Slashdot Mirror

Within the amateur and professional astronomy circles there is a fairly wide known and standard method of reporting astronomical stuff (see http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/cbat.html )

Many deepsky objects (galaxies, nebulae, star clusters) become "well known friends" by amateur astronomers. For example, when ever I'm out observing I will usually do a quick peek at M13 in Hercules, M81, M82 in Ursa Major, or parts of the Veil nebulae in Cygnus when they are visible (just to name a few). I suspect if there was a new supernova in M81 or M82, there is a chance that I would "catch it" by noticing something "odd" (think of it like noticing a new pimple on a friends face). Once something "odd" is noticed, the next step would be to check recent and older photographs of that region. If it's suspected to be "new" then the information is submitted to the IAU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams according to the instructions listed above. Usually the next step that happens is that the pros might get involved to verify the finding.

There are "rules" on who discovers the object, based mainly on the chronological time that IAU receives the information. Co-discovery of the same object can happen, usually the cut-off is when the IAU sends out the notice that there is a potential new object. In other words, say that I notice a new brightness in M81, I record the information and at 10:15 GMT send it in to the IAU CBAT. Someone else also notices the same object and sends in the information at 10:30 GMT. There is a CBAT notice sent out to subscribers at 10:35 GMT. Any observation after 10:35 would not be considered a discovery.

BTW if you go out to http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/RecentSupernovae.html and look for 2008ha, you will find that there where 2 other people who are listed as discoverers of the same supernova, and it looks like Caroline Moore has been "working" with the same folks because she is also listed with at least one of them on two other recent supernova discoveries.

Within the amateur and professional astronomy circles there is a fairly wide known and standard method of reporting astronomical stuff (see http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/cbat.html )

Many deepsky objects (galaxies, nebulae, star clusters) become "well known friends" by amateur astronomers. For example, when ever I'm out observing I will usually do a quick peek at M13 in Hercules, M81, M82 in Ursa Major, or parts of the Veil nebulae in Cygnus when they are visible (just to name a few). I suspect if there was a new supernova in M81 or M82, there is a chance that I would "catch it" by noticing something "odd" (think of it like noticing a new pimple on a friends face). Once something "odd" is noticed, the next step would be to check recent and older photographs of that region. If it's suspected to be "new" then the information is submitted to the IAU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams according to the instructions listed above. Usually the next step that happens is that the pros might get involved to verify the finding.

There are "rules" on who discovers the object, based mainly on the chronological time that IAU receives the information. Co-discovery of the same object can happen, usually the cut-off is when the IAU sends out the notice that there is a potential new object. In other words, say that I notice a new brightness in M81, I record the information and at 10:15 GMT send it in to the IAU CBAT. Someone else also notices the same object and sends in the information at 10:30 GMT. There is a CBAT notice sent out to subscribers at 10:35 GMT. Any observation after 10:35 would not be considered a discovery.

BTW if you go out to http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/iau/lists/RecentSupernovae.html and look for 2008ha, you will find that there where 2 other people who are listed as discoverers of the same supernova, and it looks like Caroline Moore has been "working" with the same folks because she is also listed with at least one of them on two other recent supernova discoveries.

Doc Searls (editor of Linux Journal) is working on such a donation system as part of his "Vendor Relationship Management" or VRM project at the Berkman Center at Harvard. The idea is to be able to make small voluntary donations to the software author, or more generally the creator of any piece of work. The goal is make this easy -- simple click of a button that says "donate $5" and put you in control of how much of your personal information (name, credit card details etc.) you want the recipient to know.

This will put even more pressure on teachers to teach to the tests. Especially in low-income areas (where these trials are being done), teachers want their students to get what they're worth.

Kids aren't "getting smarter" (by the way, what does "smart" entail?) They're learning to play the game that is the educational system.

Also, if the sponsoring organizations can afford to pay each kid $250-500, where the heck are they getting those funds, and why aren't they giving it to inner-city schools in the first place?

The Variation in the Frequency of Meteorite Impact with Geographic Latitude.

