Slashdot Mirror

Ars has better coverage which talks more about the polymers used and how this is actually achieved. It also has a link to the paper published in Nature (although you can only get an abstract if you're like me and don't have a subscription).

I submitted this story, too. So knowing Slashdot, we might see a dupe :-)

CO + H2O => CO2 + H2 is the common water-gas shift which is spontaneous (thermodynamically) below 800C. Used in coal-to-liquids after gasifying coal to make H2, and in H2 production from natural gas (CH4 + H2O => CO + 3 H2 and then make more hydrogen with CO + H2O => CO2 + H2).

CO2 + H2 => CO + H2O is the reverse water-gas shift which requires high temperatures and/or membranes for product separation to make it work. It is more difficult.

Combining CO2 with H2 is the most common method people have been discussing to produce fuels, since the 1970s using nuclear power, flue gas CO2 and hydrogen produced by electrolysis (look up Meyer Steinberg, I believe). CO2 + H2 can be reacted across a catalyst to make methanol without needing the reverse water-gas shift (3H2 + CO2 => CH3OH + H2O); it is a variation of traditional methanol production from CO + H2 (which typically has a little CO2 in there as well).

My other post for this article discusses the purpose behind such a fuel synthesis process more.

The original journal articles for those interested in more than a press release:

Efficient Oxygen Reduction Fuel Cell Electrocatalysis on Voltammetrically Dealloyed Pt-Cu-Co Nanoparticles (Strasser et al., Angewandte Chemie International Edition)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.200703331

Electrocatalysis on Bimetallic Surfaces: Modifying Catalytic Reactivity for Oxygen Reduction by Voltammetric Surface Dealloying (Koh & Strasser)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja0742784

To fully answer that question would take a whole course on organometallic chemistry to explain, but it has to do with the d-electron configuration of the platinum, (d8), which results in organometallic compounds which can be either square planar or octahedral. The ability to switch between these structures (and related oxidation states) allows for transitions and bonding between the states which allows for the creation of intermediates necessary for catalytic reactions. Bulk platinum (i.e. as a heterogeneous catalyst) also has d-electrons available at the metal surface which can form bonding and anti-bonding ( = bond breaking) bonds with small molecules. Essentially when it is reacting with, say, hydrogen gas, the H2 adsorbs onto the surface and, each atom forming a bond with one Pt atom's d-orbital.

A good book might be Heterogeneous Catalysts for the Synthetic Chemist (Google Book Search)

The original journal articles for those interested in more than a press release:

Efficient Oxygen Reduction Fuel Cell Electrocatalysis on Voltammetrically Dealloyed Pt-Cu-Co Nanoparticles (Strasser et al., Angewandte Chemie International Edition)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.200703331

Electrocatalysis on Bimetallic Surfaces: Modifying Catalytic Reactivity for Oxygen Reduction by Voltammetric Surface Dealloying (Koh & Strasser)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja0742784

To fully answer that question would take a whole course on organometallic chemistry to explain, but it has to do with the d-electron configuration of the platinum, (d8), which results in organometallic compounds which can be either square planar or octahedral. The ability to switch between these structures (and related oxidation states) allows for transitions and bonding between the states which allows for the creation of intermediates necessary for catalytic reactions. Bulk platinum (i.e. as a heterogeneous catalyst) also has d-electrons available at the metal surface which can form bonding and anti-bonding ( = bond breaking) bonds with small molecules. Essentially when it is reacting with, say, hydrogen gas, the H2 adsorbs onto the surface and, each atom forming a bond with one Pt atom's d-orbital.

A good book might be Heterogeneous Catalysts for the Synthetic Chemist (Google Book Search)

There is evidence the dream is coextensive with the REM period and that the time length of dreams, as subjectively experienced by the dreamer and objectively rated by experimenters, is closely related to the real-time length of the corresponding REM period.

If you have 30 USD, you can read their full performance report. Without paying, even the abstract might tell you something.

Deposition of alternating nanoscale layers of clay particles and a polymer yields a transparent composite that is as stiff and strong as steel.

Nanoscale building blocks are individually exceptionally strong because they are close to ideal, defect-free materials. It is, however, difficult to retain the ideal properties in macroscale composites. Bottom-up assembly of a clay/polymer nanocomposite allowed for the preparation of a homogeneous, optically transparent material with planar orientation of the alumosilicate nanosheets. The stiffness and tensile strength of these multilayer composites are one order of magnitude greater than those of analogous nanocomposites at a processing temperature that is much lower than those of ceramic or polymer materials with similar characteristics. A high level of ordering of the nanoscale building blocks, combined with dense covalent and hydrogen bonding and stiffening of the polymer chains, leads to highly effective load transfer between nanosheets and the polymer.

