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Cool discovery, but I think the bit about using this for lie detection is a bit of a stretch. This sounds like a polygraph that does not require physical contact. But, polygraphs are not believed to be all that accurate.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9986&page=87

Chapter 4 of Getting Up to Speed: The Future of Supercomputing (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11148#toc) outlines plenty of potential applications.

I have not read all of your posts in this thread, and am not quite sure of your take on the whole belief, theory, fact dialog that seem to permeate the evolution debate threads on /., but I'm sympathetic to the cost of Nature issue. This is free and has some good content http://www.nature.com/news/index.html.

Back to the evolution issue - I like what the National Academy of Science recently published: "Science, Evolution, and Creationism" which you can read online for free http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11876
This is a good read if you are interested in the current state of the science of evolution, and it has a nice FAQ for some of the issues discussed in this very thread.

SPREAD THE WORD

Evolution is a scientific fact, and every organization whose research depends on it should explain why.

Three cheers for the US National Academy of Sciences for publishing an updated version of its booklet Science, Evolution, and Creationism (see http://www.nap.edu/sec). The document succinctly summarizes what is and isn't science, provides an overview of evidence for evolution by natural selection, and highlights how, time and again, leading religious figures have upheld evolution as consistent with their view of the world.

For a more specific and also entertaining account of evolutionary knowledge, see palaeontologist Kevin Padian's evidence given at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial (see http://tinyurl.com/2nlgar). Padian destroys the false assertions by creationists that there are critical gaps in the fossil record. He illustrates the fossil-rich paths from fish to land-based tetrapod, from crocodile to dinosaur to feathered dinosaur to bird, from terrestrial quadruped to the whale, and more besides. Creationism is strong in the United States and, according to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, worryingly on the rise in Europe (see http://tinyurl.com/2knrqy). But die-hard creationists aren't a sensible target for raising awareness. What matters are those citizens who aren't sure about evolution -- as much as 55% of the US population according to some surveys.

As the National Academy of Sciences and Padian have shown, it is possible to summarize the reasons why evolution is in effect as much a scientific fact as the existence of atoms or the orbiting of Earth round the Sun, even though there are plenty of refinements to be explored. Yet some actual and potential heads of state refuse to recognize this fact as such. And creationists have a tendency to play on the uncertainties displayed by some citizens. Evolution is of profound importance to modern biology and medicine. Accordingly, anyone who has the ability to explain the evidence behind this fact to their students, their friends and relatives should be given the ammunition to do so. Between now and the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth on 12 February 2009, every science academy and society with a stake in the credibility of evolution should summarize evidence for it on their website and take every opportunity to promote it.

Before everyone completely disappears in a cloud of disputation, here is where you can actually read the actual book: www.nap.edu -- as opposed to reading the NYT's linkless description, or worse, reading reactions to the NYT by a lot of people who have read neither that nor the book... I am disappointed in the Academy: they do not offer a free downloadable copy. You can read it for free but only online on their site, page by page, in a format that does not permit increasing the text size or searching.

You can read the book online for free here.

You can also hear the press conference (Real media format) and read the News Release, which (surprise!) is a lot different than than the article summary.

The original article, The Digital Dilemma, is all about licensing, redistribution rights, things like whether reformatting to avoid obsolescence is equivalent to making a derived work and thus require license fees and royalties (an issue even for the studios, depending on the artist's contracts). I've only briefly browsed it, but given that background I suspect that they're factoring guesstimates of this kind of thing into the costs... at any rate, it's more information to argue about.

Among civilians, possibly 44,000 to 59,000 were killed the day of the bombing, with another 17,000 missing. Subsequent deaths include about 25,000 through the end of August 1945, 9,000 in September 1945, 2,000 in October-December 1945, and 2,500 in 1946. Many of these subsequent deaths involved radiation injuries.

The scientific report:
Forensic Analysis: Weighing Bullet Lead Evidence, The National Academies Press, 2004.
URL: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309090792

An extract from "Appendix K: Statistical Analysis of Bullet Lead Data by Karen Kafadar and Clifford Spiegelman (169-214)" follows.

