Slashdot Mirror

And that would be the kind of thing I would look for - take a food we've seen as generally harmless, find someone who is off the charts on a satiety index with it, and see if it can possibly get them obese. Until that's demonstrated, the whole satiety thing seems more like a 2nd or 3rd order effect than a core reason for obesity.

Palatability, not satiety (satiety is how filling it is).

The better test would be to have people rate the relative palatability of different foods. Build them a diet around those foods, and see how well the palatability tracks with weight change.

But even then there's the difficulty carrying out the study, changing palatability preferences (and what that means), maybe the fat prone people find everything tastier, etc. It sounds like a study with a lot of moving parts that's hard to do properly.

I leave it to Lustig to talk further on that, especially regarding the difference between fructose taken in juice form versus whole fruit (he seems to imply there is a difference in digestive process that mitigates the deleterious effects in that case).

Or that's the only way he can get rid of most of the non-industrial populations. After all how many non-industrial cultures drink a bunch of juice sweetened with refined sugar? Oops, found one (the Kuna)

I just thought of something - we could test this stuff on someone with no taste buds. By the satiety hypothesis, such a person would be unable to overeat, because nothing is tasty. The insulin hypothesis supposes that given insulin resistance, even if the tongue doesn't recognize that something is tasty, the muscles will know if they are being starved or not, and drive hunger.

Palatability not satiety.

I couldn't find anything on that but there seems to be an inverse correlation between taste bud sensitivity and weight. I'm not really sure what to make of it. Sweet and sour lower but bitterness, saltiness, and unami were depressed the most, I don't even know if that would balance out into increasing total palatability (less bitter) or decreasing (less salt). Could be a result of overstimulus, a defensive measure to reduce palatability, or causal somehow.

This nature article seems to imply we become less sensitive to flavours after eating a lot, though I'm not certain how that would related to palatability or satiety.

If you're trying to suggest it doesn't work (without actually knowing what it does) you have the problem of explaining what it is than that reversed the cancer in the 11 people in those three clinical trials.

And you also need to explain this:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2012%2F06%2F02%2FMNI11ORI84.DTL

"I don't have time to debunk your misunderstanding about science"
Translation: "I haven't read anything you're talking about but I know it's wrong" - the logical fallacy of the argument from ignorance. It's a shame you didn't even notice the refernces and pointers given, let alone actually read them.

There's a chance P53 doesn't work the way you think it does.

Here's an easier to digest synopsis for those short of time:

The Cytochrome P450 enzyme CYP1B1 [1] only occurs in cancer cells [2]. When certain phytoallexins such as reservetol and salvestrol are ingested these phytoallexins are converted by the P450 enzyme into picetannol [3], which is fatal to cancer cells but not human cells [4].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CYP1B1
[2] http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/57/14/3026.short
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piceatannol
[4] http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v86/n5/abs/6600197a.html

This is old and there are newer references now but this should at least explain how the idea works and gives you some explicit papes to go chase down.

At this point chemo and radiation are total dead ends and should be stopped immediately.

Also curious is Potter had convinced the British government to give this stuff to everyone, big pharma talked them out of it.

Talk to Ithaco Space Systems. They built the control wheels according to this article in Nature. They supplied the failed control wheels for Kepler and Dawn and other missions....and they were not cheap. http://www.nature.com/news/the-wheels-come-off-kepler-1.13032

This.. http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v14/n7/fig_tab/nn.2867_F1.html
and this.. attach boilerplate rodent metabolism warning though .. http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v14/n7/full/nn.2867.html

This.. http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v14/n7/fig_tab/nn.2867_F1.html
and this.. attach boilerplate rodent metabolism warning though .. http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v14/n7/full/nn.2867.html

It seems that Ithaco Space Systems built the control wheels according to this article in Nature. They supplied the failed control wheels for Kepler and Dawn and other missions....and they were not cheap. Great job there... http://www.nature.com/news/the-wheels-come-off-kepler-1.13032

Recently I was involved in research that showed big polarization in EU from North to South. There is big need to change mentality but this is not a fast process ... More details in this link http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120920/srep00678/full/srep00678.html

Genetic memories? There's still a lot to figure out about how memories work. I think there has been some research that discovered memories might reside in different cells. It could explain past life phenomena and weird unexplainables like that.