Yet another scientific story with big claims and little detail. 2nM accuracy sounds a little overstated.

Second they are using fluorescence to see the pattern and this at the very best has resolution of about 300nM.

In conclusion, we have demonstrated the feasibility of biocatalytic lithography. Catalyst-mediated soft lithographic technique offers the advantage of lateral resolution controlled by the range of motion of the immobilized catalyst rather than by the diffusive properties of molecular inks. This feature should facilitate the implementation of strategies for stamping nanoscale features. Further examination of stamping parameters and the application of this methodology to nanolithography are underway, and we will report our results in due course.

The only thing that it says about the band is that none of their fans have taken game theory.

Your mistake is to assume that standard game theoretic notions of "rationality" apply to human beings. There's ample evidence to the contrary.

The point is to reduce the overall cost of being capable of running the test, not in vastly increasing the efficiency of running a massive batch of tests this way. Certainly there's downstream potential for it...

The point is to reduce the overall cost of being capable of running the test, not in vastly increasing the efficiency of running a massive batch of tests this way. Certainly there's downstream potential for it...

Accepting quantum physics to be universally true, argues Max Tegmark, means that you should also believe in parallel universes.

The key point is that parallel universes are not a theory in themselves, but a prediction of certain theories. For a theory to be falsifiable, we need not observe and test all its predictions -- one will do.

Because Einstein's general theory of relativity has successfully predicted many things we can observe, we also take seriously its predictions for things we cannot, such as the internal structure of black holes. Analogously, successful predictions by unitary quantum mechanics have made scientists take more seriously its other predictions, including parallel universes.

I'm not sure if this is the same article that you saw previously, but this paper discusses that topic:
Seth Lloyd, "Ultimate physical limits to computation" Nature 406, 1047-1054 (31 August 2000) | doi: 10.1038/35023282 (for those without access to Nature articles, this arXiv preprint appears to be the same article).

The article reviews the absolute maximum limits for computation, based on current understanding of thermodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics.

The basic conclusion of the paper is that a theoretical 1 kg computer (confined to a volume of 1 liter), operating perfectly at the edge of what is physically possible could compute 10^51 operations/second on 10^31 bits of information (as compared to our current computers: 10^10 operations/second on 10^10 bits). Naively scaling Moore's law from current sizes, this suggests that we will reach such limits in 250 years. Of course the paper repeatedly points out that this is for an unrealistically 'perfect' computer, that is somehow able to perfectly organize all its internal matter solely for performing the computation at hand. For instance when running a computation it effectively has a temperature of ~10^9 Kelvin, which is considerably hotter than any known material could withstand.

Nevertheless, it's interesting to see what the fundamental principles of relativity and quantum mechanics indicate as a boundary for any sort of computation. The article is an interesting read.

Citation:
Holliday et al. (2007) MACiE (Mechanism, Annotation and Classification in Enzymes): novel tools for searching catalytic mechanisms. Nucleic Acids Research, 35, Database issue D515-D520. DOI link

He's right that clicking on the right and getting a quick quote for reproducing the entire article as part of a course pack (print and/or electric) is non zero... BUT, producing a course pack doesn't allways equate to non-commerial in my mind.

It might part of university course, in which case Peter Murray-Rust seems justified in taking calling this non-commerial (and therefore free under the CC licence used).

However, the course-pack could be part of a commercial training course for members of the pharma industry - in which case the end user would have to pay the copyright holders.

The bottom of the quick quote page even EXPLAINS this (cropped in his screen shot):

If the item you are seeking permission to re-use is labeled OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE then please note that non-commercial reuse of it is according to the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license. Permission only needs to be obtained for commercial use and can be done via Rightslink. If you have any queries about re-use of content published as part of the Oxford Open program, please contact journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

What's the big fuss about?

It is one thing when someone writes a crackpot book with bogus science. What really bothers me is when an executive at a large scientific research company spews nonsense in order to impress investors. Such is the case with Advanced Cell Technology. In this case, Robert Lanza aggressively sends press releases to everyone he knows in the media. The reporters don't bother to fact check properly. He told the press, "We've also tested these cells in animals for the first time, and it turns out that they have incredible reparative potential." The nature methods paper that he is referring to is much less optimistic, "they localized to the site of injury in the damaged vasculature and appeared to participate in repair... Our data suggest that hES-derived blast cells could be important in vascular repair."