Are you American by chance? I only ask because I sense a hint of that "right to bear arms" philosophy there.

I'm sorry to inform you, but you've been brainwashed. There have been many studies done by reputable groups showing a direct correlation between firearm availability and gun deaths. (Staring point: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html)

I think it's a valid extrapolation to apply such logic to nuclear weapons, since world leaders are pretty much like children (but with infinite money, power, and weapons).

Simply put the more of these we have, the more chance we have of using them. And no I am not happy the US has a ton of them, but it's a lot better to have as few countries as possible with the ability to destroy the planet, rather than the other way around.

Probably has stuff about Haiti. Pretty colorful stuff there, and now he's a "special envoy"? Oooookay...

The question is, are the folks who do NOT support "immoral" games adversely affected by their existence?

My gut reaction is that yes, games like GTA and RapeLay, played mostly by men, contribute to the subjugation of women. But that's just the uninformed gut reaction of a guy who's never played either game. I don't trust it much at all. I'd like some data.

There are tests that see how quickly you associate terms. They basically work like this:
1 - A word or person's face will appear on the screen.
2 - If the word has positive connotations or if the person is white, hit the left button. If the word has negative connotations or the person is black, hit the right button.
3 - Your reaction time is measured.

I am, regretfully, faster at reacting when it's good/white vs. bad/black than when it's good/black vs. bad/white. Try it yourself if you like.

You could do the same thing with RapeLay. One group plays RapeLay, one group doesn't. Choose some associations (e.g. submissive and strong words, male and female faces), test the groups before playing... then right after playing, or 1 week after playing, or one year after playing every day for a month, etc.

Anyone know of studies like this? Data, even with it's caveats and conditionals, beats the pants off gut reactions.

Gee, I remember that too:

http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/publications/governmentprograms/n08-2_park.pdf

It's also worth pointing out galaxies orbit each other and when the galaxies are of similar size you get repeated collisions before a merger. Black holes were a mathematical conjecture when I was a kid and we still tend to think of galaxies as islands that occasionally bump into each other but advances in astronomy and computing are telling us it's a much more dynamic and structured universe than we thought existed 30-40yrs ago.

There is a public demo tomorrow at Harvard, there will be a webcast http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2009/04/wolfram

The article forgot to say that Steven talk
at Harvard tomorrow and that the talk is available over webcast.

See http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2009/04/wolfram

While we are waiting for alpha you might like
to play 2 other knowleadge engines like:
http://start.csail.mit.edu/
and
http://quizbot.trueknowledge.com/

PS. Also check out my news site
http://crowdnews.eu/

'Moreover, even if US trademark laws somehow reached this noncommercial activity, the artists' use of the mark is an obvious fair use.'

Wikipedia is not non-commercial, it's non-profit (from their pages: "a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity").

Both non-profit and non-commercial entities can hold trade marks. Both can be held in violation of same.

Since they use the exact trade mark (again, from their pages: "Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.") rather than a generic derivative of it (ie. Wikiart) without obtaining permission, they are in violation. Specifically, by appearing as though they might be part of Wikipedia (disclaimers may follow but do not prevent prima facie assumption) Wikipedia's mark is subject to potential dilution. The law serves to protect against that specifically.

I blame Wikipediaart for the problem, even if it's due to ignorance. I doubt Wikipedia/Wikimedia wants to be seen doing this. However, they have to. Not to do so leaves them open to loss of protection should someone else do the same. Yes, it applies to trade mark as well as copyright. We've had the discussion before and references to the laws provided. A summary article with references can be found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm

Fair use does apply to trademark are well as copyright. However, it requires "non-imitative" use (http://www.publaw.com/fairusetrade.html ). The look and feel of Wikipediaart is such that it could be dropped whole into Wikipedia and look like it belongs. It is far too imitative. Furthermore, the use of material previously on Wikipedia can lead to "confusion", the point other than "dilution" that the protection exists for.

I'm disappointed in the EFF attorney. Assertions are being tossed about that are clearly contradicted by the law. I hope the organization doesn't hold the same opinions.

