Slashdot Mirror

The abstract of the article can be found here: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nn1979.html If someone is willing to pay :)

That link offers to sell me the article for $30. There is a note at the top:

Most users gain access to full text articles through a site license. This is available to institutional customers only.

Are you accessing the site from a university? Perhaps they have an arrangement to let students read the article for free.

Anyway, I agree with the authors. Even if the results are better than chance they are not much better than chance. The likelihood of the test being wrong are so high that it's basically worthless.

Does this link not work for you? I can attempt to paraphrase the paper but since it is only two pages long it would speak for itself much better. I was aware of this article and it does show in one particular laboratory experiment that polygraph results likely differ from chance. The article does not conclude that the results are reliable or transferrable to a diagnostic setting. The authors report on a single experiment in which 100 people are re-interviewed for theft cases that have previously been resolved. 50 are innocent (because somebody else confessed) and 50 are guilty (because they confessed). In this experiment, false positive rates of up to 50% and false negative rates of up to 36% were observed (depending on the interpreter of the charts). These findings are better than chance (p .05). The authors conclude, "Hence, we conclude that the validity and reliability of polygraphic interrogation have yet to be established."

Kleinmuntz, B., & Szucko, J. J. (1984) A field study of the fallibility of polygraph lie detection, Nature, 308, 449-450. (p. 304). I'm too cheap to spend $30 for the article but the summary in my intro Psych book says,

Benjamin Kleinmuntz and Julian Szucko (1984) had polygraph experts study the polygraph data of 50 theft suspects who later confessed to being guilty and 50 suspects whose innocence was later established by someone's confession. Had the polygraph experts been the judges, more than one-third of the innocent would have been declared guilty, and almost one-fourth of the guilty would have been declared innocent.

This shows results far better than chance but nowhere near sufficient to trust the results.

Somehow, we've so completely bought into the notion that embryonic stem cells are the only ones with promise, that when -- time and again -- we see that the breakthroughs are occurring with adult stem cells, we still want to ignore them and use embryonic stem cells nonetheless.

Here's another link for you: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/07090 4114446.htm Researchers at the Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh have found adult stem cells that can repair muscle.

That proves it! We need to open up federal funding for embryonic stem cell research!!!

I think it's great that adult stem cell research has been so successful. Also, according to this story: http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070604/full/447618 a.html they can now take skin cells and turn them into embryonic stem cells.

Soon there will be no need to use embryos for stem cell research.

The paper, for those with access to Nature, has extensive dissections. It's not just based on the film of feeding, although I think that's what started them looking.

The actual scientific paper can be found here (subscription required). This is a very neat idea, similar to buckling-induced experiments where similar nano-patterns can be produced quickly and easily in polymeric materials. The micrographs in the paper show remarkably clean and consistent structures, with well-defined periodicity and cross-section. From a scientific point alone, it's quite remarkable to see how one can harness a usually random process (fracture) to generate well-defined nanostructures.

That having been said, this technique suffers from a few limitations. Firstly, it will be difficult to scale this down to arbitrarily small features: polymer film stability becomes increasingly difficult as the film thickness is decreased, so this technique is unlikely to scale cleanly below the 60 nm they've already demonstrated. Also, this technique generates a large-area pattern, but it doesn't appear possible to control the registry of this pattern. So, this could perhaps be used as the first step in a mult-step chip patterning, but if you can't align subsequent patterns, it becomes useless for generating complex multi-layered structures for chips. (I can imagine ways to overcome this, but it wouldn't be easy.)

As such, I really don't think this is going to "revolutionize microchip patterning" as the headline implies. I don't think this will ever be used to generate smaller and smaller chips: the current challenges in the industry for next-generation processes are beyond what this technique can do. (Besides which, it doesn't integrate particularly well into the current photo-lithography infrastructures).

However, as a lower-cost alternative for fabricating nanostructures in the micron to 100 nm size regime, I could see this being useful. It's an easy way to create a large-area array of remarkably consistent patterns. It could be used to create optical gratings, or as a template for assembly of proteins (for diagnostics, etc.), or templates for magnetic domains (in hard-drives, etc.) and many other fields.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050704/pf/436150a_ pf.html

scintillation crystals

Apparently the border guards are having problems telling the difference between kitty litter and enrich uranium

Apes are monophyletic, because apes include humans. You are correct though, that the non-human apes are paraphyletic, because the closest living relative of the chimps are humans.

