Slashdot Mirror

Light at night, especially blue light, messes up circadian rhythms and has been implicated in sleep disruption, diabetes, and cancer. Imagine putting up an advertising constellation only to be sued by every woman with breast cancer and every man with prostate cancer. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...
Those lawsuits would certainly hurt the bottom line. Is there blue in Pepsi's logo?

Wonder if this would work for noise cancelling headphones too? It seems like its a ring that can be made smaller too: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...

*sigh*

Since the editor and submitter didn't do it,

here is the BU research alert, which includes an image of the new material, and

here is a link to the published paper, from which you can get a DOI number if you want to read about their work.

The acoustic suppressor looks like thick a 3-d printed bushing.

*sigh*

Since the editor and submitter didn't do it,

here is the BU research alert, which includes an image of the new material, and

here is a link to the published paper, from which you can get a DOI number if you want to read about their work.

The acoustic suppressor looks like thick a 3-d printed bushing.

Ultrasound firewall for mobile phones

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...

"Defence against unwanted audio tracking by acoustic cookies

"The SoniControl project of St. PÃlten University of Applied Sciences has developed a mobile application that detects acoustic cookies, brings them to the attention of users and if desired, blocks the tracking. The app is thus, in a sense, the first available ultrasound-firewall for smartphones and tablets. "The most challenging part of developing the app was to devise a method that can detect different existing ultrasound-transmission techniques reliably and in real time", said Matthias Zeppelzauer, Head of the project and Senior Researcher in the Media Computing research group of the Institute of Creative\Media/Technologies at St. PÃlten UAS.""

Yeah Hydrogen is fucked, well and truly skewered, deceased, morte, a soon to be rotting corpse. Nearly every year, an announcement about better battery technology comes out, a new refinement, new materials all leading to greater storage capacity, more recharges and cheaper battery cost and it doesn't look like stopping soon https://www.eurekalert.org/pub..., hey look, hydrogen gas as waste.

Some years ago I worked it out, it's in one of the papers I wrote for The Oil Drum when that blog was active.

If you are going to turn the CO2 into wax/synthetic oil, for pumping into old oil formation, it would take 15 TW for 20 years to take 100 ppm out of the atmosphere. While that's a lot of power, there are 3 sources that could scale that big.

From node 5485 at the oil drum:
  The area of the earth is ~5.1 x 10^14 square meters; air pressure is ~100,000 N/m2. The force would be ~5.1 x 10^19 and the mass (force/acceleration of 9.8 m/sec2) is ~5.2 x 10^18kg or 5.2 x 10^15 t. One ppm would be 5.2 x 10^9 t and 100 ppm would be ~520 billion tonnes.

It takes ~100kWh to remove a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

Removing 100 ppm of CO2 from the air would take 52000 billion kWh or 52,000 TWh, or since a year is about 8700 hours, about six TW years. A TW is about twice the installed power in the US.

It would take a 1000 1GW nuclear reactors 6 years to bring the CO2 level back to the level of 1960 if no new CO2 was being added.

The problem is what to do with the CO2? Liquid CO2 has a density of 1.1. As liquid, this much CO2 would occupy ~470 cubic km. It would cause a real problem downwind if it blew out of storage. We know that oil stayed in the ground for millions of years.

It takes ~50 times as much energy to convert CO2 to synthetic oil as it does to capture it. So to convert 100 ppm of CO2 to synthetic oil would take ~300 TW-years. If we are already feeding 15 TW into making synthetic oil, we could dedicate another 15 TW into making more and pumping it back into empty oil fields. It would take two decades at this rate to bring the current CO2 level back to that of 1960. We might be able to take the CO2 level down far enough to get the earth to go into an ice age (for those who like to ski).

For the details on the energy cost of making synthetic oil see https.htyp.org/dtc

That would be Dr. Faustmann's work at Mass. General Hospital. See https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...