Section 3.1 FBI Calculation of False-Positive Probability (FPP):

"The FBI reported an apparent FPP that was based on the 1,837-bullet data set (Ref. 11). The authors repeated the method on which the FBI's estimate was based as follows. [...] The FBI summarized the results by claiming an apparent FPP of 693/1,686,366, or 1 in 2,433.4 ('about 1 in 2,500'). ***That estimated FPP is probably too small, in as much as this 1,837-bullet data set is not a random sample of any population and may well contain bullets that tend to be further apart than one would expect in a random sample of bullets.***"

Section 3.2 Simulating False-Positive Probability:

"We simulate the probability that the 2-SD interval (or range interval) for one bullet's concentration of one element overlaps with the 2-SD interval (or range interval) for another bullet's concentration of that element. The simulation is described below. [...] Thus, the FPP could be estimated here as roughly 47/91, or 0.516. [...] Because homogeneous batches of lead, manufactured at different times, could by chance have the same chemical concentrations (within measurement error), the actual FPP could be even higher."

Section 4.2 Individual Equivalence t Tests:

"[...] Probabilities such as the FBI's claim of '1 in 2,500' are inappropriate when based on a data set such as the 1,837-bullet data set; as noted in Section 3.2, it is not a random collection of bullets from the population of all bullets, or even from the complete 71,000+ bullet data set from which it was extracted."

The current maintenance load for the ISS is about 2.5 people. The Soyuz capsule used for emergency crew return limits the ISS population to 3, except when another spacecraft is docked. So most of the crew time is tied up just keeping the thing working. The original concept was to have a permanent crew of 6, maybe more, and a "crew return vehicle", but that was abandoned around 2002.

First off, I'm glad to see people out there thinking hard about education and how their aspects of education tie in with other people as well. There was a lovely paper by Reed Stevens and others not too long ago that comes at your idea from a different direction. (link)

Not precisely my field, but there's lots and lots of work being done in all aspects of integrating science and math with reading and writing. Visit your local friendly PsycInfo database for starters. I find it more useful than google scholar, but if you're at a school and don't have access to PsycInfor through a university, google scholar can help too. Depending on how theoretically-minded you are, ERIC (run by the US government) is also a good repository to search through. It tends toward the less theoretical.

I suggest you look for "Writing across the curriculum", "content-area reading / literacy", hmmm... "Science (scientific) Discourse", the works of Jay Lemke, Ann Brown for a start. There's a ton of stuff out there. Actually, you may want to search the back issues of Review of Educational Research (RER) and Review of Research in Education (RRE)

You should also problematize your assumption: that science is all about lectures and (by connotation) cookbook labs. There's a ton of work out there saying that teaching school science shouldn't be like that, but it has a hard time penetrating the actual practice of everyday teachers. But for a good read on what we'd like science to actually be, I recommend Taking Science to School. It's targeted to grades k-8, and it's somewhat US-centric (and I've inferred from your request that you're not a USian), but it's still a great read, and you can read the whole thing for free online (one PDF page at a time, though, which was enough of an encouragement to me to actually buy it.)

My last warning - you're venturing into the zones of thought which usually drive teachers into graduate school. I started down similar roads, and now I'm a professor. The challenge is getting people to really think along these lines, but remain a practicing teacher.

Lucky for you my young padawan I have no life.

Does anyone know how/if NASA handles things like micrometeorites?

Dunno exactly, how's that for a start? I do know the shuttle's glazings are replaced about once every 10 flights due to impact, mostly with man made stuff like paint chips from exploded satellites. Just guessing here and don't quote me, but the way they deal with this is probably with stats. As in, if a chip of paint can ding a window, I guess a gram-sized piece of debris can poke two holes in the orbiter (an in and an out). Although, that might not be fatal if it doesn't pass through someone's body, the little hole can probably be patched with, you know, the space shuttle hole patch kit they must have.

The Orbiter is maneuvered to avoid known space debris, but that only goes down to about tens of centimeters. So stuff smaller than that has to be handled with stats.