The peroxalate nanoparticles have several attractive properties for in vivo imaging, such as tunable wavelength emission (460-630 nm), nanomolar sensitivity for hydrogen peroxide and excellent specificity for hydrogen peroxide over other reactive oxygen species.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030134

As others have pointed out, "water resonance" doesn't have much to do with it, and you don't want to match resonance and maximize adsorption: you get a lot of surface heating and nothing reaches the interior. A back of the envelope calculation (or just physics intuition) suggests that to maximize heating all the way through, you want to choose a wavelength that is roughly comparable to the size of the food you're trying to heat (see, e.g., here). 2.45 GHz corresponds to about 12 centimeters.

My library has a subscription.

Here's a freely available article that apparently explains the theory. It is cited in an erratum to the original paper.

Also, from the research note, they only simulated a neuron firing rate of 1Hz. I don't know much about mouse brains, but I know that's nowhere near the firing rate found in mammal brains.

There's actually alot of evidence in the literature suggesting that water forms a "structured layer" on hydrophillic (water-compatible) surfaces, and around hydrophillic objects dispersed in water. For instance the mobility of water that structures around proteins has been described in the literature as "ice-like." These measurements are typically based on the density of the water or using things like conductivity to infer mobility.

So the notion of water forming solid-like structures near surfaces is not entirely new. However, direct mechanical measurements of the mobility/viscosity of those last few atomic layers of water are not easy, so this paper certainly adds a valuable contribution to the field.

The actual scientific paper in question can be found here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.75.115415

Er, that's simply not true, it has just been published in a highly prestigious journal (PRL).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.101101

However, IAAC (cosmologist), and despite this being a refereed paper, most of the community aren't taking MOND seriously any more, so I doubt this will garner much attention. The evidence for dark matter is simply too strong.

You're right that we would have just one species of bacteria. We ought to convince ourselves that we do have more than one species, though, and the authors of the article are hard to convince. They use the idea that the incredible diversity and rapid evolution that you mention aren't enough. This indeed relates to the term "evolutionary species."

The authors define "evolutionary species" as a population that evolves independently from others, meaning that genotypes can't cross the line between two evolutionary species. In the term "evolutionary species," I'd put the emphasis on the word species. Yes, all species are evolutionary, but not all evolutionary entities are species.

Why would anyone doubt that asexual organisms can split into evolutionary species? The article says that sexually reproducing organisms can diversify but also experience cohesion within groups, and "asexuals might not diversify into distinct species, because there is no interbreeding to maintain cohesive units above the level of the individual." Distinct is the key word in that sentence. Now, if asexuals have no source of cohesion (including homologous recombination), then they don't have a good way to form truly independent subpopulations, and they can diversify to the extreme, but yes, a group of (true) asexuals would remain always just one big evolutionary species. These authors and others point out that bacteria do form distinct populations (across which genotypes presumably can't cross), but those results are less convincing because the bacteria in question can all undergo recombination, if not sex proper, and that could induce cohesion. The problem of "one big species" still exists for totally asexual organisms like the rotifers in this study.

Figure 2 in the article http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0050087 shows all of these ideas about cohesion, species, populations, and so forth relatively elegantly.

In the end, this study shows that the characteristics of some truly asexual critters fit the model of cohesive, independent clusters better than not, and they also fit a model of selection based on more than just geographic isolation, for example. How do they cohere? Probably by ending up in niches, the authors say. It has always made sense that true asexuals could do this, but it sounds like we had little evidence about whether they did in fact, before this paper.

Turning to the Times and Slashdot articles, they are both right to point out that it's interesting that organisms can replicate themselves asexually for so long and still compete with sexual reproducers, but they don't emphasize why that's interesting. The comments are right to point out that both sexual and asexual reproduction can generate diversity, so that's not why asexuals are interesting. They're interesting because they lack the usual source of cohesion and independence. In short, the question was "can organisms diversify and cohere into real species or species-like units without any combining of their genes?" The answer is "it looks like it." As an aside, I have to apply a lot of effort to feel good when all tertiary sources seem to miss subtle points like this all the time.