Most Type 1 diabetes is an auto-immune problem, where T cells destroy insuln producing cells after triggering by a virus. Tight blood sugar control for 30 days, coupled with frequent doses of the BCG (tuberculosis) vaccine, stop the auto-immune problem and allow adult stem cells to switch to insulin producing cells and cure Type 1. The treatment is in its second round of human testing: the medication is already available in millions of doses worldwide, and if the FDA gets bribed or hindered enough by Eli Lilly (which makes insulin) or Minimed (which makes insulin pumps) or the glucomater makers (where the money *really* is, those test strips are $1/each), then I'm going on some "health tourism". 30 days in a country where the BCG vaccine is broadly available is expensive, but *so is Type 1 diabetes!!!*

Meh, I'll just peel apples from now on.

That may not work.

And no matter how thoroughly you clean your apples, you may not be able to remove all the chemicals, because some may penetrate more deeply into the fruit, depending on which pesticides they are and when they were applied.

This method is effective at removing the pesticides that penetrate through the fruit. However, further reading shows the pesticide tested only penetrates 80 micrometers. So peeling may help. However, there may be other pesticides that penetrate deeper into the fruit.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...

It sounds like what they did is change from magnetic controls to electric controls for manipulating and reading the quantum state of a phosphorous atom. Apparently they can use an electron to actuate spin changes which ripple to the P atom and allow for larger coupling distances. I'm guessing this is what allows them to more easily embed the qubit in silicon. Interesting but I'd still like to see a prototype.

I think this might be it:

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...

How do women have less opportunity if there was already a CS class and after school club? The first example didn't remove opportunity from the able bodied. The 2nd example reduces the amount of funds the CS department get for little to no benefit. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...

I don't want to type, "you should." I try to avoid that. So...

I accept consensus as being, "correct given the information that we have at hand." I am also intimately aware that we've been wrong, pretty much always. To assume that we're no longer wrong is hubris. In fact, I assume we are wrong.

Now, we're often right enough. We can still use Newton's figures and be 'close enough.' However, they're still wrong. Special Relativity? Just last year, yet another paper was released that insists it's wrong.

This is one example:

Link.

There are more.

What many accept as fact, is not actually fact.

Let's try to put this together?

On the subject of AGW... I actually have taken the time to make a quasi-scholastic study of the science. I have read a great deal and spotted no flaws that were glaringly obvious. However... I also see that, if you read the actual papers, there remain parts that are poorly understood and are speculative.

This doesn't mean I don't think we should stop burning fossil fuels. No. I absolutely agree that we should reduce CO2 outputs. In fact, I'm really, really positive we should do that.

What it does mean is that I'm tired of hearing that it's settled science, well understood, or that the predictions are certain.

Again, I absolutely think we should reduce emissions of problematic gases. Just don't bullshit me and tell me that we understand it completely. We don't. We might not ever understand it completely. We could even be completely wrong.

To go on... Models, such as the Standard Model, are useful. They are "close enough." They are incomplete, as well. That doesn't mean I think we should discard them. It means I think we should continue to refine them. I also think we should stop pretending to know things as certainties when, in fact, we don't. That's why we have confidence ratings, after all.

I do wish I were more adept at putting this into text. My apologies for my lack of communication skills.

Here's news: ''Synestia'': a new type of planetary object.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...

Slashdot is so dead.

Wasn't this found to be a mascon in 2006? https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...

The results from the first study showed that Android users are perceived to have greater levels of honesty and humility, agreeableness and openness personality traits but are seen as less extroverted than iPhone users.

The results from the second study showed that most of the personality stereotypes did not occur in reality, as only honesty and humility was found in greater amounts within Android users.

I couldn't find the study. One article referenced source "Shaw H, Ellis D, Kendrick LR et al. Individual differences between iPhone and Android smartphone users. British Psychological Society. 2016."

On the other hand climate change likely had a large part in the biggest mass extinction's in earth's history. Do you really think we should be playing Russian Roulette with the Earth's climate? Not to mention a) causing millions of deaths from pollution every year, b) funnelling money in to unstable middle eastern regimes and c) using up a resource at an increasing rate that we know is finite and will run out in the future.