Just a quick google cuz I'm at work and lazy:
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080123/full/451385a.html

I dunno, maybe there's a vast single consciousness and we're all one pretty flower. If that can be proven, I'm on board :P

>> Staying hungry by eating only about 70% of the calories you should normally eat, is currently the only method known that will increase your lifespan

That theory has been debunked. It appears to work for simpler animals like rats. However, a recent comprehensive study of monkeys showed that calorie restriction produced no meaningful difference in lifespan. Since humans are genetically closer to monkeys than rats, that's how it would likely work for us too. Healthier diet, on the other hand, did seem to make a difference.

The article has more info: http://www.myhealthwire.com/news/diet-nutrition/64
A link to actual study: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/full/nature11432.html

most countries have taxes on sugar etc.

Which countries? (seriously). I'm curious if we're talking levels high enough to alter behavior (which I suspect would be awfully high). The US taxes sugar imports, which is part of why HFCS is used so much.

Denmark had a fat tax, and proposed a sugar tax, but both were scrapped in 2012. http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/11/denmark-abandons-sugar-and-fat-taxes.html

I found a paper copy of the British Medical Journal, and found this article informative: http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2931 but I don't have a subscription (there's a paywall).

A new NASA study shows that from 1978 to 2010 the total extent of sea ice surrounding Antarctica in the Southern Ocean grew by roughly 6,600 square miles every year, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. And previous research by the same authors indicates that this rate of increase has recently accelerated, up from an average rate of almost 4,300 square miles per year from 1978 to 2006.

Fascinating. I'm sure you'll explain that away as some kind of warming induced cooling, or other moronic hypothesis to keep your failing thesis alive. Please note that the last paper I read about Antarctic temperatures was by Steig et al. It got pole position in Nature (front cover too) but was shown to be complete and utter bollocks soon afterwards by O'Donnell et al. Of course as is normal in Climate Science, it wasn't retracted despite being shown to be rubbish. And you probably won't read about it on the euphemistically named Skeptical Science website.

Sea levels rose 2.4 millimeters per year between 2006 and 2011. Extrapolating that increase for the next 90 years suggests an overall increase of about 212 millimeters by 2100, or just over 8 inches. A lot different than the 4 feet rise the scare stories try to claim.

Indeed. Europe and much of N.Am already seem to be experiencing a certain amount of cooling because arctic meltwater is disrupting both the gulf stream and the jet stream... Local predictions are hard – both spatially and temporally. Hence why no one credible worries too much about them (except, e.g., weather forecasters, or modellers trying to develop better methods to deal with fine resolutions – but that's a whole other ball game).

While the z0mg!panic! was stupid, there is an issue here. Meltwater ponds reflect less sunlight than bare ice, so warm the ice underneath much quicker (until it cracks and the pond drains out.) [...]

Refereed article on this can be found here:

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1963.html
The surface albedo of the Arctic sea-ice zone is a crucial component in the energy budget of the Arctic region1, 2. The treatment of sea-ice albedo has been identified as an important source of variability in the future sea-ice mass loss forecasts in coupled climate models3. There is a clear need to establish data sets of Arctic sea-ice albedo to study the changes based on observational data and to aid future modelling efforts. Here we present an analysis of observed changes in the mean albedo of the Arctic sea-ice zone using a data set consisting of 28 years of homogenized satellite data4. Along with the albedo reduction resulting from the well-known loss of late-summer sea-ice cover5, 6, we show that the mean albedo of the remaining Arctic sea-ice zone is decreasing. The change per decade in the mean August sea-ice zone albedo is 0.029±0.011. All albedo trends, except for the sea-ice zone in May, are significant with a 99% confidence interval. Variations in mean sea-ice albedo can be explained using sea-ice concentration, surface air temperature and elapsed time from onset of melt as drivers.

Read the fine link

... Thus, bird-like encephalization indices evolved multiple times, supporting the conclusion that if Archaeopteryx had the neurological capabilities required of flight, so did at least some other non-avian maniraptorans. This is congruent with recent findings that avialans were not unique among maniraptorans in their ability to fly in some form.

This sounds like it is just what the world needs. Is this stuff economically recyclable? And is the material environmentally benign?

I find it depressing that everybody is so excited about cheaper plastic junk. I'd rather invest in an "unMakerBot" that consumed household clutter.

Now the printed trachea that saved that girls life: that's a worthwhile application of this technology!

Accompanying the paper in Nature is an article summarizing the topic.

