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I'm completely unbiased on the male vs female front

I think if you don't realize your bias then you are unwittingly probably part of the problem.

There was some excellent research showing that when researchers submitted resumes with identical credentials to firms, but one with a white sounding name and one with an Asian sounding name, the white sounding names had a significantly hire success rate in getting calls. I doubt this discrepancy is from a conscious policy.
http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090522/resume_english_090523/20090523/?hub=TorontoNewHome
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/work/right-rsum-wrong-name/article1145212/
http://aascpress.metapress.com/content/662555ttv6344365/

On a personal and anecdotal note, unrelated to hiring, there is a family that frequents my business. They are Muslim, and the mother has a thick Arabic accent. I just discovered the other day that she also speaks French (I am fluent). Being from Morocco, her French is flawless and better than mine. After talking with her for some time in French, I just realized that I had been implicitly thinking of her as less educated, due to her Arabic accent when speaking English. Upon hearing her flawless French, I saw my implicit attitude change entirely.

I work really hard to be aware of bias and to not let it get in the way of my interactions with people. But it's there for all of us, despite the effort we put in. It does no good to pretend otherwise.

If this guy was clinically unable to take responsibility, he should either be in a mental hospital, or in the care of guardians who don't allow him access to the Internet.

Should be indeed. If everyone with major depression, alcoholism, and the other important factors that contribute to suicide got help then we would see very, very few suicides.

http://www.aafp.org/afp/1999/0315/p1500.html

http://psycontent.metapress.com/content/ek8w74718q375804/br

To be fair, I highly doubt that journal publishers charge academic institutions $40 per article.

Ha! Not if you don't already have a subscription

I'm curious to see how the microwave oven was modified. I imagine the modulation rate is poor due to a variety of factors, the primary one being that microwave oven magnetrons aren't designed to be switched on/off at high speeds and their centre frequency could be anywhere from 2.3 GHz to 2.5 GHz - mostly due to thermal instability and impedance load changes. Modulating the signal as opposed to switching the magnetron would likely work, possibly by splitting the signal into two waveguides and adjusting the phase of one to create destructive/constructive interference, or by using phase modulation on the waveguide.

Another method of phase control is using an external low power RF source allowing one to control the phase of the magnetron. That would require opening up the magnetron (which is under vacuum), not exposing yourself to the beryllium coating on the inside (highly carcinogenic), adding a loop internally, then somehow closing it and getting it back under vacuum. Sounds like a serious pain-in-the-ass.

The receiver would likely need to be custom as well, and making this a two way communications link without introducing ridiculous amounts of noise on the near-by receiver would be tough.

Maybe accepting a modulation rate of 2 kHz is acceptable to some people though.

http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=v080783k2j05t343&size=largest

Perk? Maybe not, but caffeine improves focus, cognition, and memory recall. At least that is what these studies show, and most of them account for withdraw.

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=21812869
http://www.springerlink.com/content/y414x83288221635/
http://www.stormingmedia.us/28/2891/A289133.html
http://www.springerlink.com/content/yj8v0h54w05x222q/
http://arno.unimaas.nl/show.cgi?fid=7943
http://heldref.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,6,9;journal,31,55;linkingpublicationresults,1:119922,1
http://www.springerlink.com/content/a7k04226627g6326/

Here's a page with a bit more detail. These alloys are of similar composition to stainless steel and tend to have very high levels of Nickel and a little Chromium tossed in for good measure. Shape memory alloys work by utilizing a crystal structure phase transition that causes stress in the alloy to re-align which basically is responsible for the shape change.

Sorry, again with good tags

Here is the abstract, but there isn't much mentioned in the abstract beyond what's covered in the press releases.

Nuclear and non nuclear weapons tech and nuclear raw material trade.
eg
Israeli nuclear forces, 2002 from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/a38g5111525882t4/fulltext.pdf

The BBC article (which is misreporting the endosymbiont hypothesis badly enough to make Lynn roll in her grave were she not still alive) was actually reporting on an article investigating homologies of cellulose synthases in several species of cyanobacteria. Curiously, the current U of Texas at Austin is not about harnessing native cellulose production by some cyanobacterium but rather about "Transgenic expression of Gluconacetobacter xylinus strain ATCC 53582 cellulose synthase genes in the cyanobacterium Synechococcus leopoliensis strain UTCC 100". I guess that they decided that inserting required cellulose biosynthetic enzymes from an organism (apparently) known to produce a lot of cellulose was easier than trying to optimize the miserly levels of cellulose biosynthesis in some cyanobacterium.

