Hybrids to the rescue

Well, I've got good news and I've got bad news, courtesy of a professor at Oxford University.

The good news is that climate change is being taken care of.  All of the worries about ice sheets melting, sea level rise, and stronger storms can be set aside.

The bad news is that in order for all this to happen, humans have to be willing to have sex with aliens.

I wish I was making this up.  Young-hae Chi, a professor of Korean at Oxford, has published a book called Alien Visitations and the End of Humanity, in which he tells us that there are already some human/alien hybrids walking around.  There are four categories: small, tall and bold, insect-like, and scaly with cold, reptilian eyes.

What I'm wondering is, if there are all these hybrids walking around, why haven't I seen any?  Although I have to admit the first two categories are kind of vague, and Stephen Miller could easily fit into the last one.  But at least there aren't any insect people around, which is a good thing, because that'd be fucking creepy.

Still from "The Web Planet," from season two of Dr. Who.  Okay, these weren't so much creepy as ridiculous, especially considering the really annoying chirping sound they made.

"[T]hey come not for the sake of us, but for the sake of them," Chi says.  "[For] their survival, but their survival is actually our survival as well — the survival of the entire biosphere."

How exactly this works, or the specifics of how making lots of human/alien hybrid babies is going to stop climate change, Chi never says, and it sounds like he may not be clear on this himself.  "I'm looking for more evidence to support my view," he said.

I'll just bet he is.

Of course, even if there are intelligent aliens visiting the Earth, there's a serious problem with the hybridization claim, and it goes beyond supposing that humans and the aliens have the right combination of orifices and pokey-outy-bits to make it work from a mechanical standpoint.  While it's possible that extraterrestrial life would be DNA-based -- DNA and RNA nucleotides seem to be relatively easy to make abiotically, and are likely to be common in the universe -- it is extraordinarily unlikely that they would read it the same way we do.  The "translation chart," from which you can use the sequence of a messenger RNA molecule to determine the amino acid sequence of the protein it makes, is thought to be arbitrary, and there's no reason why even if there is some RNA-to-protein correspondence on the Planet G'zork, it'd be the same one we use.  (I emphasize the word thought in the previous sentence.  How the translation chart evolved, and whether it actually is arbitrary, is one of the unsolved problems of biological evolution.  If the translation chart was constrained to evolve the way it did, it might be that the decoding process is fairly uniform throughout the universe...  but I doubt it.)

So while I like Mr. Spock and Deanna Troi and B'Elanna Torres as much as the next Trek geek, that sort of thing is pretty certainly impossible.

Anyhow, I'm thinking that Dr. Chi is just making shit up, and should focus on his Korean classes and leave the astrobiology to the astrobiologists.

Still, it'd be nice to do something about climate change.  I mean, our current "leaders" are doing bugger-all, so maybe we should all welcome our alien overlords.  Although I draw the line at having sex with them.  I'm open-minded and all, but I do have my limits.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is for any of my readers who, like me, grew up on Star Trek in any of its iterations -- The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence Krauss.  In this delightful book, Krauss, a physicist at Arizona State University, looks into the feasibility of the canonical Star Trek technology, from the possible (the holodeck, phasers, cloaking devices) to the much less feasible (photon torpedoes, tricorders) to the probably impossible (transporters, replicators, and -- sadly -- warp drive).

Along the way you'll learn some physics, and have a lot of fun revisiting some of your favorite tropes from one of the most successful science fiction franchises ever invented, one that went far beyond the dreams of its creator, Gene Roddenberry -- one that truly went places where no one had gone before.

Brain on fire

When a new discovery in medical science is made, there's always the danger that gullible and/or hopeful people will misinterpret the results.  The danger is especially high when the discovery has to do with something simple and accessible, such as the find that trans-cranial electrical brain stimulation leads to higher cognitive function.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

A year ago, some researchers at Oxford University found that a painless, non-invasive application of "electrical noise," delivered through electrodes attached to the scalp, improved attention, accuracy, and memory, and that the effect lasted for weeks or months.  The procedure is called TRNS (transcranial random noise stimulation), and shows great promise in helping individuals with cognitive impairment -- and perhaps even us ordinary folks who just want a boost in our thinking ability.

"Performance on both the calculation and rote learning tasks improved over the five days, and the former improvements were maintained until six months after training," study leader Dr. Roy Cohen Kadosh told reporters.  "Research has shown that by delivering electricity to the right part of the brain, we can change the threshold of neurons that transmit information in our brain, and by doing that we can improve cognitive abilities in different types of psychological functions...  Our neuro-imaging results suggested that TRNS increases the efficiency with which stimulated brain areas use their supplies of oxygen and nutrients...  Participants receiving TRNS showed superior long-term performance, compared to sham controls, six months later."

So far, pretty cool.  But of course, when a researcher discovers something like this, it opens the door for the greedy to take advantage of the gullible by creating their own electrical stimulation devices, and claiming that "research shows" that they'll help you to think better.

"A headset for gamers, take charge... Overclock your brain," claims one company that sells home electrical stimulation devices.  Another one states: "Can you learn 20-40% quicker, reduce pain, feel better, increase energy or reduce stress with tDCS?  Research studies say, YES!"

There's even a forum on Reddit devoted to the subject -- complete with claims that TRNS can treat everything from autism to schizophrenia.  Less publicized, though, are the accounts of people who have burned their scalps because of leaving the electrodes on too long, or using a unit that delivers a higher-than-recommended voltage.

Through all of this, there have been some voices calling for reason.  Dr. Hannah Maslin, also of Oxford, published a paper calling for regulation of these devices.  "It is becoming increasingly easy for individuals to buy brain-modulating devices online that promise to make the user’s brain work faster, or more effectively, or more creatively," Maslin writes.  "Such devices can involve passing electrical currents through one’s brain or using electromagnetic fields to penetrate the scalp and skull to make neurons fire.  Yet, when purchased outside clinical settings, these devices are unregulated, with no system in place to ensure their safety.  With the market for enhancement technologies expanding, and with devices already crossing international borders, controlling which products are approved for sale is a global issue, potentially requiring international regulatory harmonization."

Steven Novella, neurologist at Yale University, put it even more bluntly.  "Any device with medical claims that it's meant to affect our biological function should be appropriately regulated.  Regulation is the only thing that creates the motivation to spend the money and take the time to do the proper research."

Of course, I'm expecting that this will bring howls of anger from the alternative-medicine crowd, who get their jollies claiming that the medical establishment is actively trying to keep us all sick so that they can make more money.  The truth, of course, is that regulation is about protecting people from their own ignorance.  TRNS does show great promise in improving memory and cognition -- but putting those devices in the hands of people who don't know how to use them correctly is asking for trouble.

So if you're tempted by the hype, my advice is to put away your credit card and read some of the actual research.  It may be that eventually TRNS units will be available for use for ordinary folks, but right now they're (rightfully) in the hands of the medical researchers.  Heaven knows I'd like to think more clearly; but I'm not going to cave in to that desire and end up burning a hole in my scalp.

Call me a Nervous Nellie, but I'm just going to err on the side of caution in this instance.