Thanks for the quote and citation: but if I look at the IPCC AR4, they have a similar quote which if you include the full context makes a lot of sense: "Urban heat island effects are real but local, and have not biased the large-scale trends. A number of recent studies indicate that effects of urbanisation and land use change on the land-based temperature record are negligible (0.006 degrees C per decade) as far as hemispheric- and continental-scale averages are concerned because the very real but local effects are avoided or accounted for in the data sets used. In any case, they are not present in the SST component of the record. Increasing evidence suggests that urban heat island effects extend to changes in precipitation, clouds and DTR, with these detectable as a 'weekend effect' owing to lower pollution and other effects during weekends."

Paleoclimatologists that I know are very dubious about Steve's methods, and have convincingly demolished his own statistical techniques (sadly, I can't reconstruct their elegant arguments myself, it was around the time of the NAS study that a couple of them did a presentation for my group on the subject, and my memory isn't so great that far outside my own speciality).

You're confusing the possibility that a dust storm can lift enough dust into the atmosphere to block sunlight with the possibility that the wind intensity is sufficiently high to drive a wind turbine. Mars has a very thin atmosphere, and this wind isn't nearly enough to drive a turbine that would produce enough power for the rovers. Lifting dust is a lot easier than pushing the blades of a fan.

Also, whatever turbine you added would go into the weight of the rover, which then affects the parachute/airbag requirements for landing, and during drive around time you're carrying that extra weight uselessly most of the time.

This setup:
http://store.motorwavegroup.com/8-micro-turbines-w ith-generato.html

generates about twice as much power as the article suggests is needed, on earth (presumably 1atm pressure) at 10m/s wind speed.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309084261/html/22.htm l
claims that martian windspeeds peak at 50m/s, but that the dynamic pressure is only 1/9th of that due to the lower atmospheric pressure.
That gives you an equivalent of only 6m/s equivalent speed (at peak intensity!).

So ... even at peak windspeed it's going to be hard to generate enough power with turbines that the rover could reasonably carry, and that would all be deadweight for the solar panels during non wind times.

Five minutes of thoughtful searching brought up useful, important information for anybody willing to take these sciences and technologies seriously. The National Institute of Health (NIH) stem cell page has some paper abstracts as well as listed universities with programs in these United States (and some online resources). Useful sources of information at this bibliography re: human reproductive cloning, at Boston University and this one. CiteSeer popped up the paper on nuclear transfer / human cloning. Apparently there's at least one dedicated research foundation out there.

Granted, most of these links are preliminary- check those deep databases, like over at PubMed Central, for those detailed reviews of the state of the art. And just for kicks, one last link which (still) impresses me.

The article is just a spin on the original report written by eminent scientists. The report is mostly about the interesting challenges in condensed matter and materials science. Only two of the chapters discuss the current state of funding and publications, which cannot be ignored because these are immediately relevant to meeting those challenges. The challenges are fundamental research, not weaponizing known research, hence the lack of interest from our militarized administration.

See http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309109698 for a prepublication version of the report. Significant facets not addressed by slashdotters include: the previous tremendous impact of industrial labs, their current tremendously weakened state, and that government funding (static with respect to real dollars) is not commensurate with increases in actual costs. Effort spent writing grant proposals to compete for the shrinking grant dollar is effort that is not spent doing actual research. This is borne out by the relative number of publications in eminent journals.

Those who went on anti-nationalism rants are largely missing the point. Research drives the longer term future of industry. If the research happens elsewhere, so will the industry. If US taxpayers want their children to have good jobs, they would do well to fund basic research now.

As a techie whose planning on retiring as a teacher, I just finished my teaching of science class in a masters program and I have to say that many people in the comments are missing the boat. There is so much opportunity for learning science concepts and more importantly 'doing' science at a young age. But rather than just take my word for it, check out the K-2 Science Standards at both the National Level and in your state: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/nses/6a.html There's many inquiry-based, standard-based programs that you can tap into as a teacher or parent. One, such as fossweb, has a kindergarten module called Animals Two By Two. Most people are like WTF, why 2 by 2. But for kindergarteners, having two of the same animal side by side helps them in developing skills such as compare and contrast, asking questions, observation, and a little bit of analysis as well. That's just one example and there are many, just look for stuff that's standard's compliant and hands-on rather than the old science facts memorization lessons that left so many people so dumb.