Tantalizing - but not enough to go on, so it is pretty much useless. I found the abstract here but it does little to elucidate the article.

Some links relevant to the program...

The Stewart Report summary:
http://www.iegmp.org.uk/report/summary.htm
(there's a link to the full text there too)

ICNIRP Publications
http://www.icnirp.de/pubEMF.htm

Karolinska Institutet:
http://ki.se/ki/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=130&l=en

Long-Term Sickness and Mobile Phone Use:
http://www.acnem.org/journal/pdf_files/23-2-septem ber_2004/23-2_mobile_phones-hallberg.pdf
PDF; a paper co-authored by Olle Johannson. It wasn't directly mentioned on the program but I guess has informed his views.

Electrohypersensitivity: State-of-the-Art of a Functional Impairment:
http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/index/G78U43 45510209JQ.pdf
PDF; authored by Olle Johannson.

Powerwatch:
http://www.powerwatch.org.uk/

The telegraph article that seemed to be the source of the "teachers demand no wifi" section of the program:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2007/04/23/nwifi23.xml

This isn't supposed to be an unbiased list of views; it's just links relevant to the program (which in my view, wasn't unbiased). Anyway - read, look for more, and make your own mind up.

(posted AC; I don't need the Karma)

"[H]earing only one side of a conversation makes it more noticeable and intrusive." (Sorry, no full article without paying, unless you're at an .edu with access, but the abstract pretty much sums it up.)

I agree with the researchers' conclusions. A full conversation usually stays in the background for me. Hearing one side is very jarring and I can't ignore it. I wish cellphones would be banned on airplanes, period, even when on the ground; the key difference between an airplane and a train/a building/the street is that in an airplane you can't get away.

If you're trying to understand a fruit-fly, then the current project is great. However, without using large numbers of neurons, you're going to miss out on important details. For example, when a signal travels down the axon, there's a certain probability that the signal will "fail" to cross the synaptic cleft. This is called a synaptic failure. It turns out that in simulations our lab did that such failures actually improve cognitive performance in a hippocampal model (and presumably in other regions of the brain as well). This was only true for models that had more than 2,000 neurons. Additionally, increasing the number of neurons increases the "optimal" synaptic failure rate. At 100,000 neurons the optimal failure rate was about 50-60%. (We actually simulate just the CA3 region of the hippocampus. For comparison, the rat CA3 has about 250,000 neurons in this region, and humans have about 2,300,000.) In the human brain, the actual failure rate is between 55-85% (depending partly on the part of the brain we're talking about). This is only one example out of many where the size of the network is very important in determining "why" nature made certain choices.

There are an awful lot of used fuel rods being stored on site at plants, do you think they count them every day?

No, but the fact that the potential terrorist would be dead by the time they got anywhere near a spent fuel rod might be a bit of a giveaway. Read this. Anybody who tries to steal a spent fuel road will be, as the article describes, "burnt toast" well before they actually get to deploy it. Not to mention that it's not particularly dangerous if you distribute it with a bomb.

They tested other kinds of games too.
Here's the abstract It's kinda saying. Folks feel good when they play video games, rather, when they feel good, while a player's needs are met while they play a game, they are likely to enjoy it more, and play more. MMO games seem to fulfill more needs and that is why they are so addictive.

So probably this wouldn't work on most slashdotters?

Furthermore, the finer method of action for *limus in atopic dermatitis is being hashed out but still pretty well known (they are both analogs of cyclosporine and as such their method of action was shown to be similar). Since at least 2000 this is what has been said:

Tacrolimus does not have any specific receptors at its cell surface. It penetrates the cell and binds to the cytoplasm of the T-cells at a specific "binding protein". Thus a complex comes into being which again binds calcineurin. The larger complex generated this way inhibits both the transcription of cytokins as Interleukin 12 as well as the T-cell proliferation. The significantly increased serum-IgE-level, typical for atopical diseases is lowered. Furthermore, Tacrolimus inhibits the release of histamine and inflammatory mediators from mast cells and basophilic granulocytes.reference