You can get pretty good reflectivity using glancing incidence mirrors

A good example would be http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/animations/mirror.html.

Not the first. Maybe the first X-ray FEL (maybe) but not the first X-ray laser proper. The first X-ray lasers were created in nickel and samarium plasmas created by few ns long, multi Kj, UV light pulses of LLNL's Novette laser (predecessor of the Nova laser) in the early '80s. The work was probably done with SDI in mind.

> I like how you conveniently forget that you have to buy a highly specialized laser printer and transparencies to accomplish that.

Hmm? No people have done on it a 300DPI printer with bog standard transparencies. You can even download the source code and do it yourself if you want: http://www.corticalcafe.com/prog_CGHmaker.htm

> And the "display a hologram on a TFT is completely ridiculous. I assume you're talking about this [siggraph.org] A few nvidia supercomputers running 65 projectors into a screen? Yup, feasible.

I've done it on a 1024x768 LCOS. Admittedly the hologram isn't going to be very big at all, but it still has many uses. For example displaying moving points of light.

Btw my PhD thesis is on this :-D You can read it if you want:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009arXiv0902.0551T

Yeah, this would be much more easily explained using the concepts of topological string theory. I'm sure a 200 page paper on it is something most of us read in our spare time, lol. How many of you even got beyond Linear Algebra and Discrete Math?

IMHO, the shadow analogy is fine for layman. I have used something similar in trying to explain Hilbert spaces to undergrads and to my knowledge the analogy is used in textbooks on the subject.

Water is pretty much a broad-band absorber of electromagnetic radiation of infrared wavelengths and above, which includes radio waves. Especially in the radio wavelengths, it does not have any particular absorption maxima. So you won't find _any_ kind of micro- or radio wave wavelength that water is particularly transparent to.

http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~jones/es151/gallery/images/absorp_water.html

No, if you want to see a REAL pissed off bunch, you should see what the Russians did to Germany after WWII (in retaliation for the earlier atrocities the Germans had visited on THEM). Making a prisoner watch a movie, however childish, rather pales in comparison.

Remind me how you Europeans are so far above war retaliation again? I seem to have forgotten your argument.

In related news, his blog is complete utter nonsense.

He has chosen a preposterous writing style for that post. But what he says makes sense. Read it again.

In related news, his blog is complete utter nonsense.

Yeah, I would have to agree. A quick glance at the blog reveals a marijuana category.

...Except three of the four articles aren't about marijuana. They're political poems sent into the blog.

The oldest post does mention marijuana law... in another poem.

Maybe _this_ is the ??? before "Profit"??

Perhaps by having two actors in different courtrooms on the same day, charged with exactly the same crime under the same circumstances, except one is black and the other is white, and repeat the experiment many times to see if they receive different average sentences. For a scientist, the idea is the most natural thing in the world. Forget the fact that the legal system doesn't do this -- why is virtually nobody in the legal profession even suggesting it?

Nobody is suggesting it because the legal system operates on the premise that judges are impartial and unbiased.

The Western system of justice functions because the courts and their decisions are respected. To suggest (God forbid you actually show) otherwise is to damage the court's effectiveness... which is why studies showing that minorities receive harsher sentences are rarely popular.

There are always 'inconvenient truths' that must either be rhetorically obfuscated or avoided entirely. And with the proliferation of bias *studies, it is harder and harder to make the claim that individuals (Judges, Prosecutors, Police) are unbiased, because studies keep showing that even 'unbiased' individuals have unconscious biases.

Implicit Bias among Physicians ... Black and White Patients
Racial Discrimination Among NBA Referees (3rd one down)
Check your own biases using Harvard's IAT tests

*and corresponding studies looking at ways to practically apply the results of such bias studies

Actually, Harvard mandated Open Access in 2008.

Dirty communists!

The MacIntyre case does indeed protect publishing anonymously, but that is far cry from what is being discussed. That is the first amendment overriding a ability of a court to order the identify of an anonymous poster to be revealed.

