow–how the heck to spell salchow–and then we let it all go dormant for the next four years, until we can debate the finer points of fencing again.

It's this thrill of the unusual, and of learning its finer points, that I was looking for in Scientific American's ebook, The Science of Sports: Winning in the Olympics. And coming into it looking for that angle, I was disappointed that the book stayed so true to the first part of its title: the science of sports. That's what this ebook is full of. What it is not full of, and what I missed, was the science of the Olympics.

This first ebook from the editors of Scientific American reads much more like a collection of articles than a single work, and as such it is a perfectly serviceable survey on the science of sports. Pieces are divided into eight sections: The Psychology of Winning, Pushing Human Limits, Drugs and Doping, Concussions, Comeback from Injury, Gear that Gives an Edge, Fitness: Expert Advice for You, and Closing Ceremonies. The pieces, written especially for this ebook by individual Scientific American editors and contributors, explore the physiology, biochemistry, and neurobiology of sports. They also examine recent incidents, such as doping scandals, that bring science and sports together in less savory ways.

Although the lack of unity was sometimes frustrating on a straight-through read–back-to-back articles sometimes retread each other's ground, re-explaining a concept or re-defining a blood protein–it still makes for a nice collection to pick your way through. There's no need to read in order, so you can follow your interests, from the mental acuity of an elite athlete to the most common Olympic injuries and then over to how playing sports can boost children's brain power. You'll learn something cool whichever path you take. And there's a lot to learn. Even if you didn't need this ebook to teach you that the ACL isn't the Achilles tendon but is actually in the knee, there is satisfyingly deep discussion of topics ranging from psychology to blood doping to the physics of prosthetic legs.

The questions tackled in this ebook go beyond the science of sports, too, in several cases engaging with the ethical questions that scientific advances raise. Do steroids make better athletes, or do they make cheaters? How many restrictions should be put on young athletes to protect their brains from concussions? Where does an athlete find the balance between improved performance and dangerously low body fat? These questions make interesting food for thought, and perhaps also foundations for important decisions. The ramifications extend far beyond the Olympic arenas.

Yet I still wished this ebook spent more time within those Olympic arenas. Many pieces focus surprisingly squarely on the topic of the ebook's subtitle: winning. It's as if the ebook's authors decided that Olympic equals elite, and then just wrote about how elite athletes win. But I don't care if Michael Phelps gets the gold. I care that he is stunning to watch. (In the pool, I mean.) And I want to know the science behind his performance–of something that feels specifically, uniquely Olympic. Articles that focused on baseball and American football felt similarly dissatisfying. They're sports, yes, but hardly what we think of as Olympic sports. (In fact, now that baseball's been dropped from the games, neither is an Olympic sport.) For readers drawn to this ebook for the Olympics and not for the sports, this may be a disappointment.

Also potentially disappointing–or virulently frustrating, depending on your level of investment–are some gaps in the scientific and athletic arguments. Jesse Bering's piece, “Why We Love Sports: Success of the Fittest,” proposes that sports compel us as fans and spectators because they serve as a demonstration of reproductive prowess. (Think of football as the peacock tail-feathers of our species.) This argument itself is a stretch. Sports audiences are so dramatically weighted toward men who are not looking to the field for mates. Bering doesn't even give the plausible counterarguments lip service. What about the primal need for play? Tribal affiliations and the strengthening power of us vs. them? The evolution and ritualization of hunting and combat practice? Heck, maybe even mirror neurons, who knows?

In a piece called “Does Exercise Really Make You Stronger?” Coco Ballantyne asserts that “the longer, harder and more often you exercise, the greater the health benefits.” She fails to offer the important caveat against overtraining, which plagues professional and devoted amateur athletes alike, with increased risk of injuries and often dramatic negative effects from overstressing the body. An article on preventing shin splints was similarly narrow-sighted, failing to mention the calf-strengthening exercises that have saved the shins of every new runner I know.

The highlights of the book examined the subjects that I, and most readers, have no experience with. The articles on top-level cyclists and swimmers, on Olympic runner Oscar Pistorious' prosthetic legs, drew me in much more and carried that charge of the slightly esoteric that make me love the Olympics. Even an article on advanced swim gear brought a little frisson of elite, advanced technology. And “Who Wins the 40-Yard Dash: Squirrel, Elephant, Pig, Human?” armed me for some fun small-talk to fill the breaks between track and field events over the next two weeks.

For the most part, though, the science here is decidedly pedestrian. Readers who want to learn about the geometry of a rhythmic gymnast's twirling ribbon or how a pentathlete slows her heart rate before she shoots will have to wait. Maybe there will be something for us in another four years.

Jaime Green is a graduate student in Columbia's MFA writing program. Her work has appeared in The Awl, Spezzatino, The Hairpin, and Parabasis. She is writing a book about the possibility of life in the universe.