My impression of the Nature article (subscription required) is that the authors are claiming that their paleontologic find pushes the gorilla split (from the human-chimp lineage) back to ~12 million years. Based on this, they essentially recalibrate the molecular clock as it relates to several of the ape divergences. This information is in section 5 of the paper's online supplementary materials (subscription not required), not the body of the article. Keep in mind that supplementary materials generally aren't peer-reviewed as rigorously as the rest of the article.

Apes are monophyletic, because apes include humans. You are correct though, that the non-human apes are paraphyletic, because the closest living relative of the chimps are humans.

My impression of the Nature article (subscription required) is that the authors are claiming that their paleontologic find pushes the gorilla split (from the human-chimp lineage) back to ~12 million years. Based on this, they essentially recalibrate the molecular clock as it relates to several of the ape divergences. This information is in section 5 of the paper's online supplementary materials (subscription not required), not the body of the article. Keep in mind that supplementary materials generally aren't peer-reviewed as rigorously as the rest of the article.

and as far I know, no one has succeeded yet in getting silicon to convert electricity directly into laser light.

Does this count?
http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v1/n4/full/n photon.2007.29.html

> and as far I know, no one has succeeded yet in getting silicon to convert electricity directly into laser light.

Does this count?
http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v1/n4/full/n photon.2007.29.html

I doubt that this would be specific enough (and of uncertain sensitivity) to be useful.

The peroxalate nanoparticles were also capable of detecting hydrogen peroxide at concentrations as low as 250nM (Fig. 2b), and thus can detect hydrogen peroxide at physiologically relevant concentrations.

Another appealing feature of peroxalate nanoparticles for imaging hydrogen peroxide is their specificity for hydrogen peroxide over other reactive oxygen species.

The specificity of peroxalate nanoparticles containing rubrene to hydrogen peroxide was therefore investigated. Figure 2d shows that peroxalate nanoparticles have considerable selectivity for hydrogen peroxide over other reactive oxygen species. For example, at 10 micromolar hydrogen peroxide, peroxalate nanoparticles gave a chemiluminescent intensity of 1.3×106 RLUs^-1, which is 50 times higher than with either tert-butyl peroxide or the hydroxide radical.

The overproduction of hydrogen peroxide is implicated in the development of numerous diseases 1-4 and there is currently great interest in developing contrast agents that can image hydrogen peroxide in vivo.

The overproduction of hydrogen peroxide is implicated in the development of numerous inflammatory diseases, such as atherosclerosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and liver hepatitis 23-27.

1. Lim, S. D. et al. Increased Nox1 and hydrogen peroxide in prostate cancer. Prostate 62, 200-207 (2005).
2. Chang, M. C. Y., Pralle, A., Isacoff, E. Y. & Chang, C. J. A selective, cell-permeable optical probe for hydrogen peroxide in living cells. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 126, 15392-15393 (2004).
3. Miller, E.W., Albers, A. E., Pralle, A., Isacoff, E. Y. & Chang, C. J. Boronate-based fluorescent probes for imaging cellular hydrogen peroxide. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 16652-16659 (2005).
4. Albers, A. E., Okreglak, V. S. & Chang, C. J. A FRET-based approach to ratiometric fluorescence detection of hydrogen peroxide. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 128, 9640-9641 (2006).
23. Polytarchou, C., Hatziapostolou, M. & Papadimitriou, E. Hydrogen peroxide stimulates proliferation and migration of human prostate cancer cells through activation of activator protein-1 and up-regulation of the heparin affin regulatory peptide gene. J. Biol. Chem. 280, 40428-40435 (2005).
24. Laurent, A. et al. Controlling tumor growth by modulating endogenous production of reactive oxygen species. Cancer Res. 65, 948-956 (2005).
25. Stone, J. R. & Collins, T. The role of hydrogen peroxide in endothelial proliferative responses. Endothelium-New York 9, 231-238 (2002).
26. Mohler, D. L. & Shell, T. A. The hydrogen peroxide induced enhancement of DNA cleavage in the ambient light photolysis of CpFe(CO)(2)Ph: A potential strategy for targeting cancer cells. Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett. 15, 4585-4588 (2005).
27. Hirpara, J. L., Clement, M. V. & Pervaiz, S. Intracellular acidification triggered by mitochondrial-derived hydrogen peroxide is an effector mechanism for drug-induced apoptosis in tumor cells. J. Biol. Chem. 276, 514-521 (2001).