Actually, it works! Recently, there was a nice study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology on this topic:

Beyond Vicary's fantasies: The impact of subliminal priming and brand choice
Johan C. Karreman, Wolfgang Stroebe and Jasper Claus

Abstract

With his claim to have increased sales of Coca Cola and popcorn in a movie theatre through subliminal messages flashed on the screen, James Vicary raised the possibility of subliminal advertising. Nobody has ever replicated Vicary's findings and his study was a hoax. This article reports two experiments, which assessed whether subliminal priming of a brand name of a drink can affect people's choices for the primed brand, and whether this effect is moderated by individuals' feelings of thirst. Both studies demonstrated that subliminal priming of a brand name of drink (i.e., Lipton Ice) positively affected participants' choice for, and their intention to, drink the primed brand, but only for participants who were thirsty. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2005.12.002

Although tool use is known to occur in species ranging from naked mole rats to owls, chimpanzees are the most accomplished tool users. The modification and use of tools during hunting, however, is still considered to be a uniquely human trait among primates. Here, we report the first account of habitual tool use during vertebrate hunting by nonhumans. At the Fongoli site in Senegal, we observed ten different chimpanzees use tools to hunt prosimian prey in 22 bouts.

        This includes immature chimpanzees and females, members of age-sex classes not normally characterized by extensive hunting behavior. Chimpanzees made 26 different tools, and we were able to recover and analyze 12 of these. Tool construction entailed up to five steps, including trimming the tool tip to a point. Tools were used in the manner of a spear, rather than a probe or rousing tool. This new information on chimpanzee tool use has important implications for the evolution of tool use and construction for hunting in the earliest hominids, especially given our observations that females and immature chimpanzees exhibited this behavior more frequently than adult males.

Some of my colleagues (e.g., Vittorio Cristini) have been modeling the potential benefits of nanoparticle drug delivery for a couple of years now. As has been known for some time (e.g., see papers from R.K. Jain), the blood vessels that grow to supply tumors with nutrients (the tumor-induced neo-vasculature) are different than regular, non-pathological vessels. They tend to be more tortuous and leaky, with larger holes than regular vessels.

This is where the nanoparticles come in: one can design nanoparticles that encapsulate cancer drugs in particles that are too large to exit normal blood vessels but can pass through the leakier, tumor-induced blood vessels. This naturally targets cancerous tissues.

However, there are other issues to consider. Due to the high pressure inside tumors (due to the rapid proliferation of cells within a confined area, among other factors), along with the leaky vessels, blood flow can be very poor inside a tumor, and so while the drug may be targeted toward and delivered to the tumor, it may not actually penetrate very far into the tumor. Some great work has been done by Steven McDougall, Sandy Anderson, and Mark Chaplain in this area. In particular, look at their DATIA (dynamic adaptive tumour-induced angiogenesis) papers.

One way around this (suggested by R.K. Jain and Vittorio Cristini, among others) is to use targeted anti-angiogenic therapy to prune out the worse blood vessels and improve flow within the tumors, thereby also improving drug delivery and penetration.

Lastly, on the therapeutic aspect of blocking up tumor blood vessels with the nanoparticles, the work we've done (see this paper, which will appear in the Journal of Theoretical Biology soon), indiscriminately cutting off the nutrient supply to a tumor can increase tumor invasiveness by increasing morphological (shape) instability. (See some of the animations here.) So ironically, while more tumor cells may be killed, those that remain may spread farther and initiate new tumors. Given that hypoxic tumor cells are more likely to be resilient to further treatment (e.g., hypoxic breast cancer cells), this is a problem worth keeping in mind when planning anti-angiogenic therapy.

If you're interested in these topics, please do check out the paper above. (You can also download it at my website without any special memberships.) Even if you don't like it, we have a lot of references you may find handy. -- Paul

I didn't think I had to since those numbers were presented by several different people already and modded highly in this article. Here is one of the pertinent ones that is also well written http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=210866&cid =17175778 [slashdot.org]. Not one person I saw in the entire discussion presented numbers indicating that violent crime (as opposed to "gun crime") correlates favorably with gun control legislation.

Huh? Nothing he mentioned in any way contradicts anything I've said on the matter. The whole thrust of his argument was to put gun related deaths into prospective. I agree, for instance, that the average citizen is far more likely to killed by a car than by a gun. I simply believe that society would be better off if more and better gun laws were put in place (esp. those that would reduce concealed weapons, readily available/loaded weapons, etc).

Several points:

First, the data does not compare gun ownership, frequency of use, and method of use to the deaths and injuries so it tells us little about the risks on a marginal basis. By this same fuzzy rationale I might come to conclude that Russian Rulette is relatively safe because only 3 minors died of it last year (or whatever the exact # would be... certainly very small).

