Slashdot Mirror

giulioprisco writes: A new study from Lund University in Sweden (abstract) indicates inherited viruses that are millions of years old play an important role in building up the complex networks that characterize the human brain. The Lund study shows that retroviruses seem to play a central role in the basic functions of the brain — over the course of evolution, the viruses took an increasingly firm hold on the steering wheel in our cellular machinery. In particular, the retroviruses seem to play an important role in the regulation of which genes are to be expressed, and when."

PolygamousRanchKid writes, quoting Forbes "Researchers at Sweden's Lund University have announced that they've been able to confirm the existence of element 115 on the periodic table. This research team isn't the first to create element 115, which is currently known as ununpentium. The first claim that ununpentium had been synthesized in a lab was by a joint group of Russian and American researchers, who believed that they created it in their lab in 2004."

New submitter arobatino writes "A new method of manufacturing semiconductors which eliminates the substrate (in other words, no wafer) could be much faster and cheaper. From the article: 'Instead of starting from a silicon wafer or other substrate, as is usual today, researchers have made it possible for the structures to grow from freely suspended nanoparticles of gold in a flowing gas. "The basic idea was to let nanoparticles of gold serve as a substrate from which the semiconductors grow. This means that the accepted concepts really were turned upside down!" Since then, the technology has been refined, patents have been obtained and further studies have been conducted. In the article in Nature, the researchers show how the growth can be controlled using temperature, time and the size of the gold nanoparticles.'"

bgood writes "'What, a swallow, carrying a coconut? ...' The Department of Animal Ecology at the University of Lund in Sweden uses a modern low-speed wind tunnel specially crafted for bird experiments. The birds are trained to fly in the 'test-section' and the tunnel can be tilted up or down to simulate ascent and descent. This link contains plenty of detail, complete with bird pictures. For those of you who yearn to build your own (non-bird-compliant) wind tunnel, you can find instructions in this Scientific American article."

Okay... weds we asked for submissions of weird links for a conspiracy feature to coincide with the opening of the X-Files movie. What happened? Click the link below... Okay... let's face it - we all knew, maybe subconscously, that there was going to be a lot of weird stuff out on the web. I mean, that's the cultural stereotype - a geek with a bunch of comic-book inspired political philosophies creating a web page so that he can network with all the other geeks about alien abductions, cattle mutilations, whatever... We've all experianced these types of sites, we've all treasured the links as something to peruse when slacking off at work, etc.

As you can imagine, like everything else on the internet, the sheer volume of information on "nutcase" ideas has proliferated to such gargantuan proportions that trying to browse it and bang together a comprehensive overview over a couple of hazy evening hours is a staggering task. But goddammit, that's what I'm here for.

Sitting down in the poof chair with a Jack Ripper cocktail (purified rain water and grain alcohol) I proceeded to plow through the sites that had been submitted to me since weds, when this excursion was announced. And, through strength and perserverance - and a deep determination to disbelieve everything I read - I emerge to present to you some sites of interest.

Brian shot me a link to the Arc-Hive. It's a very well organized and catagoried index of conspiracy oriented papers. Highlights include the the Conspiracy Dictionary (hey, you need to know what a manchurian canidate is before you can have paranoid delusions of them breaking in your front door), also you can learn how Tickle-Me-Elmo is part of the new world order.

And while there are many archives of conspiracy material, a more direct source for material is the horse's mouth. On the extreme protestant end of that scale is the Flat Earth Society (thanks to Janne Moren for this one). I'll bet you never suspected your sixth grade geography teacher was part of the globalist conspiracy to discredit the bible. A bio for the "flat earth prophet" can be found here (thanks to Dan Hollis).

Another horse mouth would have to be Art Bell - a radio talk-show host who often discusses aliens and other paranormal goings-on. This link was sent to me by several people - probably working together.

From the kooky-bitshifted-copy-of-Slashdot category comes Parascope (submitted by Eric Maland). The site's major accomplishment is reporting articles like "Bigfoot in Russia" but still maintaining a sincere journalistism feel. And hey, when you can't wait for the next issue of Weekly World News to get the skinny - this is a great place to go.

On the other side of the conspiracy spectrum was Circle Makers. (submitted by Dan Hollis, who submitted just a few too many links to remain above suspicion) This website documents crop circles not as alien pasttime, but rather an art form that many overtly mathmatical and probably unstable crop-artists pursue. There are some fantastic pictures of crop circles, and even a mac program that will allow you to design agricultural destruction in your own home.

If preserving the American Way against the new world order, freemasons, etc is your thing then you'll probably enjoy Free America. Pay attention, because long after I'm neutralized by the Secret Government you'll be able to survive - provided you have a compound, a good water source, and lots of freeze dried food.

That's it. Enjoy going to the X-files movie tonight if you think that's the safe thing to do. I'm going to wait a few days, I think - to make sure the opening night audiences aren't reprogrammed subliminally, that is. So farewell - thank you to all who submitted links, and a tip from agent Kandalgaonkar: remember to tin-foil all your windows as protection from government microwaves.

Janne Moren wrote in to tell us about this story where you can read about a Japanes plan to put a dozen air ships high up in the sky, and have them cheap wireless telephony. 1/10th the cost, and it lasts longer? How long before I can have a wireless internet connection on my laptop?