The AES NIST standard encryption competition finalists:

        CAST-256--Canada
        CRYPTON--South Korea
        DEAL--Canada and Norway
        DFC--France
        E2--Japan
        FROG--Costa Rica
        HPC--U.S.A.
        LOKI97--Australia
        MAGENTA--Germany
        MARS--U.S.A.
        RC6--U.S.A.
        Rijndael--Belgium
        SAFER+--U.S.A.
        SERPENT--Norway
        TWOFISH--U.S.A.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

Here you go

"...Baruch Aba Shalev's book 100 years of Nobel Prizes, which found that, from 1901 to 2000, 654 Nobel laureates, or nearly 90 percent, belonged to one of 28 religions. The remaining 10.5 percent were atheists, agnostics or freethinkers.

"You can be religious and be a very good scientist," Jack said.

Stop promoting Forbes on Slashdot please.

Here's some alternative links:

- http://www.redorbit.com/news/s...

- http://motherboard.vice.com/en...

- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

Stop promoting Forbes on Slashdot please.

Here's some alternative links:

- http://www.redorbit.com/news/s...

- http://motherboard.vice.com/en...

- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

I hate to say it, but we're too late for 2 C. Even if we call a halt to CO2 emissions, the gas already in the atmosphere is likely to carry us up and over. To make matters worse, the carbon capture technologies coal plants were supposed to get don't work as well as advertised. Even if we do hold to 2 C, btw, we are going to have long term sea level rise.

Global warming at this point is inevitable. Even probably 5 C warming. Some are arguing 8 C by the end of the century. However, its not the end of the world. Just a radically different one.

(yeah I've been following this very closely for over a decade)

Amusingly, coccolithophores, the calcium shelled plankton, everyone has been really worried would be seriously impacted by the rise in carbon dioxide causing oceanic acidification actually grow MORE in raised CO2 environments.

It's a known quantity.

Right. . . It is not like there are tons of new discoveries every day , right? Sorry, but your assertion is absurd. Knowing how CRISPR, itself, works in no way reduces the risk when we use it on all the stuff (you know, life on planet Earth) we barely understand.

How about we perform an experiment. . .you and I both get into fully automated cars. I allow you to randomly change binary bits of my car's programming (much like natural mutation). You allow me to randomly change source code functions, configuration values, etc. . . of your car (much like the genetic script kiddie activities you are asserting are complete harmless). Let's see who lives longest. . . : )

Survivors of the Back Death seem to acquire part of a beneficial genetic mutation that gets passed on in full if they breed with another Black Death survivor - resistance to most known forms of HIV.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

What the hell? Cats make their own vitamin C. Explain that!

In some variants of I.D. genetics, a mutation can only subtract functionality, not add. So some I.D. advocates would claim that humans were created perfect, with the ability to synthesize ascorbic acid, before such a deleterious mutation became fixed in the population during a massive bottleneck in the 24th century BCE. So if Noah Lamechsson had a defective allele for the vitamin C gene, all of humanity ended up with this defect. Other I.D. advocates would counter this with a claim that humans were designed to produce it from DHA.

Personally, I'm more in the "God used evolution as a tool" camp.

Can you point out anywhere where Mars or the researchers have claimed that Mars chocolate has significant health benefits? No? Science funded by industry is still science as long as the results are repeatable as part of a valid study. If you can't actually show that the science is bogus, perhaps you should just shut the fuck up with your whining.

Not everything is a nefarious scheme.

Is this guy good enough for you:"Harold Schmitz, Ph.D., Group Research Manager, Mars, Incorporated" at an American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium, February 2000

"We are very encouraged by the findings presented during this symposium," said Harold Schmitz, Ph.D., Group Research Manager, Mars, Incorporated. "The clinical study results, together with those of earlier in vitro research findings, are very promising, and suggest that additional research is needed to further assess the potential cardiovascular health benefits of chocolate."