Disclaimer: Now I have to buy Spencer a beer after work today and congratulate him for getting published in Nature... The second scientist in the office this month.

Accompanying the paper in Nature is an article summarizing the topic.

Disclaimer: Now I have to buy Spencer a beer after work today and congratulate him for getting published in Nature... The second scientist in the office this month.

selling plants that won't seed to the third world

Do you have a place where I can read more about that? All I can find is a Nature News article where somebody speculates that they might do it. And, of course, an over-the-top, inflammatory slashdot article about the article.

I see I accidentally double pasted in my previous post. Woops.

Some summary sources suggest that spicec and herbs have been in use since early hunter times, with documented uses as early as roughly 2000 BCE ([1] [mccormicks...titute.com], [2] [wikipedia.org]; and I'm half of Chinese descent).

I guess the general use of spices and herbs from around the world does go back a bit further than I thought. Thinking about it a bit more, the use of potent plants for medicinal purposes also seems like something that has been around for quite a while: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_medicine
There also does seem to be evidence of genetic adaptation to certain herbs, such as coriander: http://www.nature.com/news/soapy-taste-of-coriander-linked-to-genetic-variants-1.11398

I guess all the evidence points to using copious amounts of herbs is a good idea, health-wise. On the other hand it doesn't really make a case for avoiding synthetic preservatives. In fact, if we focus on the anti-microbial properties of herbs and spices, synthetic (anti-microbial) preservatives should also sound like a good idea. If on the other hand herbs and spices are beneficial due to vitamin and mineral content, synthetic preservatives lose out completely.

I don't really know either. I've heard about things like red-meat cravings for people with mild anemia

You seem to have mentioned the 'one' exception :) ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/08/food-cravings_n_1940299.html )
They mention sugar and its connection to serotonin, which I found interesting and related, and that lead me to this:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201105/sunlight-sugar-and-serotonin (most interesting bit in the last paragraph)
Also, interestingly, other mammals tend to seek out (crave for) umami food:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867403008444

Returning to the point about evolution and nutrients, one wonders what humans generally consume in a primitive society. From what I can find, modern day tribes in Africa and the Amazon mainly hunt animals, grow starch-rich 'vegetables', and pick fruit, nuts and some herbs. Apparently, growing leafy vegetables isn't all that 'natural'. On the other hand, if herbs are beneficial to health due to vitamin and mineral content, it kind of makes sense to cultivate something that is almost all leaves and easily edible. As much as I like herbs, I'm not going to eat 200 grams of them each day.

I didn't mean that present nutrients would be less absorbed or that other nutrient signals wouldn't still exist, just that those signals would get bundled up with there always being a sugar reward no matter the food source, and we might learn to seek out food largely on this anticipated reward.

This argument would work if we would experience rewards from eating things with certain other nutrients (vitamins, minerals and such), which I believe is not or hardly the case. I.e.: I'm not so sure those other signals even exist.

Well if you want to go ahead and taste-test corn-starch slurries with varying degrees of starch and salt, you go right ahead. And tell me the results :-)

I believe that means we have arrived at a stalemate here ;-)
We need a volunteer to test this for us. For science!

Another idea that I've heard that I guess may be related to the taste inhibition idea (maybe you've alre

This has always been evident to anyone with half a brain, yet it hasn't stopped the insanity. So perhaps we can use the paranoia of terrorism to do good things.

I don't know really anything about GPS. I've heard the military has one or two better systems which are barred from civilian use, but aren't that hard to use. Maybe we could use "OMG TERRORISM!" as an excuse to demand it for everyone. Alternatively, if military grade GPS is vulnerable to the same attack here, then it seems like that could have actual security implications. "Oh no, a plane is off course" is less of a threat than "Oh no, a cruise missile is off course" but maybe no one gave a shit until they mentioned terrorism.

Anyway, I think we should be using the constructed threat for actual important things, for instance, getting regulation on antibiotic use. The brits are starting to use terrorism as a reason why we need to clamp down on antibiotic abuse. A tool is only as good or as evil as the person using it. "We have to protect against the terrorists" has been used mainly to justify writing big checks to the military industrial complex, and ideally the voters would, as you suggest, grow brains and relax about terrorists. In the meantime, we could use the tool for good.

First: thanks for putting effort in your answer.