And atleast a district Judge agrees with me that there has been no such ruling by SCOTUS on the matter that prevents it in more than just the few instances you've outlined, and I quote "In the context of a civil subpoena issued pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 45, this Court must determine when and under what circumstances *1094 a civil litigant will be permitted to obtain the identity of persons who have exercised their First Amendment right to speak anonymously. There is little in the way of persuasive authority to assist this Court. However, courts that have addressed related issues have used balancing tests to decide when to protect an individual's First Amendment rights."

That came from John Doe v. 2themart.com, however the case was found lacking, the finding and thinking of the judge is clear that there is no ruling by SCOTUS by which he can follow. You may find the entire case here, and you will find discussion part of useful, as it details exactly what must happen for a court to be able to override the first/fourteenth amendments and be able to force the identity of an anonymous poster.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/stjohns/2themart.html

Once a cornerstone of its socially responsible identity, the company removed its salary cap on the compensation of its highest paid employee in 1994. The company historically limited the salary of its highest paid employee to no more than five times the salary of the lowest paid worker (though the ratio was revised to seven-to-one in 1993). With the removal of the cap, the gap between the highest and lowest paid employee has risen to unprecedented levels. The ratio was an astounding 16-1 in 1998 and is even higher once the current value of unexercised stock options are factored in! Of course, even under the former stringent salary cap, the ratio was misleading for it did not take into account stock options for executives. http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/236/Patel,_Tupate_-_Paper.html

I had to reply to this thread, seeing only 9 hidden comments so far. That's a bit sad, since the JWST will be one of the most important science events since the Hubble. It will be an infrared telescope like the Spitzer, but it will effectively be an optical telescope for the distant universe because of red shift! And it will be able to peer into the distant past unlike any telescope prior.

In the sense of being a "space race" this is one area where the US really shines. There's no other nation that really is in the running, although there are lots of international contributions (yay Canada!). Maybe it's because of the language barrier, but I can't think of a single Russian space telescope. I can name a half dozen US scopes and one or two from the ESA. (Be sure to look up the Chandra, Fermi, Spitzer, XMM-Newton)

But then it's not really a space race, it's about science, so maybe it's a little boring for the general public. I only hope Slashdotter's are more aware that this is one of the great scientific adventures of our time.

Stop butchering Latin. It's already dead.

adamo

I am a physicist working with GRACE data, and I feel the need to nitpick. GRACE uses a microwave ranging system, not a laser ranging system. The increased accuracy of a laser ranging system wouldn't be useful because there are so many other sources of noise, but it is being considered for GRACE 2.

Also, the baseline between the GRACE satellites is more than a couple dozen miles. On average, GRACE A and B are 220 km apart.

GOCE is an amazing satellite, and its low altitude combined with its ion engine (to precisely compensate for drag) will increase the resolution of our STATIC (i.e. not time dependent) gravity field maps. But it can't replace GRACE's measurements of the changing gravity field. GRACE has provided independent measurements of the Greenland ice sheet melt and helped to correct water storage models, which underestimated the 2005 Amazon drought.

My research involves pushing GRACE's temporal resolution even further down. Rather than detecting annual signals or slowly varying linear mass changes (like ice sheet melt), I'm trying to measure the gravity changes from ocean tides. My preliminary results show that GRACE can detect gravity fluctuations from twice-daily tides, which means that it can be used to improve our ocean tide models. This helps oceanographers, but indirectly helps all gravimetry because tides are a source of noise even for static measurements of the earth's gravity field. Modelling the tides better can help to reduce this noise.

GRACE isn't dead yet.

Both the Americas and the Soviets put a number of probes in or through the Venus atmosphere, including 2 French-Soviet balloons.

The Soviet Vega landers actually detected some interesting things in the upper atmosphere of Venus with a light backscatter experment :

Lots of submicron particles between 60 and 30 km - roughly 10,000 per cubic cm.

In the "F zone" (~ 30 - 45 km) a possible detection of "extremely large" particles in the mm size range.

It's not a current driver for space exploration, but based on this I would by no means rule out a possible biosphere in the upper levels of the Venusian atmosphere.

Both the Americas and the Soviets put a number of probes in or through the Venus atmosphere, including 2 French-Soviet balloons.