The peroxalate nanoparticles have several attractive properties for in vivo imaging, such as tunable wavelength emission (460-630 nm), nanomolar sensitivity for hydrogen peroxide and excellent specificity for hydrogen peroxide over other reactive oxygen species.

Out with the old and in with the new:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v430/n7001/ab s/430742a.html

Old symbys out, new symbys in.

I wrote the news article for Nature. Here it is. It'll be free for only a few days, so grab it while it's hot!

Actually, there is a very interesting article in Nature describing this.
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061113/full/061113 -11.html

Yes, you are correct. I took a look at the original article which actually had a scale bar for the image and it amounts to roughly 200 micron. The linked article is kind of scant on details, so here's a more detailed writeup: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/07081 2173253.htm

For a while I've been hoping that they would do something similar and allow comments (and maybe blog references) through Google Scholar, their search engine for academic publications. It would be great to have a way for the research community to publically share thoughts on a publication besides the high-latency/low-throughout channel of the actual journal. PLoS One and Nature Precedings are starting to do this for work published by them, but having a commenting function built into Google Scholar would allow comments on anything the search engine indexes. Just a minor feature this could have a huge impact on academic research.

According to original article in Nature.

Anagenetic means one type of an organism is a direct descendant of the other type without splitting. Co-existance by definition eliminates that, meaning the individuals that lived at the same time are not descendants of one another but descendants of earlier generations. If you and I are of the same age, I cannot be your father and vice versa, but we still can share the same father, grandfather, etc...

This is is because of the mess with nomenclature which essentially stems from that we do not know if erectus and habilis were not able to mate producing successful progeny. Those guys might very well be Homo Bushus (no pun intended) and Homo Norwegius of that age - of the same human species and all the terminology around it is just Bullus Shitus.

Sites in eastern Africa have shed light on the emergence and early evolution of the genus Homo1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The best known early hominin species, H. habilis and H. erectus, have often been interpreted as time-successive segments of a single anagenetic evolutionary lineage3, 7, 8, 9, 10. The case for this was strengthened by the discovery of small early Pleistocene hominin crania from Dmanisi in Georgia that apparently provide evidence of morphological continuity between the two taxa11, 12. Here we describe two new cranial fossils from the Koobi Fora Formation, east of Lake Turkana in Kenya, that have bearing on the relationship between species of early Homo. A partial maxilla assigned to H. habilis reliably demonstrates that this species survived until later than previously recognized, making an anagenetic relationship with H. erectus unlikely. The discovery of a particularly small calvaria of H. erectus indicates that this taxon overlapped in size with H. habilis, and may have shown marked sexual dimorphism. The new fossils confirm the distinctiveness of H. habilis and H. erectus, independently of overall cranial size, and suggest that these two early taxa were living broadly sympatrically in the same lake basin for almost half a million years.

It surprises me that people can be so dismissive about this when they don't even know what they're talking about. Look at the abstract of the actual Nature article (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7154/a bs/nature05986.html). The reasoning is quite clear. Most evidence until now has pointed toward a progressive lineage, but now we have evidence of coexistence. Hence the importance of the finding. The scientists are not surprised because they thought coexistence of the species was impossible, but because it runs counter to most other evidence.

For those interested, here's the news@nature article, as well as the original research paper. Here's a paste of the abstract:

Preparation and characterization of graphene oxide paper

Dmitriy A. Dikin1, Sasha Stankovich1, Eric J. Zimney1, Richard D. Piner1, Geoffrey H. B. Dommett1, Guennadi Evmenenko2, SonBinh T. Nguyen3 & Rodney S. Ruoff1