One last little point, I think such studies are often overstated but not necessarily deliberately so--rather, with the genuine belief that the assumptions and generalizations being made are valid.

Yeah, probably at least in part. For the record, though: I was referring to how PR departments and the media in general spin pretty much every nutritional study into what amount to either flat out lies or terribly misleading statements. Using 'X linked to Y' in the headline leads most people away from the commutative nature of the relation, but I guess headlines like 'X and Y associated with each other' sell less ads.

@1a:
The thing with preservatives is that we've actually evolved quite strikingly to like their taste. I'm specifically talking about naturally occurring preservatives like salt, pepper, garlic, onions, sugar, soy sauce and pretty much every herb in existence. See f.i.: http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/ppoint/spice.pdf and http://www.nature.com/srep/2011/111215/srep00196/full/srep00196.html#/f4
Digestive systems generally suffer from thriving colonies of 'wrong' gut bacteria (the poop transplant is becoming a more and more popular cure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy ) or mechanical issues (lack of fibers etc.), not necessarily from having a hard time breaking down food.

@1b:
If I'm not mistaken, oxidization requires being exposed to oxygen. There's a reason why some stuff can be stored for weeks in a closed package and mere days when the packaging is opened. There's still oxygen exposure, but it is greatly reduced and fairly predictable.

In addition to that, 'non-packaged food' may also have been or be exposed to significant amounts of oxygen and other deteriorating influences. Sure, if you take stuff directly from your own garden you have total control over that, but this is not an option for daily nutrition for pretty much everyone.
Things like frozen vegetables have been indicated to be better in containing nutrients like vitamins than 'fresh' vegetables. See f.i.: http://www.smdisteel.org/~/media/Files/SMDI/Containers/Container%20-%20UC%20Davis%20Executive%20Summary.pdf
or a more popularly written one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1255606/Why-frozen-vegetables-fresher-fresh.html

With regard to the supplements: they do seem to have an effect for children with glaring deficiencies: http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d5094
We're very aware that deficiencies of certain vitamins can cause diseases or disorders, but it seems that just overloading our body with the pure versions of them has a bad effect, as per TFA. I guess that means we should exercise some .. moderation ;-)

@2:

I'm sure you know as well as I that labels such as "all natural" and "heart-healthy" are little more than marketing slogans.

Oh man, don't get me started. In my country, there's a foundation that attaches certain national labels on all types of products. Its board is made up of mainly ex-(marketing)employees of Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Ahold.

Then, the less a food resembles the component ingredients, the less I know what I'm actually eating, and the more a company can, in my mind, easily get away with (whether by intentional profit-grubbing or just because money motivates shortcuts and rationalizations).

True. The upside at this point is that most of the pu

We take their word in every other field of science. And you can certainly add your name to the list (of 100,000 candidates) for peer review - if you have suitable qualifications and experience in a relevant field, naturally.

Murdoch owns Nature now?

http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-forecast-for-2018-is-cloudy-with-record-heat-1.13344 :

In August 2007, Doug Smith took the biggest gamble of his career. After more than ten years of work with fellow modellers at the Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK, Smith published a detailed prediction of how the climate would change over the better part of a decade1. His team forecasted that global warming would stall briefly and then pick up speed, sending the planet into record-breaking territory within a few years.

The Hadley prediction has not fared particularly well. Six years on, global temperatures have yet to shoot up as it projected.

Nobody seems to be able to decide what the heck glass is.

Actually the Nature article on the pitch drop states:
"Scientists used to believe glass to be a slow-moving liquid as well — in part because old church window panes are thicker at the bottom — but it is now considered a solid."
and points to this as a reference. Zhao, J., Simon, S. L. & McKenna, G. B. Nature Communications

Nature is a fairly reputable journal so I think I'll go with glass as a solid for the time being.

The issue regarding the windows panes appears to be that the differing thicknesses from one side of the window to the other is because of the manufacturing method. Also they put the thicker side at the bottom in order to prevent breakage because they weren't idiots.

The phrasing "despite many caveats, our results suggest" doesn't mean "we have shown...", it means "if we make a whole bunch of other unsupported assumptions, maybe...".

Well that's an interesting interpretation, from a person who confuses inter-glacial temperature change over many millennia with a similar number of degrees toward a global hothouse over a few hundred years.