The Soviet Vega landers actually detected some interesting things in the upper atmosphere of Venus with a light backscatter experment :

Lots of submicron particles between 60 and 30 km - roughly 10,000 per cubic cm.

In the "F zone" (~ 30 - 45 km) a possible detection of "extremely large" particles in the mm size range.

It's not a current driver for space exploration, but based on this I would by no means rule out a possible biosphere in the upper levels of the Venusian atmosphere.

Both the Americas and the Soviets put a number of probes in or through the Venus atmosphere, including 2 French-Soviet balloons.

The Soviet Vega landers actually detected some interesting things in the upper atmosphere of Venus with a light backscatter experment :

Lots of submicron particles between 60 and 30 km - roughly 10,000 per cubic cm.

In the "F zone" (~ 30 - 45 km) a possible detection of "extremely large" particles in the mm size range.

It's not a current driver for space exploration, but based on this I would by no means rule out a possible biosphere in the upper levels of the Venusian atmosphere.

Both the Americas and the Soviets put a number of probes in or through the Venus atmosphere, including 2 French-Soviet balloons.

The Soviet Vega landers actually detected some interesting things in the upper atmosphere of Venus with a light backscatter experment :

Lots of submicron particles between 60 and 30 km - roughly 10,000 per cubic cm.

In the "F zone" (~ 30 - 45 km) a possible detection of "extremely large" particles in the mm size range.

It's not a current driver for space exploration, but based on this I would by no means rule out a possible biosphere in the upper levels of the Venusian atmosphere.

It so happens that a lot of fatal accidents with guns in the US are caused by guns kept 'under the pillow' as well

Citation?

In other words, the rest of us is comparing civilized countries where the rule of law is upheld to other civilized countries and the conclusion can only be: liberal gun laws get a lot more people killed than strict gun laws, if properly upheld

That's an interesting conclusion. How do you explain how Norway and Finland (two European countries with a lot of civilian guns) have a lower murder rate than Luxembourg (virtually no civilian firearms to speak of) or Poland (very few)? How do you explain how Wyoming and Montana have lower murder rates than New York or California? Could it just be that crime is caused by socio-economic factors and the access to firearms has very little to do with it? I find it interesting how "correlation is not causation" is a standard refrain around here in every argument except those put forth by the gun control crowd.

The anti-social behaviour of people wanting to be able to 'defend themselves', at great cost to society at large, is despicable.

A) You haven't demonstrated any "great cost" to society, B) This statement borders on trolling and I'm surprised nobody with mod points caught it. If you are interested in looking at a real study here is an interesting one from Harvard of all places. They set out to disprove the notion that more guns = more violence. It's a pretty compelling read.

Doesn't the NIH already do this with Entrez ? Plus there are plenty of data generating institutions that actually chave such infastructure such as Connectivity Map, Chembank and the personal genome project to name a few. From the article I'm having trouble seeing how "Sage" will offer anything unique.

You're papering over so many of Microsoft's crimes: I'll just select one, but a big one, to shoot down. Note that as a result of the original court case, Microsoft _is_, legally and otherwise, a monopoly and continues to behave as such to this day.

Break it? Originally the "interweb" was defined largely by what IE and Netscape implemented.

No. The Internet had clear standards and Microsoft intentionally set out to break those standards. Microsoft sought to "Embrace, extend and extinguish" the Internet and to exclude rivals. From Steven McGeady's testimony during the court case:

...they wanted to add incompatible or proprietary extensions to HTML. In particular, the context here is they were going to add RTF extensions to HTML. Those extensions weren't widely accepted as standards. They were unlikely to be adopted by Netscape or other promoters -- or other peope that dealt with HTML. And if they managed to fragment or balkanize the HTML community into what -- into who could read what version of HTML, then they would significantly blunt the power and ability of other computer software companies to implement it and produce compatible products.

After World War I, the Bayer trademarks in the U.S. were reincarnated in a new company, confusingly also called Bayer, owned by the American firm Sterling Drug. They attempted to enforce the trademarks, but a 1921 court ruling invalidated the "aspirin" mark on grounds that it had come to be used as a generic term for the class of drugs for too long to be recaptured.