Their press release the same day

This is where the whole "Chocolate may be good for you" craze started 15 years agi - studies funded by Mars Inc. and talked up by one or their own employees.

Here's some more handy links about this research:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

Unfortunately, Latin was not one of the languages they investigated in this research, but I do find it very interesting how Latin, which is one of Spanish's parent languages, is far, far more efficient (in dI/dS terms) than Spanish is, and in fact is probably more efficient and complex than any of its derivatives.

It won't work because studies have been done proving people don't hang around on pages with annoying ads, even when it's to their benefit to do so.
In other words, having annoying ads is losing them more traffic than having those ads blocked.

Oh, yes, let's talk about murder statistics.

Like how gun ownership rates are directly correlated to familial murder rates while having no bearing on non familial murder rates.

Or that states with high gun ownership have about the same rate of non-gun murders, but more than twice as many gun murders?

The thing is, you're wrong. You're wrong in a constitutionally protected way, but your beliefs are outright contrary to any sort of factual observation.

It's even older than that. Here's an article on the subject dating back to 1998. Jeffrey Turner was one of the early pioneers of this research, and co-founded a company, Nexia Biotechnologies, to commercialize the idea in 1993. I swear these "spider goat" articles have been popping up several times a year for the last fifteen years in various media outlets.

No, that's only the nearly statewide class 4 drought that has hit California.

You know, the one that made it illegal to wait for you water to heat up.

At the time the scientists were saying that a 5,000 year old ice shelf had broken off. Okay if it was 5,000 years old what broke it off the last time? the egyptians using slave labor to build the pyramids?

Really?

1) Larson B had been a stable ice shelf 200 metres thick with a surface area of 3,250 square kilometres for at least 10,000 years. (source)
2) Even if that wasn't the case you can still attribute climate change to a cause, and that cause doesn't have to be the same cause as previous climate change.
2 b) Climate change one to two orders of magnitude slower than the current climate change would not be expected to have the same mechanism.
3) It is not believed that Egyptians used slaves to construct the pyramids.

The weather changes it goes up and down and side to side.

Yes. And the current going up is primarily due to the enhanced greenhouse effect.

looking for a .01 degree change is like looking for a penny to pay a $1,000 bar tab. it matters yes but come on.

On the other hand a 0.8 degree rise has put a number of species at extinction risk, has displaced tens of millions of people per year, and kills about 150,000 people annually.

Well, you could always try making a battery with a lithium anode instead, that's coated with carbon nanospheres to stop it from reacting to stuff, and forming dendrites over time with charging and recharging. Funny thing is, Stanford's doing just that, and I believe I may have even gotten this link from slashdot a couple weeks ago: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

I'll keep denying until somebody can explain to me why going in and out of ice ages wasn't manmade

Milankovitch cycles

but now we should freak out and spend billions over 1 or 2 degrees of "manmade" "climate change" over the last hundred years

Food security

(when it has been going back down for the last 15 years straight).

Because it hasn't "been going down for the last 15 years straight"?. The decade from 2000-2009 was warmer than any previous decade on record, 10 out of the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998 (inclusive). Globally 2005 and 2010 were actually warmer than 1998. Lastly starting with an abnormal year (like 1998 which had an exceptionally strong El Nino effect) and not accounting for it's abnormality is either foolish bungling, or a deliberate attempt to deceive and manipulate others.

This is really basic stuff, if you don't know it, you're probably not knowledgeable enough to provide meaningful contributions to this discussion.

http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/66682.php?from=257191 Credit: NASA & ESA, STScI-PRC14-06b Usage Restrictions: News organizations may use this image in connection with reports about exoplanetary research.

WTF? News organisations can, but but bloggers or amateur astronomers can't? Can't use it for reports about other things? It's a shitty low resolution image anyway. Are they scared someone will write an best selling game around it? Usual institutional anti-fair use paranoia off something probably spawned from a public research grant anyway.