'Caveats' likely means possibly-mitigating factors that they considered but which didn't negate their hypothesis. I have never seen the term "caveats" used to mean "unsupported assumptions" in a scientific paper (that would be setting themselves up for quick dismissal, which is no way to get published) especially when the word is bracketed by "our results are striking" and an evolutionary shortfall x 10,000 when even a factor of 2 or 20 would be considered worrisome.

In fact, they discuss the caveats in the appendices.

Normally, it would be kind of weird to debate this study and encounter dismissals like those you've set out. 'Didn't take migration into account'-- Really?? The paper is based on data about species that reach back into the geologic past. And I never expected to see a disclaimer along the lines of 'We narrowed our examination to species known for their immobility'. IOW, over time those creatures moved however they could to try to adapt.

However, in this case its not weird when you clearly didn't consider the study in good faith and instead attacked it with whatever cheap shots came to mind. No doubt its a familiar attitude to just about anyone reading this, the compulsion to misuse good diction to try to reframe an issue in accordance with market fundamentalism (which, embarrassingly enough, seems married to religious fundamentalism once again... both traditions devoted as they are to producing 'teaming masses').

As for the trend in scientific outlook, here is a sample:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0106/Climate-change-models-flawed-extinction-rate-likely-higher-than-predicted
http://www.livescience.com/16307-climate-path-migration-amphibian.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v427/n6970/full/nature02121.html
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1876.html
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/

Ah, the classic left wing approach to trying to paint economics as good-people-vs-bad-corporations. This isn't about "allowing industry" to do anything, it's about not destroying the global economy, the economy that we need to grow in order to be able to make the changes that we need to make in order to reduce population growth and carbon emissions.

Throwing what you get from people back at them (sans data) in reverse is not considered clever anymore. Empty homilies laden with unsupported assumptions (economics>ecology, regulation destroys the economy, etc.) are also unconstructive. Try some humility next time you have the urge to paint an opposing viewpoint as "stupid and unscientific", because the 'more CO2 = good' line you were towing is in fact an Exxon / Koch funded talking point modeled on the "smoking is healthy" propaganda the tobacco industry tried to put across-- you've fallen for their rank denialism.

The phrasing "despite many caveats, our results suggest" doesn't mean "we have shown...", it means "if we make a whole bunch of other unsupported assumptions, maybe...".

Well that's an interesting interpretation, from a person who confuses inter-glacial temperature change over many millennia with a similar number of degrees toward a global hothouse over a few hundred years.

'Caveats' likely means possibly-mitigating factors that they considered but which didn't negate their hypothesis. I have never seen the term "caveats" used to mean "unsupported assumptions" in a scientific paper (that would be setting themselves up for quick dismissal, which is no way to get published) especially when the word is bracketed by "our results are striking" and an evolutionary shortfall x 10,000 when even a factor of 2 or 20 would be considered worrisome.

In fact, they discuss the caveats in the appendices.

Normally, it would be kind of weird to debate this study and encounter dismissals like those you've set out. 'Didn't take migration into account'-- Really?? The paper is based on data about species that reach back into the geologic past. And I never expected to see a disclaimer along the lines of 'We narrowed our examination to species known for their immobility'. IOW, over time those creatures moved however they could to try to adapt.

However, in this case its not weird when you clearly didn't consider the study in good faith and instead attacked it with whatever cheap shots came to mind. No doubt its a familiar attitude to just about anyone reading this, the compulsion to misuse good diction to try to reframe an issue in accordance with market fundamentalism (which, embarrassingly enough, seems married to religious fundamentalism once again... both traditions devoted as they are to producing 'teaming masses').

As for the trend in scientific outlook, here is a sample:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0106/Climate-change-models-flawed-extinction-rate-likely-higher-than-predicted
http://www.livescience.com/16307-climate-path-migration-amphibian.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v427/n6970/full/nature02121.html
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1876.html
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/

Ah, the classic left wing approach to trying to paint economics as good-people-vs-bad-corporations. This isn't about "allowing industry" to do anything, it's about not destroying the global economy, the economy that we need to grow in order to be able to make the changes that we need to make in order to reduce population growth and carbon emissions.

Throwing what you get from people back at them (sans data) in reverse is not considered clever anymore. Empty homilies laden with unsupported assumptions (economics>ecology, regulation destroys the economy, etc.) are also unconstructive. Try some humility next time you have the urge to paint an opposing viewpoint as "stupid and unscientific", because the 'more CO2 = good' line you were towing is in fact an Exxon / Koch funded talking point modeled on the "smoking is healthy" propaganda the tobacco industry tried to put across-- you've fallen for their rank denialism.