As an undergraduate, I recently built a Paul Trap from this paper: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1991AmJPh..59..807W It was rad! I suggest using a tesla coil to charge the particles.

Actually since people started keeping records of meteor strikes there have been a number of incidents where people have been struck by them. With injuries ranging from being killed instantly to a bruise on the back of the head.

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/icq/meteorites.html

Bravo. The post full of true but irrelevant detail, the tone of righteous indignation... excellent troll.

Just in case you were serious, have a read through the wikipedia entry for the Hubble deep field, and the original paper (PDF link).

Pay particular attention to the "Field Selection" section of the paper. Note that both the Wikipedia article and the introduction to the paper talk about how the project was designed to image a "typical" field, with the intention of studying (among other things) galaxy morphology in the very early universe. Also, the introduction to the paper outlines several other preceding medium and deep field studies that provided the motivation for the Hubble deep field project (goes to how the astronomers knew they were likely to find galaxies - previous studies did NOT show nothing at all).

Now, moving on to the field selection part of the paper, note how the target field was chosen because of the absence of nearby sources, and upper limits on the strength of the sources present (not NO sources present, but rather no STRONG, CLOSE sources present).

The kicker of course, is this quote: "Eisenhardt (1995) kindly provided KPNO 4m R-band CCD images (2x300 second exposures) as further verification that the fields were typical in terms of source counts..." (emphasis mine). A truly empty portion of the sky, with no observable signal sources would be VERY atypical.

Taking a quick tour through the source table in the paper, I noticed a source at around magnitude 17. The tables later in the paper suggested that there are sources present up to magnitude 15. That's pretty faint, but magnitude 15 is reachable by moderate amateur telescopes and the naked eye. Considerably better can be done with amateur CCD equipment and long exposures.

One of the fundamental assumptions of cosmology is that, on the large scale, the universe is pretty much the same no matter what direction you look. A totally blank area back as far as Hubble can see would be very unusual.

Again, I'm sorry to ruin your beautiful troll with actual references, but it was so well done someone might believe you!

PS: the "a normal application... would have been rejected" claim doesn't seem to be nearly as iron-clad as your tone implied.

An endowment is not a checking account an organization can just withdrawl cash from and spend. The endowment exists because the organization lives off the interest generated by the endowment. If they just dipped into the endowment whenever they needed money the endowment would quickly dry up. Endowments only distribute a small percentage of their total value in any given year. This article from August 2007 explains Harvard's endowment a bit more. According to that article they seek to spend 5% of the endowment per year and as of that article has distributed $1.1b which is about 3% of the endowment. If returns on Harvard's endowment are down 40% and continue to be down over the next few years the endowment will start to shrink making that 5% distribution smaller. If Harvard's operating expenses are $3b as the article claims then lower endowment distributions means they either need to cut operating expenses or get that operating capital from somewhere else. Oh shit, organizations with endowments have real budgetary concerns!

They've tried and failed with Napster, PlaysForSure, etc. The problem was that they didn't have the technical prowess to set up a seamless integrated operation. They don't have the facilities to understand websites, hardware etc. It took Apple who was willing to do it all before online music was a success.

Also the demands of DRM and tight control doomed most of the implementations because they want the consumer to pay for a copy for every device or rent music. They even fought against the idea MP3 players with their lawsuit against Rio. The subscriptions may generate lot of money for them, not that it's good for the consumer or what they wanted. Also they wanted subsidies from every device maker.

I it's not like it gets easier to detach from iTunes Store with time.

Are you kidding? With all music now DRM free from Apple, I can completely uncouple from iTunes. I might have 10 songs I need to upgrade to DRM free. Heck, I can use Amazon now. The reason I still use iTunes is that it's freakin' convenient.

Selling baby insurance to nervous expecting parents is like shooting fish in a barrel. Cord blood banking companies know this better than anyone.