Going to Extremes: An Ebook About the Climate Forest and the Weather Trees

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Carl Zimmer

Going to Extremes, by James Lawrence Powell. iTunes (requires iBooks 2), $0.99

Guest review by Dan Fagin

Bad weather always looks worse through a window, said Tom Lehrer, the songwriter cum mathematician. From my desk at home on Long Island, I can see the backyard grass – okay, crabgrass – slowly yellowing. The thermometer under the yew tree reads 96 degrees Fahrenheit; we haven’t had a respectable rain for weeks. At least my brother in Colorado Springs is back home: He had to evacuate when the Waldo Canyon wildfire advanced to within two blocks of his house. Through my other window on the world – my computer screen – I read that Floridians are still dealing with flood damage from a freakishly early tropical storm, Debby, which struck in June. That’s a mere inconvenience, though, compared to the deadly weather-related chaos in Russia and Brazil.

This is the new normal: weird, hot, and often dangerous weather. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration says that the first six months of 2012 were by far the hottest on record, and that most of the South and West is in severe drought. Scientists, campaigners, and scientist-campaigners have been saying for years that Americans will soon find it impossible to overlook the effects of the 150-year buildup of heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere; now, perhaps, that fateful moment has come. Certainly there is some evidence that the extreme weather events of 2011 and 2012 have moved the needle of U.S. public opinion at least slightly toward accepting the reality of human-induced climate change, even if the electorate remains starkly polarized on basic questions climatologists resolved years ago.

There is some irony that extreme weather is having a political impact, because it’s not at all easy to credibly explain the relationship between singular weather events and humanity’s ongoing reckless experiment in atmospheric chemistry. The problem is that what we call “the weather” – atmospheric conditions at a specific place and time – is the product of the extremely chaotic process driven by differences in air and water density which are, in turn, driven by uneven solar heating. (The simplest example: sunlight striking the tropics more directly than the higher latitudes.) Weather on Earth is never perfectly stable because solar energy is never distributed perfectly evenly across the planet’s surface. Climate – the long-term averaging of weather measurements – is unstable, too, but climatic changes are much harder for humans to perceive because of the longer time scale. But even so, if the billions of tons of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases we expel into the atmosphere every year are having an effect – and we now know that they are – then climate, not weather, is where the signal will always be clearest. We may feel this signal in day-to-day weather, but we can most reliably measure it in longer-term changes in climate.

Continue reading “Going to Extremes: An Ebook About the Climate Forest and the Weather Trees” →

A Journey to the Island of Tree Kangaroos

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Carl Zimmer

The Island of Secrets, by Matthew Power. Published by the Atavist. $1.99 – $2.99. iPad and iPhone version available through the Atavist app. Kindle, Nook. More information available from The Atavist.

Guest reviewed by Oliver Hulland

Matthew Power is the kind of writer everyone dreams of becoming. In the vein of John McPhee and Paul Theroux, Power writes about exotic far-away places, not from second-hand accounts but instead from personal experience. The cuts, bruises, insect bites, and close encounters he records are just as likely to be his own as the adventurers he profiles.

The Island of Secrets is Power's most recent attempt to understand the indomitable urge to explore. We find ourselves thrust into the world of John Lane, a California scientist who looks for fossils in caves and who had accidentally discovered a new species of tree kangaroo on the side of the road while on an expedition in New Britain, an island off the coast of New Guinea. Upon learning of its novelty he later returned for the specimen only to find that it had, to his dismay, been eaten. And so Lane, with Power in tow, mounted another expedition to rediscover the kangaroo he believes holds the key to preserving what's left of the island's vanishing forests.

The Island of Secrets reads like a twenty-first-century explorer's diary, rich with multimedia content documenting an expedition deep into New Britain's jungles. Inline links pop open locations on maps, historical factoids, or images from Power's trip. The intimate photos provide a glimpse into the day-to-day life of the haphazard expedition, including shots of an impromptu shoddily-made raft, the science team's dilapidated jungle base camp, and the odd detail like a local's "Calvin Klain" underwear.

While the quality of the photographs are nothing like those found in glossy magazines, they serve as evidence of the journalistic process, and of the realities of Power's research in New Britain. Even better than the photographs, though, are the small video clips that are peppered throughout the text. One clip records a slapdash attempt to sew shut a careless machete wound, while another shows the slow, laborious process of hacking through the dense Tanglefoot fern underbrush. These short clips are the antithesis of slick BBC nature documentaries, and as a result they succeed in providing gritty, blurry proof of the day-to-day struggle of science in far-away places.

Along with the text, The Atavist app also includes a superbly produced audiobook version, ready by Power himself. You can also listen to snippets of sounds from the jungle including the whirring of cicadas or samples of the local language, Tok Pisin. Some may find these audio-visual elements distracting or unnecessary (notably the looped chirping crickets that function as a soundtrack), more often than not they work in concert to create one of the richest media experiences available on an iPad or iPhone.

None of this would work, however, if it weren't for Power's talent in telling the story of John Lane's obsession with finding the tree kangaroo. By building off the foundation of a good story, The Atavist’s adaptation of The Island of Secrets creates a hybrid of narrative nonfiction that succeeds in bringing the journalistic and scientific process to life.

Oliver Hulland is the editor of Cool Tools, a site dedicated to finding tools that really work. When not reviewing tools, he can be found foraging for mushrooms, exploring caves, and applying to medical school.