I'm done being invested in anything climate change / global warming related. We had the global cooling in the 70's / global warming / now in the last few months there have been several reports of global cooling now: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n12/full/nclimate1589.html http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/05/26/to-the-horror-of-global-warming-alarmists-global-cooling-is-here/ http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130503/alaskans-alarmed-russian-specter-global-cooling Backed up by the NASA chart: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GISSTemperature/giss_temperature2.php So now we are at Climate Change/Global Warming/Global Cooling. Anyway you look at it man is far too myopic to be objective on this. We have what 50 years of really good temperature data? 150 years of historical data (of varying quality)? For a planet that is 4.5 billion years old? Besides shouldn't we be in global warming anyway if we are still in an ice age? Flame away...

The previous "cure" was following a bone marrow transplant from someone with a mutation that made them highly resistant to HIV. This article makes it sound as though it was the transplant itself that cured the HIV. Does anyone know if these transplants also involved a resistant donor?

Either Mt. Pinatubo or Mt. St. Helens were far larger than that in terms of energy and vastly more effective at coupling the debris into the upper atmosphere. Add to that the large amounts of sulfur compounds they emitted. So, where was the massive weather disruption or global cooling (or warming for that matter)? It didn't happen. It hasn't happened then or even with Krakatoa or other massive eruptions of less than Yellowstone or Mt. Toba scale.

Both Pinatubo and Krakatoa had noticeable climatic consequences. But those effects lasted only a few years, on the surface. (Krakatoa probably affected ocean heat for many decades.) Tambora helped cause "the year without a summer".

16 nukes wouldn't do much, but a large number of nukes could cause a nuclear winter. For the climatic consequences of that, see this paper.

I am pretty sure that this 7-month-old arXiv preprint corresponds to the Nature Communications paper. The titles and author lists are identical, but the abstract deviates, so who knows what changes it went through in revision (I don't have access to the official paper either, even at the university where I work). But presumably it covers the same ground, and it looks like all of the figures from the official are in the preprint.

(Yo, fuck Nature Publishing Group.)

For anyone interested, I believe this is the article TFA refers to:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130628/ncomms3067/full/ncomms3067.html

A preprint appears to be available on arXiv:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.1739

I've read some articles on attempts to extract and sequence old DNA in this sort of range, and I'm surprised they've been able to do this given the half-life of DNA.

I wonder how many other researchers are making claims of extracting DNA this old? It seems improbable, but maybe the state of the art has greatly improved.

DNA has a 521-year half-life

The team predicts that even in a bone at an ideal preservation temperature of 5 C, effectively every bond would be destroyed after a maximum of 6.8 million years. The DNA would cease to be readable much earlier — perhaps after roughly 1.5 million years, when the remaining strands would be too short to give meaningful information.

Bill Gates variously regards himself as Napoleon or Augustus Caesar. I think of him more as a scofflaw and can only hope that he dies the way Napoleon did.

One thing that would be great would be to fund studies that's sole purpose is to verify/reproduce someone else's work. Obviously, with the current state of funding, this really doesn't happen. Once something is published, we as the next researchers are forced to take results as fact - which may not be true due to error, low yield, or (hopefully not) fabrication of results (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct).

I really do believe that incentivizing verification of results and repeat studies (with reasonable limits, of course) would improve scientific research tremendously. However, it's even less likely to take hold than moving away from "publish or perish."

The link to the actual Nature Communications paper is here: Non-volatile memory based on the ferroelectric photovoltaic effect.

This somehow resembles Phase-Change Memory (PCM). PCM devices are composed of a material which, under a high current, there is a thermal fusion and changes to a different material status, from amorphous to crystalline. This changes two properties: light reflectivity (exploited in CDs and DVDs) and electrical resistance (exploited in emerging non-volatile PCM memories). The paper cites PCM and other types of emerging non-volating memories.

In this case, it is the polarization what changes, without requiring a thermal fusion, therefore increasing the endurance of the device, one of the main shortcomings of PCM. The other main shortcoming of PCM is write speed due to the slow thermal process, in the paper they claim something like 10ns. If this can be manufactured with a large scale of integration and low cost, it will probably be a revolution in computer architecture.

Unfortunately, the original paper is paywalled at Nature.