From this article:

The researchers published a study a few months before the earthquake, describing the particular locked patch with the clearest potential for the next large earthquake in the region. The team projected the total amount of energy that could have developed across that region and forecasted that if the locking remained similar since the last major earthquake in 1950, then there is presently enough energy for an earthquake on the order of magnitude 7.8 there.

Because of limits in technology and scientific understanding about processes controlling fault locking and release, scientists cannot say much about precisely where or when earthquakes will occur. However, earthquakes in Nicoya have occurred about every 50 years, so seismologists had been anticipating another one around 2000, give or take 20 years, Newman said. The earthquake occurred in September of 2012 as a magnitude 7.6 quake.

I don't see any reference to "imminent".

Paid Claims $21,523
Claim Expenses $5,240
Service & Admin Fees $8,026

Now, that's just sad. it cost them about $0.62 to dispense each $1 in claims.

Anybody who tells you that private insurance is "more efficient" is just looney. Medicare overhead ranges from 1% to 6% depending on what you call "overhead".

The situation for doctors isn't different here. Top specialists, especially surgeons, make a lot of money, but many other doctors (notably primary care) don't, and they all pay a lot of money for malpractice insurance. (There were reports some years back of doctors being forced out of OB/GYN because of high insurance rates: see http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-06/uomh-hco053105.php for one example.) And to get there, they have to survive years of training with very long hours, and pay a lot of money for schooling, typically taking on a crushing load of student loans.

At 120dB seems likely that such devices will kill the remaining working hair cells.

Hopefully they can find a way to stop/slow "age related" hearing loss: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/meae-rdp032713.php

I wondered whether the device was actually bypassing the hair cells entirely...

At 120dB seems likely that such devices will kill the remaining working hair cells.

Hopefully they can find a way to stop/slow "age related" hearing loss: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/meae-rdp032713.php

Here is a link http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uoc-dod032113.php. It mentions a beer refrigerator size unit. I would imagine that would be smaller than a normal refrigerator. I live near a water pumped storage unit. They are investing close to a billion dollars in changing the turbine blades. They also built 56 windmills here at a cost of around 250 million dollars. It would seem to me that the money spent for the blades would be better spent on the home units since they would be much closer to where the electricity is being used. I would think that they could make bigger units for industry. I would hope that the units would be free and it would be like an air conditioner unit so it would be external to the house.

It's the dark matter that is still the key to all of this. Could this new data show some kind of structure to dark matter distribution in the early universe. Can Dark matter as WIMPs be generated as the result of high energy collisions more common at the beginning of the universe? From a press release it noted that "At the same time, some curious features are observed that don't quite fit with the current model. For example, the model assumes the sky is the same everywhere, but the light patterns are asymmetrical on two halves of the sky, and there is larger-than-expected cold spot extending over a patch of sky." http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uoc--pnm032113.php So there is hope yet for some interesting potential new physics and cosmology. M-Theory, Brane cosmology is perhaps going to get a bit more data to back it up.

Tube Babies coming soon to a lab near you.

This is my second "Sci-Fi tech could become reality in the none too distant future" of the last 20 minutes. (The first one being Sundiveresque http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-11/uoi-plt111312.php). If I keep reading, I might find out someone about to make a working version of a warp drive.

Good Times!

[forgot to login in my prev. post]

"The technology" turns out to be called "asymmetric multilevel outphasing". No wonder the submission was too embarrassed to include this tidbit. Small problem, though. Nerds don't omit.

Empathy represses analytic thought, and vice versa

Even for nerds it turns out that dog paddling through life in the default network generates more discussion forum page views. Somewhere a kitten dies.

Just to throw out something else to consider:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/meae-ots122911.php

"Outside temperatures, sun exposure and gender may trigger glaucoma"

Importantly, those with a lifetime residential history of living in the middle tier and south tier of the United States was associated with 47% and 75% reduced risks, respectively, compared with living in the northern tier...