I, and the other neighborhood kids, used to play on the big green transformer box in the next-door neighbor's front yard. We sat on it all the time when we were outside, playing. Nobody once told us back then that we were being exposed to "dangerous" radiation. There were 6 of us, and among the group, there has been no cancer, and all of the children born to this group have been perfectly normal.

I recommend this openbook, Possible Health Effects of Exposure to Residential Electric and Magnetic Fields (1997). Given its age, it doesn't address modern wireless, but it provides good aggregate information from a broad array of studies. The upshot is that:

1.) Yes, high tension power lines can cause leukemia... very rarely.
2.) Household EMFs, however, don't.
3.) At extremely high doses, there is some cellular damage -- but not genetic.
4.) High-dose EMF + carcinogens cause breast cancer in animals, but EMF alone does not otherwise seem to cause cancer in animals.
5.) High-dose EMF causes some behavioral abnormalities in animals.

So, there you have it. Weird.

Why don't you take a look at the US National Academy Assessment of the hockey-stick cluster of studies rather than relying on climateaudit.org? Though the 4th Assessment Report isn't a bad place to look either. Also, I believe that the hockey stick always came with error bars, and was fairly good for a first pass, and subsequent studies have mostly confirmed Mann's argument that the current global scale warming is likely unprecedented in the past 1000 years.

the top 26 peer reviewed journal claims that supports the so-called climate change orthodoxy that have been proven false

It took me about three clicks to get to the references list for the National Academy of Sciences report that says the "hockey stick" is accurate. English, motherfucker, do you read it?

the top 26 peer reviewed journal claims that supports the so-called climate change orthodoxy that have been proven false

It took me about three clicks to get to the references list for the National Academy of Sciences report that says the "hockey stick" is accurate. English, motherfucker, do you read it?

The article was taken from a National Academies press release. Here's the full report, parts of which (maybe the whole thing? I didn't check) can be previewed as a pdf if you don't want to purchase the book.

Oh, and here's a brief (4-page summary) of the report.

Woulda been nice to have the source info in the summary...

Abstract at http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5170&p age=105

Occurrence and Use

CO2 normally exists in the atmosphere at 0.03% (Morey and Shattuck, 1989). In a Danish study, the maximal CO2 concentrations inside 14 town-hall buildings (6 had natural and 8 had mechanical ventilation) were measured to be 0.05-0.13% (Skov et al., 1987). Wang (1975) reported that the CO2 concentration inside a university auditorium built up to about 0.06-0.09% during a lecture. CO2 is not used in space shuttles, but it will be used as a fire extinguishant in the space station.

And this is the point. The global mean reletive humididty isn't staying constant!.

On the contrary, it has stayed largely constant. As I said, there are some small higher-order variations, such as those alluded to on the RealClimate essay and discussed in more detail here. (They find, actually, that if anything, the water vapor feedback is being overestimated, not underestimated.)

This is were the models are wrong when it comes to the sun.

For the last time, even if the global mean humidity were not constant, that still would have nothing to do with the Sun. The global mean relative humidty depends only on temperature, not on solar input. The Sun has nothing to do with whether or not the global mean humidity stays constant, except insofar as it influences the temperature of the Earth.

If you want to claim that models of relative humidity are wrong, then you can do so if you think you can defend that position. But if they are wrong, then they are wrong no matter whether the temperature is being forced primarily by CO2 or the Sun or anything else, because evaporation rates depend on the temperature, not on what is forcing the temperature.

Sure there are vaiables. And the sun has an efect on two that you just mentioned.

If you mean temperature and pressure, then certainly the Sun has an effect on those. I am not arguing otherwise. I am saying that climate models correctly take the Sun's influence into account. You have claimed otherwise, insisting that climate models do not take the evaporation due to the Sun into account. This is manifestly false: climate models take into account how the Sun influences thermodynamics variables, and how thermodynamics variables influence evaporation.

There is no special term in the equations for how "the Sun" influences evaporation that is being left out. There is no special term in the equations for how "CO2" influences evaporation that is being left in. There is only an equation which says how temperature and pressure influence evaporation, as well as equations for how a given amount of radiative forcing (from any source) influences temperature and pressure.