On what evidence? It seems pretty obvious that -some- sort of epigenetic changes happen in the human brain too on -some- occasions. I doubt the researchers are arguing that human pair-bonding happens in exactly the same way as in prairie voles - just that there are some parallels. In any case, the cool thing is that they've shown epigenetic changes behind pair-bonding for the first time. (There's plenty of evidence that epigenetic changes influence other forms of complex human behaviour (eg see http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100908/full/467146a.html). No reason I can see for sex/love to be different.)

The actual Nature Photonics article does talk about the noise floor, which is on order of 1 nanowatt of illumination. That corresponds to ~10^9 visible light photons per second --- easily 10^6 times worse than what your ordinary camera pixels are capable of. Oh, and you need cryogenic cooling to do that well. This graphene sensor is not great for visible light sensing --- what it can do (potentially) better than alternate technologies is sense light all the way from visible to 10um mid-infrared.

Here's the actual Nature Communications article, not a mangling by some incompetent tech journalist.

Even it works, it implies knowing in advance of at least 1 year that it is coming (and sometimes the time since notice is far shorter, even if should be easier to spot bigger ones). Maybe with more of these we could improve detection rate before is too late.

The half life of all DNA is 521 years. What kind of 2-bit "scientists" are these that think they can clone an animal that died 10,000 years ago?

If you read your own reference, you will see that the researchers believe they could recover sequences as old as 1.5 million years. Granted, "sequence" is not the same as "genome", but "10,000 years" is not the same as "500,000 years" (current record). So this seems reasonable to carry out.

Remember, in this case a half life denotes whole vs. broken sequences. You don't need unbroken DNA to sequence it. Remember, one of the first things they will do with the fragmented DNA is create a library, so they will have a renewable supply of every recoverable fragment.

Interesting link there. The DNA studied in the story at the link sat at a temperature of 13.1 C. That is quite a bit above freezing, and temperature is a key aspect of speeding up aging. The oldest DNA sequenced is quite a bit older than 10,000 years (from your link)..

“We might be able to break the record for the oldest authentic DNA sequence, which currently stands at about half a million years,” says Ho.. --- DNA has a 521-year half-life

The half life of all DNA is 521 years. What kind of 2-bit "scientists" are these that think they can clone an animal that died 10,000 years ago?

It seems you are referring to those seismologists who were sentenced for "not having predicted the L'Aquila earthquake". This is not correct: they were sentenced, and rightly so, for having misled the public that there was a certainty that no earthquake was going to happen. That's different from saying that there was no certainty it was going to happen. Their (very public) statements convinced many to return to their homes, and die there when the earthquake happened.

What very public statements by the scientists themselves?

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110601/full/474015a.html

Schroedinger was a mystic. Read some of his quotations about Nirvana and Hinduism at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger

Here's a sample:

The observing mind is not a physical system, it cannot interact with any physical system. And it might be better to reserve the term "subject" for the observing mind. ... For the subject, if anything, is the thing that senses and thinks. Sensations and thoughts do not belong to the "world of energy."

Another sample:

The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.

Another:

Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents -- their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.

Andrew Cleland and Aaron O'Connell have recently done experiments putting a macroscopic object in a superpositional state.

O'Connell's PhD dissertation: http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~martinisgroup/theses/OConnell2010.pdf

In O'Connell's words, from http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/v464/n7287/nature-2010-03-18.html:

the swing both swings back and forth and stays perfectly still at the same time.

In conclusion: 1) Schroedinger had mystical beliefs, which is relevant when you bring up his ulterior motives for the "cat" analogy; 2) modern experiments demonstrate superposition on a macroscopic scale.

The idea is to down-regulate the production of protein(s) that induce cellular senescence in chronic wounds, for example. The short interfering RNA molecules are fragile. The article is touting a potentially more effective delivery system (gun), rather than a particular fragment (bullet).

An even better system would also deal with the fallout from flesh-eating bacteria!

The idea is to down-regulate the production of protein(s) that induce cellular senescence in chronic wounds, for example. The short interfering RNA molecules are fragile. The article is touting a potentially more effective delivery system (gun), rather than a particular fragment (bullet).

I don't know of any macroscopic entanglements, but about three years ago macroscopic cantilever was put into superposition: Paper in Nature.

I dunno, but I hope this means someone builds a Predictor.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7047/full/436150a.html