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Majel Barrett Roddenberry has left us.

Majel played the Enterprise's first officer in the original pilot "The Cage" (later recut with a frame story as the TOS two-parter "The Menagerie"), then Nurse Christine Chapel in the original series. Then in TNG she played Councilor Troi's mother, Lwaxana, as well as providing the ubiquitous computer voice in TNG and later series. In fact, she has recenntly finished voice work on the forthcoming Trek movie.

She and Gene Roddenberry married two months after the final episode of Star Trek was aired. (According to Memory Alpha, they were in Japan and has a "Shinto-Buddhist" wedding!)

After Gene's death she did a lot to preserve the Star Trek legacy, and also worked as executive producer on two shows based on ideas from his archives, Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda.

Two science stories to tickle your big-thought imagination:

• Physicists have gathered substantial evidence that 99% of the mass of protons and neutrons - which make up almost all of the mass of ordinary matter - comes not from the quarks that make up the nucleons, but from the "virtual" gluon particles the carry the strong nuclear force. According to quantum theory, these virtual particles pop into existence and quickly disappear again, sort of borrowing against the the uncertainty principle.
• A theory called loop quantum cosmology (LQC) brings back an old idea of n "oscillating" universe, one that cycles through an endless series of expansions and contractions.

The full moon tonight is at the same time as perigee, the closest point to Earth in Luna's orbit. This will make the moon look larger and brighter. A moon near the Solstice also gets to be higher in the sky; put them all together and it should be a nice show.

Back in February 2006, I posted about the dangers of the ubiquitous chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA), a synthetic hormone that is the building block of polycarbonate.

More attention has been focused on BPA of late. Time reports on the latest data and the latest regulatory action:

Why the renewed uproar over plastic? Since the FDA completed its original analysis in August, additional data on the potential health effects of BPA have emerged, linking high levels of BPA exposure to increased risk of heart disease and diabetes and even a decreased sensitivity to chemotherapy in cancer patients. The compound is also linked to developmental and brain effects in infants; BPA is known to mimic the hormone estrogen in the body, which can cause changes in developing fetuses and infants. "There is enough evidence today for the FDA to take the precaution and to certainly get BPA out of infant products," says Urvashi Rangan, senior scientist and policy analyst at Consumers Union. "Even more, consumers should not be ingesting this substance while the science is being figured out."

New Scientist reports that magpies have been shown to recognize themselves in a mirror. Previously, only humans, four other ape species, bottlenose dolphins, and Asian elephants had shown this ability.

Arthur C. Clarke was the author of such science fiction classics as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Childhood's End, and was the first to proposed the idea of placing communications satellites in geosynchronous orbits (where they always appear in the same point in the sky). He passed away today at the age of 90. An amazing man, he will be missed.

In his honor I think I'm going to re-read my copy of The Lion of Comarre & Against the Fall of Night. (I like the original Against the Fall of Night a bit more than the expanded and revised The City and the Stars, but both are good. Beyond the Fall of Night, however, is a great disappointment, contradicting the original not just in theme but in plot, and Gregory Benford should be ashamed of the hack job he did on his half.)

A recently published meta-analysis of studies of SSRI antidepressants - including unpublished trials - shows that they are no better than placebos for all but the most severely depressed people; and furthermore, that severely depressed people exhibited a decreased placebo response rather than a increased responsiveness to the drugs. (SSRIs, “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors” are the class of drugs that include Prozac (fluoxetine), Effexor (venlafaxine), Serzone (nefazodone), and Seroxat (paroxetine).)

This prompted a discussion over on Slashdot, where I posted as follows:

ISS Science Officer Don Pettit writes about the smell of space:

It seems about as improbable as listening to sounds in space, yet space has a definite smell...I had the pleasure of operating the airlock for two of my crewmates while they went on several space walks. Each time, when I repressed the airlock, opened the hatch and welcomed two tired workers inside, a peculiar odor tickled my olfactory senses. At first I couldn't quite place it. It must have come from the air ducts that re-pressed the compartment. Then I noticed that this smell was on their suit, helmet, gloves, and tools.

A recent Slashdot discussion brought up the the way that Soledad O'Brien asked John Edwards about evolution, specifically the phrase "man came, evolution-wise, from apes.", and whether that was an attempt to whip up the ""I didn't come from no monkey!" camp.

It got me imagining my ideal candidate giving a reply. Wouldn't you love to hear something like this:

"Why, yes, Ms. O'Brien, according to our best evidence we did descend from apes - more precisely, we and modern apes descended from a common, ape-like ancestor. And I'm proud of how far our species has developed, how far up from the muck we've come, how far towards grace we've climbed; and I hope that our umptity-great grandchildren will be as far above us as we are above the Australopithecines. My opponent the Biblical literalist, on the other hand, seems to hold that we're all the fallen result of incestuous inbreeding from a single original pair of idiots dumb enough to be fooled by a talking snake. I've got to say I find the scientific account not only more rational, but orders of magnitude more inspiring."

Charles Darwin Has A Posse. Stickers (including images for DIY fun), t-shirts, and more available on the other side of the link. From Colin Purrington at Swathmore University's Department of Biology. Evolve!