Second, it does not mention any study of correlation of gun ownership in general to any of the various bad things (murder, violent crime, robbery, etc).

Three, it particularly does not discuss specific gun laws as it relates to specific crimes. This is absolutely necessary to persuade me. I believe that responsible ownership of rifles is an acceptable risk generally, but that laws that allow most people to carry and own weapons that are readily concealed (including driving around with a loaded weapon at all times--handgun or not) results in a marginal increase in murders and serious injury (I do not believe that it tends to reduce crime across the board). In other words, even if one were to accept that "gun ownership does not cause an increase in violent crime" this says nothing about particular gun laws, murder rates, etc. That argument is kind of like arguing that, because we can prove that modern medicine correlates strongly with people living longer and healither lives, that any specific doctor or medicine is safe (e.g., untested medicines, unlicensed doctors, etc).

"the facts show that there is simply no correlation between gun control laws and murder or suicide rates across a wide spectrum of nations and cultures.

As for these very limited statements you've presented, I disagree with the conclusions you are drawing from them. The mere fact that someone who studied it failed prove correlation in a particular study (or even several) does not mean that there is not a causative impact. There are a lot of other variables involved and the data collection is difficult (different places measure crime and gun ownership different) whether you are comparing two different places or two different times (before and after).

What's more, there are studies that do suggest positive correlation between gun ownership rates and homicide rates...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1359-1789(03)00044-2

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2005.02.003

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11130511&dopt=Citatio n

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/abstract/148/10/172 1

I didn't think I had to since those numbers were presented by several different people already and modded highly in this article. Here is one of the pertinent ones that is also well written http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=210866&cid =17175778 [slashdot.org]. Not one person I saw in the entire discussion presented numbers indicating that violent crime (as opposed to "gun crime") correlates favorably with gun control legislation.

Huh? Nothing he mentioned in any way contradicts anything I've said on the matter. The whole thrust of his argument was to put gun related deaths into prospective. I agree, for instance, that the average citizen is far more likely to killed by a car than by a gun. I simply believe that society would be better off if more and better gun laws were put in place (esp. those that would reduce concealed weapons, readily available/loaded weapons, etc).

Several points:

First, the data does not compare gun ownership, frequency of use, and method of use to the deaths and injuries so it tells us little about the risks on a marginal basis. By this same fuzzy rationale I might come to conclude that Russian Rulette is relatively safe because only 3 minors died of it last year (or whatever the exact # would be... certainly very small).

Second, it does not mention any study of correlation of gun ownership in general to any of the various bad things (murder, violent crime, robbery, etc).

Three, it particularly does not discuss specific gun laws as it relates to specific crimes. This is absolutely necessary to persuade me. I believe that responsible ownership of rifles is an acceptable risk generally, but that laws that allow most people to carry and own weapons that are readily concealed (including driving around with a loaded weapon at all times--handgun or not) results in a marginal increase in murders and serious injury (I do not believe that it tends to reduce crime across the board). In other words, even if one were to accept that "gun ownership does not cause an increase in violent crime" this says nothing about particular gun laws, murder rates, etc. That argument is kind of like arguing that, because we can prove that modern medicine correlates strongly with people living longer and healither lives, that any specific doctor or medicine is safe (e.g., untested medicines, unlicensed doctors, etc).

"the facts show that there is simply no correlation between gun control laws and murder or suicide rates across a wide spectrum of nations and cultures.

As for these very limited statements you've presented, I disagree with the conclusions you are drawing from them. The mere fact that someone who studied it failed prove correlation in a particular study (or even several) does not mean that there is not a causative impact. There are a lot of other variables involved and the data collection is difficult (different places measure crime and gun ownership different) whether you are comparing two different places or two different times (before and after).

What's more, there are studies that do suggest positive correlation between gun ownership rates and homicide rates...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1359-1789(03)00044-2

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2005.02.003

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11130511&dopt=Citatio n

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/abstract/148/10/172 1

Anaesthetica has solid bone or rocks for brains

/. - Tell-us-something-we-don't-know.
Anaesthetica should have saved this bullshit for 2007/04/01, or anaesthetica is another one of those ignorant politicians' staffers or lobbyist. If anaesthetica is a staffer or OPEC or AgriBiz lobbyist, then they need to be honest enough to identify themselves as expressing corporatist interest and just spinning-truth to fit lies.

Last I checked, our planet's surface is about two-fucking-thirds water. For our/global economy and environment Hydrogen and SolarCell technology is the only way to solve energy/fuel and air-pollution problems permanently.

