Fuzzy Logic 3rd December 2006

The first of Fuzzy Logic “in Summer Mode”: imagine, if you will, Fuzzy Logic in a hammock swinging gentle in the warm coastal breeze while sipping some iced beverage from a coconut shell. Pretty darn relaxed.

First up was a story on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and how it’s used to “see” water diffusion in the pain sensing areas of the brain. This was used recently in a German study on people who had chronic lower back pain but without any discernable cause. See the Radiological Society of North America’s website http://www2.rsna.org/pr/target.cfm?ID=300

Second was the discovery by Claude Herzberg that the Earth recycles quite a bit of its own crust after subduction. Herzberg reports in Nature (Nature 444, 605 - 609 (30 Nov 2006) Letters to Editor) that the chemistry of Hawaiian magma has low calcium levels; something you’d expect in recycled crust. Further studies on the content of sulphur and other chemicals could tell us more about the cycles that volcanoes go through.

In the middle of the show was my soap box section where I editorialised (read ranted on and on) about the recent report by Ziggy Switkowski et al. on the potential nuclear future for Australia and the implications for water. There have been several other reports that have also come out and reports in the press (ABC) and I just though I’d put all these numbers about gigalitres and gigajoules in perspective with my own extraction from the ABS Water Accounts 2004-05, Table 1.3, page 8. The numbers I quoted were that 25 nuclear power plants using around 25 Gl of water a year each (total of 625GL/year), would use more water per year than the water consumption of every household in NSW (572GL/year). In fact, if you add together the household consumption of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT that’s approximately 649 GL/year. So, all these nuclear power plants had better be on the coast right? Well that’s not exactly specified in the Zwitkowski report, probably because the current transmission lines emanate from coal fired power stations plonked next to rivers and lakes. Hmmm.

Next up was a story on epigenetics and DNA methylation which was derived from the AAS website (http://www.science.org.au/nova/098/098key.htm).

And finally a story left in the fridge from last week’s Food Theme Show: asparagus and why it makes your pee pong. All you want to know about asparagus but were too afraid to ask can be found in the journal article; Drug Metabolism and Disposition vol 29. No.4 Part 2 p539 (2001).

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