I'll keep the biology lesson short. Umbilical cord blood is a source of stem cells. For about $5,000 parents can have this blood collected at birth and stored for 20 years (an optimistic appraisal of its shelf life). The dream sold to parents is that these stem cells might be used to cure their sick child, a sibling, or even the parents themselves of a horrible disease. The benefits promised are so spectacular that it seems downright negligent to not take advantage of this miracle of science, or so the promotional literature says.

When I was a nervous expecting parent about two years ago, I put aside the glossy brochures and did a little research on the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) web site. Here are a few facts I learned about cord blood banking and the stem cell treatments it promises:

• Since 1988 there have been about 3,500 instances of cord blood stem cells being successfully transplanted. This just means the cells were not rejected, not that the treatment was successful. In my mind this makes the treatments very experimental, even though I have had medical professionals say to my face that they are "mainstream."
• In the subset of stem cell transplant cases where treatment was successful in fighting a disease, especially a childhood cancer, the stem cells did not come from the patient in the majority of cases. This makes sense if you think about it; childhood cancers are often genetic, so why would you base treatment on cells with the same defective DNA that caused the illness in the first place? This is why the AAP strongly advises against banking for self-treatment.
• There are no comprehensive standards for collection or storage of stem cells. Different banking companies follow different procedures and there is little guarantee that the collected sample will be usable. Furthermore, while it may sound a little cynical, I don't have much faith in the internal controls of banks whose customers come back very infrequently for withdrawals. (The probability of an immediate family member being stricken with a disease for which there is any chance of a stem cell treatment is estimated to be 1 in 20,000.)
• Cord blood isn't the only or best source of stem cells. There are many kinds of stem cells, some present in adults. In fact, there have been breakthroughs in creating stem cells from adult cells. To me this suggests that cord blood stem cells are unlikely to be a silver bullet for any particular disease, and it's highly probable that other treatment options will exist.

Of course $5,000 sounds like a small price to pay for the promise of your child's well being, even if it's bet on a long shot. But I'll wager that putting that money in a college fund is a far better investment.

They might even win an award for this:
'1999 IgNobel Award in Sociology: Steve Penfold, of York University in Toronto, "for d oing his Ph.D. thesis on the sociology of Canadian donut shops."' http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/10.07/Ig-Nobels.html

Just a few examples (source http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/evidence99/marijuana/Health_1.html):

That's an old link, from 25 Aug 2003 at 06:31:44. However let's see what it says:

"EFFECTS OF HABITUAL MARIJUANA USE ON THE IMMUNE SYSTEM"
"4. Marijuana suppresses the immune system" dated 11 January 2009
"Like the studies claiming to show damage to the reproductive system, this myth is based on studies where animals were given extremely high-in many cases, near-lethal-doses of cannabinoids. These results have never been duplicated in human beings. Interestingly, two studies done in 1978 and one done in 1988 showed that hashish and marijuana may have actually stimulated the immune system in the people studied."

"MENTAL HEALTH, BRAIN FUNCTION, AND MEMORY"
"Heavy Marijuana Use Doesn't Damage Brain" from 1 July 2003 (also old)
"Analysis of Studies Finds Little Effect From Long-Term Use"

"RESPIRATORY ILLNESSES"
Now this is where the trouble is, from 26 April 2005 at 15:01:33:
"Q. How Does It Affect Your Health?"
"A. No drug is always safe for everybody, but after 150 years of scientific study, the only proven health problem from cannabis is that its smoke can be linked to bronchitis."

However there's also this, from 16 March 2008 at 18:57:35:
"Summary of Cannabis and HIV/AIDS"
"The effectiveness of cannabis for treating symptoms related to HIV/AIDS is widely recognized."

Falcon

Just a few examples (source http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/evidence99/marijuana/Health_1.html) :

1) Smoking marijuana regularly (a joint a day) can damage the cells in the bronchial passages which protect the body against inhaled microorganisms and decrease the ability of the immune cells in the lungs to fight off fungi, bacteria, and tumor cells. For patients with already weakened immune systems, this means an increase in the possibility of dangerous pulmonary infections, including pneumonia, which often proves fatal in AIDS patients.