I hate stupid staffers, lobbyist, corporatist, and damn fool dogmatist with faux-answers.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/39936.pdf
Results from the Vehicle/Infrastructure Learning Demonstration Project
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=17774&ch=energy
Cheap, Superefficient Solar Solar-power modules that concentrate the power of the sun are becoming more viable.
http://news.com.com/Solar+cell+breaks+efficiency+r ecord/2100-11395_3-6141527.html
Solar cell breaks efficiency record
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/12/06/027 228.shtml
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35174.pdf
Progress in High-Performance PV: Polycrystalline Thin-Film Tandem Cells
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0360-3199(97)00102-X
Affordable hydrogen supply pathways for fuel cell vehicles
http://dx.doi.org/index.html
http://www.greenwatts.com/docs/ProgressInPhotovolt aics.pdf
Energy Pay-Back and Life Cycle CO2 Emissions of the BOS in an Optimized 3.5 MW PV Installation

Anaesthetica has solid bone or rocks for brains

/. - Tell-us-something-we-don't-know.
Anaesthetica should have saved this bullshit for 2007/04/01, or anaesthetica is another one of those ignorant politicians' staffers or lobbyist. If anaesthetica is a staffer or OPEC or AgriBiz lobbyist, then they need to be honest enough to identify themselves as expressing corporatist interest and just spinning-truth to fit lies.

Last I checked, our planet's surface is about two-fucking-thirds water. For our/global economy and environment Hydrogen and SolarCell technology is the only way to solve energy/fuel and air-pollution problems permanently.

I hate stupid staffers, lobbyist, corporatist, and damn fool dogmatist with faux-answers.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/39936.pdf
Results from the Vehicle/Infrastructure Learning Demonstration Project
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=17774&ch=energy
Cheap, Superefficient Solar Solar-power modules that concentrate the power of the sun are becoming more viable.
http://news.com.com/Solar+cell+breaks+efficiency+r ecord/2100-11395_3-6141527.html
Solar cell breaks efficiency record
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/12/06/027 228.shtml
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35174.pdf
Progress in High-Performance PV: Polycrystalline Thin-Film Tandem Cells
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0360-3199(97)00102-X
Affordable hydrogen supply pathways for fuel cell vehicles
http://dx.doi.org/index.html
http://www.greenwatts.com/docs/ProgressInPhotovolt aics.pdf
Energy Pay-Back and Life Cycle CO2 Emissions of the BOS in an Optimized 3.5 MW PV Installation

Anaesthetica has solid bone or rocks for brains

/. - Tell-us-something-we-don't-know.
Anaesthetica should have saved this bullshit for 2007/04/01, or anaesthetica is another one of those ignorant politicians' staffers or lobbyist. If anaesthetica is a staffer or OPEC or AgriBiz lobbyist, then they need to be honest enough to identify themselves as expressing corporatist interest and just spinning-truth to fit lies.

Last I checked, our planet's surface is about two-fucking-thirds water. For our/global economy and environment, Hydrogen and SolarCell technology is the only way to solve energy/fuel and air-pollution problems permanently.

I hate stupid staffers, lobbyist, corporatist, and damn fool dogmatist with faux-answers.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/39936.pdf
Results from the Vehicle/Infrastructure Learning Demonstration Project
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=17774&ch=energy
Cheap, Superefficient Solar Solar-power modules that concentrate the power of the sun are becoming more viable.
http://news.com.com/Solar+cell+breaks+efficiency+r ecord/2100-11395_3-6141527.html
Solar cell breaks efficiency record
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/12/06/027 228.shtml
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35174.pdf
Progress in High-Performance PV: Polycrystalline Thin-Film Tandem Cells
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0360-3199(97)00102-X
Affordable hydrogen supply pathways for fuel cell vehicles
http://dx.doi.org/index.html
http://www.greenwatts.com/docs/ProgressInPhotovolt aics.pdf
Energy Pay-Back and Life Cycle CO2 Emissions of the BOS in an Optimized 3.5 MW PV Installation

Anaesthetica has solid bone or rocks for brains

/. - Tell-us-something-we-don't-know.
Anaesthetica should have saved this bullshit for 2007/04/01, or anaesthetica is another one of those ignorant politicians' staffers or lobbyist. If anaesthetica is a staffer or OPEC or AgriBiz lobbyist, then they need to be honest enough to identify themselves as expressing corporatist interest and just spinning-truth to fit lies.