Tacrolimus, topical 0.03%, 0.1% (Protopic) -- Reduces itching and inflammation by suppressing the release of cytokines from T cells. Also inhibits transcription for genes that encode IL-3, IL-4, IL-5, GM-CSF, and TNF-alpha, all of which are involved in the early stages of T-cell activation. Additionally, may inhibit release of preformed mediators from skin mast cells and basophils, and may down-regulate expression of FCeRI on Langerhans cells. Ruzicka T, Bieber T, Schopf E, et al: A short-term trial of tacrolimus ointment for atopic dermatitis. European Tacrolimus Multicenter Atopic Dermatitis Study Group. N Engl J Med 1997 Sep 18; 337(12): 816-21 reference

The important part there is the langerhans part as they are limited (pretty much) to within the skin. Also, the may parts have some evidence, but the results need to be further studied, and replicated, here are some replicated experiments from 2004/5, so the evidence is there and growing:

• Gisondi P, Ellis CN, Girolomoni G. Pimecrolimus in dermatology: atopic dermatitis and beyond. Int J Clin Pract. 2005 Aug;59(8):969-74.
• Koo JY, Fleischer AB Jr, Abramovits W, Pariser DM, McCall CO, Horn TD, Gottlieb AB, Jaracz E, Rico MJ. Tacrolimus ointment is safe and effective in the treatment of atopic dermatitis: results in 8000 patients. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2005 Aug;53(2 Suppl 2):S195-205.
• Hanifin JM, Paller AS, Eichenfield L, Clark RA, Korman N, Weinstein G, Caro I, Jaracz E, Rico MJ; US Tacrolimus Ointment Study Group. Efficacy and safety of tacrolimus ointment treatment for up to 4 years in patients with atopic dermatitis. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2005 Aug;53(2 Suppl 2):S186-94.
• Tan J, Langley R. Safety and efficacy of tacrolimus ointment 0.1% (Protopic) in atopic dermatitis: a Canadian open-label multicenter study. J Cutan Med Surg. 2004 Jul-Aug;8(4):213-9.

In your defense, the 2005 PDR still says the method of action is not fully known...but that is not surprising, it may have been updated for '06, or not. It is not a very flexible book.

In short, much work has been done since 2000 on this subject, mostly because the results have been really impressive, especially in those patients who were refractive to other therapies.

In closing, you just hit a tender spot that is a bane of medical education. In th

We found that high vehicle performance and a greater number of safety features led independently to greater intended risk taking in general

You can't just make totally unsubstantiated statements like this and expect anyone to take you seriously. Where's your proof?

The proof is a "scholar.google.com" search away. You could start with an article by Quayle and Taylor, which has a small sample size, but cites a number of other relevant articles. The big idea of the article is (quoted from the abstract) "the important role that the Internet plays in increasing sexual arousal to child pornography and highlights individual differences in whether this serves as a substitute or as a blueprint for contact offenses. It also draws our attention to the important role that community plays in the Internet and how collecting facilitates the objectification of children and increases the likelihood that in the quest for new images children continue to be sexually abused."

Can you point to some evidence that backs up that assertion?

Absolutely. Searching scholar.google.com can get you some interesting research. Here's a start. While it is a small sample size for this study, other researchers have also found with various sample sizes that it's not uncommon for people viewing, masturbating to, and producing child pornography to have it "normalized" by their fellow pedophiles. Once they consider it "normal," they're more likely to commit further sex crimes against children.

Abstract:

This paper presents a clear-cut definition of consciousness of humans, consciousness of self in particular. The definition "Consistency of cognition and behavior generates consciousness" explains almost all conscious behaviors of humans. A "consciousness system" was conceived based on this definition and actually constructed with recurrent neural networks. We succeeded in implementing imitation behavior, which we believe is closely related to consciousness, by applying the consciousness system to a robot.

This belongs to the branch of AI informally known as "faking it". There's a long history of work in this area, starting with ELIZA and continuing through a long series of rather lame systems. The latest systems are intended to mimic the behavior of call center employees.

Sadly, this isn't a joke.

The study referred to in the story was published last year in Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. Abstract free, the article, like most journal articles, is probably very expensive.

In sexual populations, beneficial mutations that occur in different lineages may be recombined into a single lineage.