Science is a significant value of mine. It’s funny to me that people tend to find science dry or boring. To me, it’s anything but.
Science allows you to walk around at the world and see something that makes sense and is beautiful for it. Look at a plane and see a balance of forces that result in suspension in the air. Look at the sun (through very, very thick sunglasses) and see a gigantic mass of fusion reactions. Look even at your own plate; look at shrimp plump in salt water and see supercharged osmosis.
Pile on top of that exactly how damned valuable science is. As I write now in a cafe, I see everywhere the benefits of our discovery of electricity’s properties: warm lighting, machines that pump water through coffee at very high pressure, wooden chairs shaped with electric saws and sanders. And then there’s the benefits of chemistry: rich and long-lasting paints on the wall, the vacuum-packaging that keeps the coffee fresh.
That body of knowledge accumulated by the scientific pursuit is a huge achievement. It is the product of incredible people pushing onward to greater knowledge and clarity.
The particular story I’m linking to today is about research on a relatively undiscovered topic: autism. If you read media reports on autism, it would seem that everyone knows exactly what autism is and what causes it–vaccines. In truth, there are multiple hypotheses about the cause of autism, and the current scientific consensus is that vaccines are a very unlikely culprit. Further, there is argument about what autism even is (one hypothesis is that there are actually multiple syndromes all grouped together under the term of autism). I say this not to criticize current knowledge of autism but to point out the activity and enthusiasm that right now is going into understanding the syndrome.
The story below about researchers Ami Kiln and Warren Jones struck me because of the joy and inventiveness Kiln and Jones bring to their work. In one example, Jones had the idea that doing eye-tracking on autistic children would be a fruitful avenue toward figuring out how to make a diagnosis. Since eye-tracking software is expensive, Jones had the children wear head gear with lasers mounted on top pointing forward. Thus, ingeniously, the laser’s movement would actually trace the path of the child’s attention.
Proper diagnostic tools would be a large step in understanding what autism is, which populations have it, exactly when a particular child developed it, and–ultimately–what causes it. From this kind of understanding comes applications, including possibily knowledge of how to prevent autism, to improve the lives of those with it, possibly to cure it. Quite a prize.
Click here to read on.
:: 
:: 
:: 