Without having read the full paper, it seems to me that what they're saying is that your location has a lot to do with the risk. Perhaps it's the extra exposure to UV/Sunlight from snow reflection? So it makes sense that TFA finds an increase in risk for people in Scandinavian regions.

You're an idiot. We get it. Next you'll be question evolution, quantum mechanics and whether the Earth is round.

It's very well established that Americans avoid even going to doctors because they can't afford to pay for either what must come out of their pockets, whether they have insurance or not because it's that uncertain. They don't even get up to bat to be denied.

• 
  Major Medical Mystery (sic) why people avoid doctors

  Do Americans avoid going to a doctor because it will cost them money?

  Avoiding the Doctor's Office

And yes Virginia, Americans absolutely do get turned away from hospitals and doctors:

• 
  Uninsured Americans Still At Risk For Getting Turned Away By Hospitals
  Critically ill uninsured Americans still at risk of being turned away from hospitals despite law
  Ambulance Diversion

People to do manage to get care also go bankrupt primarily due to medical bills (not covered by insurance)

• 
  Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies

  Plaintiff challenging healthcare law went bankrupt – with unpaid medical bills

  Towering Medical Bills Leave Many Americans Bankrupt

The fact is that America has the WORST HEALTHCARE SYSTEM of ANY developed or even most developing countries. The only par countries are the lower rungs of developing countries and undeveloped countries. Other far less wealthy nations manage to deliver far better healthcare than the US. I know personally because I've lived overseas in these countries.

Your ship has sailed for specious and ignorant rhetorical tricks and debating games. The facts are clear.

BTW I don't even bother getting health care in the US any long. I have group insurance that covers international providers so my primarily care doctors are in Mexico, Thailand and Germany now. Even with airfare it's still cheaper, less stressful, better quality and more certain than getting the same in the USA now! I only carry insurance in the US for being hit by a bus - my group plan is set up to transport me overseas once I'm stable in such situations (again still cheaper than standard US insurance).

ObarmaCare is a day late and dollar short as far as I'm concerned. But the Republican alternatives are even much worse. Basically criminality of political and immorality of leadership dominates both parties completely. To regain my trust it will take decades of a clean track record and that clock has yet to even start.

At least you're starting to show your work. Your entire first paragraph, until the last sentence, is actually correct. Two issues still: the 7% increase in albedo is not a unanimous fact. See here for quite a few papers discussing the evolution of albedo, the accuracy of the Earthlight project, etc: http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/papers-on-the-albedo-of-the-earth/. Secondly, the calculation has been met with great skepticism, precisely because the 2C drop in temperature hasn't been observed. This means that changes in albedo have a very limited impact on the global temperature. Finally, Grey-body calculations are fine, but they are far more complex than you let on. For one, what's the impact of dealing with irradition onto a sphere, instead of onto an ideal black-body cavity with an albedo factor applied to it? Hint: it involves integration.

You're still completely lacking in citations. Here, let me help you a bit with a paper actually discussing the impact of bond albedo and solar cycles on future insolation: http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/apr/article/download/14754/10140 They don't discuss the

As for the other assertions, obviously we look at different graphs for sea ice -- the SH is over the 30 year mean and has been for a rather long time.

Sea ice is a rather minor aspect of the ice in the SH, as well as utterly uninteresting when it comes to rising sea levels. Furthermore, you are conflating ice area and ice volume. See here for some very accurate measurements that indicate that ice volume is decreasing: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/uoca-ais022806.php Now that you're 0 for 2, you want to try again?

If you google a bit, you can actually see the variation year by year over the last decade or more, all on one graph.

Yes, it's well known. It's the one I linked. I'm glad you don't even read the replies. It's a great way to stay ignorant and look like a fool.

Oh, and while you're worrying about explaining how you can tell what is a linear trend and what is cyclic in the absence of any sort of serious baseline for data or workable theory,

Ok, now I KNOW that you didn't read anything I linked to. Want to retry that AFTER looking at the graph in my reply? Or are you talking about the slight uptick that came from the Earthlight project, and that no one was able to replicate in their DIRECT measurements of albedo?