Last I checked, our planet's surface is about two-fucking-thirds water. For our/global economy and environment, Hydrogen and SolarCell technology is the only way to solve energy/fuel and air-pollution problems permanently.

I hate stupid staffers, lobbyist, corporatist, and damn fool dogmatist with faux-answers.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/39936.pdf
Results from the Vehicle/Infrastructure Learning Demonstration Project
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx? id=17774&ch=energy
Cheap, Superefficient Solar Solar-power modules that concentrate the power of the sun are becoming more viable.
http://news.com.com/Solar+cell+breaks+efficiency+r ecord/2100-11395_3-6141527.html
Solar cell breaks efficiency record
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/12/06/027 228.shtml
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35174.pdf
Progress in High-Performance PV: Polycrystalline Thin-Film Tandem Cells
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0360-3199(97)00102-X
Affordable hydrogen supply pathways for fuel cell vehicles
http://dx.doi.org/index.html
http://www.greenwatts.com/docs/ProgressInPhotovolt aics.pdf
Energy Pay-Back and Life Cycle CO2 Emissions of the BOS in an Optimized 3.5 MW PV Installation

After RTFA, I found out Ted Bryant is the Tsunami expert in this group of researchers. While researching for my thesis, I was confronted with his book, "Tsunami: the underrated hazard". This work, while being quite easy to understand, can hardly be called scientific based on his way of making citations (grouping all references at the beginning of a chapter which leaves you without the possibility to look up where he drew his conclusions from).

Reviews of his book can be found here: http://hol.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/5/637 and here http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0025-3227(03)00086-0 and here: Synolakis, C.E., and G.J. Fryer, 2001. Book Review: Tsunami: the underrated hazard by Edward Bryant, Eos, Trans. Am. Geophys. Union, 82, 588 (can't find a quick link right now).

The existence of so-called megatsunamis is hardly scientifically proven, especially not by the work of Bryant (he classified sedimentary features embedded in sandstone somewhere in Australia as relics of an ancient megatsunami when in a nearby graveyard the same sandstone wouldn't resist local climate and erosion for more than a few centuries).

The propagation of tsunamis with huge waveheights seems to be limited due to dispersion effects and the so-called "Van-Dorn-Effect" should cause these huge waves to break as soon as they reach the continental shelf (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL02191 8.shtml and http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~jmelosh/ImpactTsunami. pdf , but also http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=10986 ).

After working some time in the field of megatsunamis (my thesis concentrated on the Cumbre Vieja Scenario postulated by Ward&Day back in 2001 (http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/La_Palma_grl. pdf) and, based on scientific grounds, I had to "debunk" it as several researchers have done before me), I have learned to take these reports with a grain (or better, a big portion) of salt.

FTFA:Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (vol 103, p 17979)

But going to the PNAS home page, the largest page number in the current issue (which is v.103) is 17063. Accessing the PNAS Early Edition page and searching for "pain" or "saliva" doesn't turn up anything which seems relevent. So where do I read the original article?

Maybe Newscientist should start using the DOI system so that we can easily resolve and find the original article.

FTFA:Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (vol 103, p 17979)

But going to the PNAS home page, the largest page number in the current issue (which is v.103) is 17063. Accessing the PNAS Early Edition page and searching for "pain" or "saliva" doesn't turn up anything which seems relevent. So where do I read the original article?

Maybe Newscientist should start using the DOI system so that we can easily resolve and find the original article.

And the original research paper can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nphys442 (subscription required)

First, because I haven't seen anyone point it out yet, the actual journal article is Neurology 2006;67:1208-1214. Go to http://dx.doi.org/10.1212/01.wnl.0000238082.13860. 50 and the server will redirect you appropriately. The journal's Web site should let you read the abstract for free. To read the whole article, you have to pay, or find a suitable institution with online or print access to this journal.

Now, some comments. The idea that correlation doesn't imply causation is correct, but this paper used a multivariate analysis to attempt to control for several possible confounding factors. I count twelve that the authors thought about and included in some of their models: age, sex, educational level, diabetes, systolic blood pressure, daily alcohol intake, physical activity, perceived health score, perceived stress score, energy, social isolation, and region of residence. It looks like the paper acknowledges more confounders than anyone's mentioned here on Slashdot so far. Ultimately, though, this paper is a cohort study, so you can still argue that they missed a confounding factor. If you can think of a legitimate one, you stand a good chance getting it published in the journal Neurology.