And once the models were changed, they found that it was greater of an effect then expected.

The models were not changed. Nor was the way they treat the Sun changed. Both are correct, despite your claims that they incorrectly treat the Sun's influence on relative humidity.

What was changed was the data fed into the models (solar irradiance).

Adn don't give me the they say only 30% bull.

They say only 30%. Just because the facts disagree with your ideas doesn't make them bull.

I'm not exactly sure why it is so hard for you to except change here? And even if you don't except it, Why are you trying so hard to stop others from exploring it?

Hey, jackass, I told you about five messages ago that changes in the Sun's intensity contribute to global warming. They just contribute a small amount. The issue has been explored. It doesn't agree with your preconceived notions. Deal with it.

The national accademy of science and many independent experts have stated the hocky stick is wrong.

As I just told you, the NAS said that the hockey stick's shape is correct, but that Mann underestimated the size of the error bars. See this report. They state, "The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes [...] Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer suppor

One must also ask, and this is something I rarely see in the general debate : "What about all the nitrogen?"

Even back in 1994 the global warming potential of fertilizers were known :

"In wet soils, denitrifying bacteria convert nitrate to nitrous oxide and gaseous nitrogen. The former is a greenhouse gas that has an energy reflectivity per mole 180-fold higher than that of carbon dioxide."

I came across the notion in an MIT courseware video lecture (16 or 17 I think)

On a slightly different tack nitrogen's role in reducing carbon fixing was documented in 1996
  and thus warning against adding nitrogen to the ecosystem because it reduces the ability to fix the dreaded carbon, ignoring N's own contribution.

Yet here we have Nasa saying that carbon fixing is nitrogen limited and we should add more nitrogen to the system.

Not that all modern thinking is pro-nitrogen.

Add into the mix the world's estimated 1,300,000,000 cattle belching out 400 litres of methane each per day : 520,000,000,000 litres

Here's more on methane

Methane is responsible for nearly as much global warming as all other non-CO2 greenhouse gases put together. Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. While atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen by about 31% since pre-industrial times, methane concentrations have more than doubled. Whereas human sources of CO2 amount to just 3% of natural emissions, human sources produce one and a half times as much methane as all natural sources. In fact, the effect of our methane emissions may be compounded as methane-induced warming in turn stimulates microbial decay of organic matter in wetlands--the primary natural source of methane.

and more

What conclusions?
My conclusion is that reducing one's carbon footprint will not suffice. The way to fix more nitrogen is to grow more pulses and legumes which is good because you're going to need something to replace the cows you're eating now. Stop pouring nitrogen on to the fields and start eating more organic produce.

As we've been saying for a while : "think globally, act locally"

At the same time, the scientific programming positions the parent mentions would probably be a great fit for you, if you don't mind trading some income for interesting work and a less-regimented pace.

Be careful. Slashdot has been running lots of stories that are "investment opportunities". Read this, the first comment to the story linked from the Slashdot story. I didn't write it, it was written by someone with the nick Emosson, but it sounds correct. (Also, read the other comments showing skepticism of the idea.):

"Unfortunately EEStor never made and will never make the supercapacitor described in the patent because they ignore a well known physical effect, called "dielectric saturation".

"Barium titanate has been used in capacitors for decades, due to its high dielectric constant: (PDF file).

"However, the dielectric constant drops as the electric field strength increases: http://www.nap.edu/books/NI000488/html/49.html
http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v71/i12/p890_1

"At a hypothetical field of 3500 Volts over a thickness of 12.76 micrometers, as proposed in the patent, the dielectric constant of barium titanate would be orders of magnitude lower than the claimed 18500, reducing capacity and energy density by the same factor...

"This has been discussed in more detail by Prof. Anatoly Moskalev on December 24th and 26th, 2006 in
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/index.php?p=43

"with an update on January 20th, 2007:
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/?p=46."