But either way the physics of both is perfectly clear, and any halfway decent climate model that includes the measured albedo as a parameter should be showing strong cooling.

The models do include measured albedo, you meandering, cherry-picking, misleading nimrod, and neither the data, nor the models indicate much cooling. Merely a bit of a pause after a record high in 1998, with a slight upward trend if you start your trend at 1999.

But they're not, even though this is bone-simple physics even more fundamental (and prior to) the GHE. I wonder why?

If you would read anything I've linked to, did any sort of research with the goal of understanding your question, rather than confirming your existing bias, you'd know that everyone has been asking the same question, came to the conclusion that the physics model is far too simple to be used as the only controlling factor, and decided that there's got to be more to the current data than what can be inferred merely from water vapor and albedo.

If you want me to take you seriously, you might want to start linking your sources. Because so far, you are batting a big fat 0, and coming across as someone who is mistaking expertise in one area for expertise in a completely different one - and making a total ass out of himself in the process.

Study: When highly skilled immigrants move in, highly skilled natives move out

In the first study to measure the temporary impact of highly skilled immigrants on native populations, University of Notre Dame Economist Abigail Wozniak and Fairfield University's Thomas J. Murray — a former Notre Dame graduate student — found that when highly skilled immigrants move to a city or town, the U.S. natives in that area who are also highly skilled tend to move away. However, the study found that the same immigrant group's presence decreases the chances that low-skilled natives would leave.

"High skill" refers to those having some post-secondary education or above, while "low skill" are those with a high school diploma or less education. "Natives" refer to U.S. citizens by birth.

According to the study, which will appear in the July issue of the Journal of Urban Economics, smaller and more geographically isolated cities show the biggest impacts. There was little difference in results between growing versus declining cities.

"We conclude that natives with less education take longer to adjust to the arrival of immigrants in their local labor market than do natives with more education," Wozniak says. "These effects are more pronounced in smaller, more isolated communities, from where it would be more difficult and expensive for less skilled natives to relocate."...

OK, what causes a particular electron to go through the first slit, or through the second slit?

Damn good question. As far as it can be determined, the act of detection or thinking about the result changes the result.

Erm, well, I'm not sure the Copenhagen interpretation has been experimentally demonstrated to be the only valid interpretation of quantum mechanics (no, experiments showing that local hidden variable theories don't work don't demonstrate that detection collapses the wave function), and I don't think the Copenhagen interpretation says anything about "thinking about the result".

A side note: There are numerous studies that show that humans have 6th sense like abilities. One study shows that human tension rose incredibly world wide just prior to 9/11, and they have tracked similar phenomena to other major events both natural and man made. There was a study that showed that humans had a spike in brain activity just prior to seeing erotic images, which hints at some type of precognition and ESP like abilities.

Citations, please? I'd like to see whether the data really points to your interpretations.

There is a distinct difference when thinking about a creator, which is that morals and ethics can become a requirement as opposed to the atheist view. Look at the state of the US legal system now compared to, lets say the 1850s and see how big the difference is.

Well, yes, we now have laws against, e.g., owning people as property, which is a definite improvement. Are you saying that this was, say, the result of a post-1850's Great Awakening, or something such as that? There were religious people on both sides of that "owning people as property" debate.

Now, laws are mere technicality that people in power can break. Survival of the fittest works in that aspect, just as well as what most people think of in the animal kingdom.

Well, perhaps the fittest might be the ones who don't just fuck other people over.

their end goal is to use red blood cells as a vehicle for drug delivery

Now they'll have probable cause if the K9's detect that you have red blood cells.

- sarcasm off.

In all seriousness, gold nano particles are being explored medically in some pretty freakin' cool ways - to kill cancer by heating the gold with light, kill cancer by heating the gold radio waves in places where light can't reach and targetted delivery of chemotherapy.