Next, naming intelligent friends with high BMIs or famous thin people with questionable smarts does not change what this paper says, of course. Let's even pretend to add those people to the data. Now we have 2243 subjects instead of 2223. I doubt that changes the results much, but I admit I can't prove that. Counterexamples do tell us something very important, though. If high BMI really causes worse word-list learning, it is still one of a staggering number of other effects on this measure, and it by no means excludes anyone from higher intelligence.

Lastly, people are right to wonder what cognitive tests like word-list learning really measure. This paper didn't use IQ directly, but the point still stands. The authors know this and address it, too. "The functional significance of cognitive changes in our sample is difficult to assess.... We did not collect any direct index of work performance." In fact, they don't know whether differences in these psychometric test scores apply to "this healthy working population." BMI, too, may represent a surrogate marker. The association in this paper still stands, although I don't see anything about whether active weight loss attempts change cognitive point measures or decline. Yes, there are other markers of cardiovascular risk, and these include waist circumference (Am J Cardiol 2006;98:1053-1056), which someone could study in the same way that the Neurology paper studies BMI.

So what's the point? The point is, the differences in these cognitive tests concern some people. The results suggest that some real effect on cognition exists, and the authors mention a few reasonable mechanisms for the effect. If you agree that a normal BMI leads successively to less diabetes, less coronary artery disease, and less chest pain when you walk around, then it makes sense to try for a normal BMI if it's even possible that it will save blood vessels in your brain, or your brain cells directly, or whatever mechanism you believe. It wouldn't surprise me, though, if weight loss merely slows cognitive decline or lessens the risk, rather than positively improving intelligence or some similar claim. The other point is that newspapers check sources and strive to do it very well, but they rarely offer substantial analysis of original research. They will quote authorities regarding the research but leave item-by-item discussion to commentary articles in specialty journals. Even my couple hundred words here only begin to address the reasonable analysis of this or any scholarly article.

The Ioannidis article you cite has more to do with overinterpretation of statistical power in data analysis than outright falsification of data as in the Poehlman case. In particular, Ioannidis is actually critical of overinterpretation of results obtained from sample sizes that are too small or experimental designs that have too many degrees of freedom. In fact, the title of his study is an overinterpretation of the conclusions in the paper itself - which I'm sure he did on purpose to incite debate on the topic.

This is well summarized in this response to the article, which has the added bonus of quoting "Mudd's Women" to support the argument.

Forgive me for not being up on the details of this, but why do division algebras stop at 8? Does 16 not work?

See Toby Bartels's argument at the bottom of Week 59 of John Baez's TWF series.

Incidentally, the parent poster's argument is wrong. You can construct consistent field theories in N dimensions. Indeed, the division algebras have relevance to why string theory does work in 10 dimensions. (See, for instance, this paper and this comment.

For those with access, anyway. Recent peer-reviewed papers from the group mentioned in the press release Onaran et al, Degertekin et al

For those with access, anyway. Recent peer-reviewed papers from the group mentioned in the press release Onaran et al, Degertekin et al

We consider black hole production at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in a generic scenario with many extra dimensions where the standard model fields are confined to a brane. With ~20 dimensions the hierarchy problem is shown to be naturally solved without the need for large compactification radii. We find that in such a scenario the properties of black holes can be used to determine the number of extra dimensions, n. In particular, we demonstrate that measurements of the decay distributions of such black holes at the LHC can determine if n is significantly larger than 6 or 7 with high confidence and thus can probe one of the critical properties of string theory compactifications.

How about some facts for that argument on the efficacy of nationalised health care. The numbers are kinda scary.

(disclaimer I'm an Austrlian living in the UK) Here's the thing, Health care is pretty much an actuarial issue with a strong public policy rider. You can work out how much healthcare your society needs as a function of age, nutrition, diet, lifestyle etc of the population, the specific individuals that require that service fall into two clases, those that, by the very nature of their lot in life need more care (the poor probably require more interaction with the service for a wide variety of reasons from nutrition, nature of work, "lifestyle choices") and those who happen to be unlucky enough to need the service, hit by a car, cancer, nasty staf. infection, both present justifcation for why the service is a public good, they did not choose to be where they are and the unsubsidised payment for the service would be unfair when the price had to be borne by the society as a whole anyway, why not let society as a whole pay for it.

The arguments about efficiency are there to be made (and disagreed with) but in my view it is only a technical failing that stops a nationalised health care system from being more efficient than a series of private institutions that must replicate a wide variety of the same services. This is different from other industries because of the nature of healthcare and the "base level" or "capacity" issue highlighted above.