Also read this comment considerably below:

"Further evidences of EEstor's hype! by Roger Pham 1/22/2007 10:41 PM

"In his patent #7033406, Richard Weir, EEstor CEO, cited data published WAY BACK in 1985 from the Japan's Journal of Applied Physics, as basis for the high dielectric property of Barium Titanate (BaTiO3)powder, when coated with aluminum oxide and calcium magnesium aluminosilicated glass. If BaTiO3 capacitor was so good way back in the 1985, the likes of the GM EV1 would be around evey street corners since 1996, or the Prius would have been a PHEV way back in 1997!

"What held back coated BaTiO3 powder from becoming a SuperCapacitor was the fact that BaTiO3 has dielectric property that varies by nearly ten folds with just typical seasonal swing in ambient temperature, and the fact that its dielectric property drops by as much with high electrical field strength, as Emosson has brought up!"

Right: all the climate instruments that were slated to be on NPOESS are now gone, and the sounders on the GOES-R series are gone. Read this page of the NAS report executive summary: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820& page=5 [nap.edu]

This is an executive report about reduced NASA capability, which essentially passes the buck to other agencies. NPOESS needs to be treated as a separate issue. Because of the cost over-runs, no instruments will be added (instruments were the whole reason for the problems in the first place -- the requirements were too far-reaching). GOES-R, however is a different matter. There are very good chances that opportunity slots on the spacecraft will be used to ensure data continuity. As to the sounder... it's not gone. The HES is gone -- it suffered from the same problems as some of the NPOESS instruments and was cut for the same reasons. However, GOES-R will not launch without a sounder, it just won't be the HES.

What does "launch=prep" mean, considering the draft request for proposals for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission imager went out last month (December 2006). Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 are both on their last legs now (both past their design lives), the replacement won't be launched for 2 or more years.

A launch campaign can take five years or more. It consists of the final design reviews and operations development. While its true that a draft RFP is not a nearly finished product, in Landsat's case, it will probably be a follow-on instrument to the current one (maybe even the same vendor). This is a serious risk reduction. By the time that draft is out a considerable amount of work has been done. Maybe it was premature of me to call that a launch campaign, but from my point of view, 'a' follows 'b' follows 'c'. By the time a draft RFP is issued, that reduces the chances of a cancellation to a very small probability. So what if Landsat 5 & 7 are beyond their design lives? Many spacecraft are. So long as they are still useful and safe, that's fine.

It's not free, as in it costs $600 per scene.

That's for archived data prior to April 2003. For newer images it's about $300. Not free, but available to the general public (as I said before).

Which is fine if you're interested in real-time data. If you're interested in climate you have to build your own satellite receiving station and data archive, or buy old data--not free.

If you're trying to track long-term climate, realistically no one will archive more data than a spacecraft's operators. However, people do: University of Colorado and Wisconsin for starters. NOAA makes scientific quality data available in real time with a 3-week backup available for free. Old data can be accessed from the Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS) for very nominal rates (like, free, usually) and the aggregate data (the kind most useful in climate research) is available on request so... just ask.

NASA does procure (not develop, not launch) spacecraft for NOAA and USGS

Nope. I used the word "procure."

Really? So the following The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is responsible for the construction, integration and launch of NOAA satellites. Operational control of the spacecraft is turned over to NOAA after it is checked out on orbit, normally 21 days after launch. is a lie?

Its a spin. Goddard procures the spacecraft. Translation: they find a contractor which will build and launch the spacecraft. NASA manages the development and test processes, ensuring that NOAA and USGS get what they paid/asked for. Lockheed built POES, GOES-I/M was built by SS/Loral, GOES-N/P(Q) by Boeing, NPP/NPOESS by NGST and GOES-R/U is TBD. These contractors manufacture the spacecraft in their own high-bays, perform I/T (integration and g

How much of the Earth do you think DigitalGlobe images each year? (~3%) How much does NASA image each day? (>90%). Granted it's at different resolutions, but that underscores the point that NASA's remote sensors have different capabilities than DigitalGlobe's (or GeoEye's). Next question: who buys most of the high-resolution commercial satellite data? (The U.S. government via the Department of Defense(in fact, the DoD and congress forbid NASA from making high-res observations)). Do you think NASA's satellites are better calibrated than the commercial sensors, which is critical for studying long-term trends? Maybe NASA is capable of taking many more types of measurements, with spaceborne radars, lidars, scatterometers, thermal infrared sensors, gravity sensors, etc?