Studies further suggest that marijuana is a general "immunosuppressant" whose degenerative influence extends beyond the respiratory system. Regular smoking has been shown to materially affect the overall ability of the smokerâ(TM)s body to defend itself against infection by weakening various natural immune mechanisms, including macrophages (a.k.a. "killer cells") and the all-important T-cells. Obviously, this suggests the conclusion, which is well-supported by scientific studies, that the use of marijuana...

2) The main respiratory consequences of smoking marijuana regularly (one joint a day) are pulmonary infections and respiratory cancer, whose connection to marijuana use has been strongly suggested but not conclusively proven. The effects also include chronic bronchitis, impairment in the function of the smaller air passages, inflammation of the lung, the development of potentially pre-cancerous abnormalities in the bronchial lining and lungs, and, as discussed, a reduction in the capabilities of many defensive mechanisms within the lungs ...

3) It has been suggested that marijuana is at the root of many mental disorders, including acute toxic psychosis, panic attacks (one of the very conditions it is being used experimentally to treat), flashbacks, delusions, depersonalization, hallucinations, paranoia, depression, and uncontrollable aggressiveness. Marijuana has long been known to trigger attacks of mental illness, such as bipolar (manic-depressive) psychosis and schizophrenia. This connection with mental illness should make health care providers for terminally ill patients and the patients themselves, who may already be suffering from some form of clinical depression, weigh very carefully the pros and cons of adopting a therapeutic course of marijuana.

So to summarize :
1) it partially disables the immune system of users
2) it damages (physically) the lungs, and creates infection points in them, which do not easily disappear
3) it causes, in the long term, lung cancer
4) while it doesn't cause psychological episodes, it triggers them. Giving marijuana to anyone with any type of brain malfunction whatsoever is dangerous in the extreme.
5) even in healthy people marijuana manages to cause so many different problems that the standard manual of psychological diagnostics grew about 20% to describe them all.
6) it is not good for the hearth, and increases (like any drug that exites neurons) the risk of heart attack. During smoking and up to 2 weeks after last use risk of heart attack is about 4x higher than normal. ...

(look for yourself)

You mean, like the one the plaintiffs cited in their motion? (subsequently amended and so on)

There's a lot that doesn't make sense here. I mean look at Plaintiff's opposition to a protective order to seize the parents' hard drive. Whatever shift in Tenenbaum's perceived behaviour might have come about from the fact that moved from acting pro se to having competent representation, the RIAA admits that defendant provided them with an exhaustive list of everyone who could have come in contact with the computer, and which computers he used. Part of the meat of their motion here is that defendant has not shared vital pre-discovery information. In fact, they state in the motion they were perfectly willing to discuss an Oppenheim deposition, once defendant complied to the RIAA's liking with Rule 26. But not even in their motion do they specify what they think defendant should do and has not done -- they cite the schedule set last January and one of their own motions as evidence. If you want to talk about Bulldogs, those would be the people making motions that they refuse to substantiate.

You mean, like the one the plaintiffs cited in their motion? (subsequently amended and so on)

There's a lot that doesn't make sense here. I mean look at Plaintiff's opposition to a protective order to seize the parents' hard drive. Whatever shift in Tenenbaum's perceived behaviour might have come about from the fact that moved from acting pro se to having competent representation, the RIAA admits that defendant provided them with an exhaustive list of everyone who could have come in contact with the computer, and which computers he used. Part of the meat of their motion here is that defendant has not shared vital pre-discovery information. In fact, they state in the motion they were perfectly willing to discuss an Oppenheim deposition, once defendant complied to the RIAA's liking with Rule 26. But not even in their motion do they specify what they think defendant should do and has not done -- they cite the schedule set last January and one of their own motions as evidence. If you want to talk about Bulldogs, those would be the people making motions that they refuse to substantiate.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society will act as a subscriber to the CVN narrowcast and will make the recording publicly available for all non-commercial uses via its website

So we don't need to torrent it. Yet.
And it seems that they care what happens to recordings.

How about this one?

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/opennet