Have you ever tried to buy an acquisition from DigitalGlobe? Do you have $10,000? If you have more questions, read the NRC report itself:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820& page=1
or read about NASA's current Earth science research:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

Anyway, the shuttle flight control is only 420,000 lines of code (plus another 1.5M of support code). Nothing to sneeze at, but Visa and linux are said to have 50 and 30 million lines of code, respectively. So that's about two orders of magnitude! I'm also willing to bet the flight control software for the Shuttle hasn't changed much over the past 25 years, yet 275 people support it.

The problem is that the US immigration & visa policy is pretty forbidding.

Here is a page describing the accessibility features of all of the world's currencies as of 1995. Note that the US is the only country on the list that didn't have a single one of the 4 features they look at, and Brazil was very rare in using just bill color (which is obviously useless to people who are completely blind) to distinguish bills. China's currency includes a tactile recognition symbol, and India's uses a different size bill for some denominations.

Besides, a more fair comparison would be not to similar-sized countries, but to other industrialized democracies. But, for the record, almost every country in Africa has (or had, in 1995) more accessible currency than the US.

http://newton.nap.edu/html/howpeople2/ch2.html I'm guessing that the bulk of slashdoters will agree. However, I think this article needs some percolation.

I believe that you have done a much better thing than Monckton by highlighting that report. It is very interesting.

I admit, however, that the summary from that article shows pretty convincingly why climate scientists believe that global warming is very real and caused by human activity. Look at the graph on Page 2 in the summary of that report and observe what is happening after 1900.

Here is a quote from that summary regarding medieval global temperatures:

Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since 900 A.D.

Regarding the medieval warming period. The data on that graph does show a warmer period in the early middle ages, but this does not clear Monckton or show that he is credible. Monckton represented the whole middle ages as substantially warmer that now, even to the extent of having an ice free Arctic Ocean in the 15th century. That is patently false. The same data shows much cooler average temperatures in the 15th century than now. The report you highlighted further demonstrates Monckton's lack of credibility.

I can only find two -- a whole two -- scientists who disagree with the usage of bristlecones (McKitric and MacIntyre). If you can find more, please cite them. I've searched.

In 2006, the National Academy of Scientists reviewed Mann's original study. Naturally, Monckton doesn't bother to mention this. What did they come up with? This. "'High Confidence' That Planet Is Warmest in 400 Years".

They confirmed that, while bristlecones are a poor temperature proxy, and the analysis used tends to bias the shape of the reconstruction, it doesn't unduly influence reconstructions of hemispheric mean temperature.

But hey, listen to a viscount with no credentials over the NSF if you'd like. ;)

One of the important underlying points is that other reconstructions have been done, using a variety of techniques by a variety of groups, and all of the groups feel that the modern period is unusual. The uncertainties involved are such that we can't rule out the idea that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today, but the available evidence suggests it was not.

To quote the NRC Report:

It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceeding four centuries. ... Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900."

The US Senate asked independent statisticians to investigate. They found that the graph was meretricious,

Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences, which produced a much more balanced report. Of course, since that is real science, its a bit harder to find convenient sound bites there...

http://newton.nap.edu/books/0309075742/html/
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/reports.htm

Naps at work: excellent idea - and already implemented at some places in order to improve productivity by as much as 40%.

http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/printout/0,8816 ,1209960,00.html

Napping has had the hardest time gaining traction, despite the scientific evidence in its favor. A study by NASA found, for example, that a 26-minute nap increased pilots' performance 34%. "What other management strategy will improve people's performance 34% in 26 minutes?" asks Mark Rosekind, president of Alertness Solutions, a fatigue-management consultancy, and the former NASA scientist who conducted the research. Yet most businesses still reject public napping. According to a survey by William Anthony, a Boston University professor of rehabilitation counseling who created National Napping Day, 70% of respondents who sleep at work do so secretly, often curled up in the backseat of their car at lunch.

You can read more here http://darwin.nap.edu/books/0309101115/html/R1.htm l. The cost of sleep deprivation to todays' economy is in the hundreds of billions - that's several thousand dollars per year per worker in lost productivity, mistakes, etc.