Free-standing paper-like or foil-like materials are an integral part of our technological society. Their uses include protective layers, chemical filters, components of electrical batteries or supercapacitors, adhesive layers, electronic or optoelectronic components, and molecular storage1. Inorganic 'paper-like' materials based on nanoscale components such as exfoliated vermiculite or mica platelets have been intensively studied2, 3 and commercialized as protective coatings, high-temperature binders, dielectric barriers and gas-impermeable membranes4,5. Carbon-based flexible graphite foils5, 6, 7 composed of stacked platelets of expanded graphite have long been used8, 9 in packing and gasketing applications because of their chemical resistivity against most media, superior sealability over a wide temperature range, and impermeability to fluids. The discovery of carbon nanotubes brought about bucky paper10, which displays excellent mechanical and electrical properties that make it potentially suitable for fuel cell and structural composite applications11, 12, 13, 14. Here we report the preparation and characterization of graphene oxide paper, a free-standing carbon-based membrane material made by flow-directed assembly of individual graphene oxide sheets. This new material outperforms many other paper-like materials in stiffness and strength. Its combination of macroscopic flexibility and stiffness is a result of a unique interlocking-tile arrangement of the nanoscale graphene oxide sheets.

For those interested, here's the news@nature article, as well as the original research paper. Here's a paste of the abstract:

Preparation and characterization of graphene oxide paper

Dmitriy A. Dikin1, Sasha Stankovich1, Eric J. Zimney1, Richard D. Piner1, Geoffrey H. B. Dommett1, Guennadi Evmenenko2, SonBinh T. Nguyen3 & Rodney S. Ruoff1

Free-standing paper-like or foil-like materials are an integral part of our technological society. Their uses include protective layers, chemical filters, components of electrical batteries or supercapacitors, adhesive layers, electronic or optoelectronic components, and molecular storage1. Inorganic 'paper-like' materials based on nanoscale components such as exfoliated vermiculite or mica platelets have been intensively studied2, 3 and commercialized as protective coatings, high-temperature binders, dielectric barriers and gas-impermeable membranes4,5. Carbon-based flexible graphite foils5, 6, 7 composed of stacked platelets of expanded graphite have long been used8, 9 in packing and gasketing applications because of their chemical resistivity against most media, superior sealability over a wide temperature range, and impermeability to fluids. The discovery of carbon nanotubes brought about bucky paper10, which displays excellent mechanical and electrical properties that make it potentially suitable for fuel cell and structural composite applications11, 12, 13, 14. Here we report the preparation and characterization of graphene oxide paper, a free-standing carbon-based membrane material made by flow-directed assembly of individual graphene oxide sheets. This new material outperforms many other paper-like materials in stiffness and strength. Its combination of macroscopic flexibility and stiffness is a result of a unique interlocking-tile arrangement of the nanoscale graphene oxide sheets.

No need to continue your work....it's already been solved, too. From a link within the article: http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070716/multimedia/ 070716-13_bx1.html.

What about War?

Two easier to read commentaries in Nature and Science

The actual paper is at:

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/p df/nmat1929.pdf

If one looks at the models shown in the paper, they are graphed in such a way (on the right) that the modeled energy would have to still be twisted for it to make sense.

Also, they don't examine how their model handles values for w so large that it's not possible to make the strip with them. Nor do they explore negative numbers or zero/infinity extremes for their length and width. How does their model handle those special cases? Just looking to be thorough.

Why did I have the impression this is a well established fact? In addition, mitochondria not signalling the cell to die is the main reason that cancer cells don't die. It's many months now that research into dichloroacetate (DCA), which has been used for other purposes too, causes cancer-cell mitochondria to resume their operation and cause the cells to eventually die. See an example of a similar report.

Yeah, the National Enquirer of science. Wake me up when Science runs it. BTW, the article is only available to the suckers who'd pay for that drivel.

I can't find the current issue of Nature online, but here's a bittorrent link of the April 26th issue to give you an idea.

And The Enquirer is a freebie.

It is also cited here:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12174-sex-ph eromones-make-mice-brains-grow.html

and here:

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/ abs/nn1928.html

It appears that the article has not yet been published but is posted online in advance. Also, Samuel Weiss is the last author of seven. I find it a little weird that CBC article calls them "Sam Weiss's findings," as if he were the only one working on it.

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v10/n7/index.h tml

No papers by Sam Weiss or anything whose name sounds like the paper discussed. Or am I missing something?

//T

Your university course is wrong? Here's a problem a common Turing machine can't solve:

Using a program of length n produce n+1 "really" random numbers.

Quantum events are as far as I understand the only source of "really" random numbers we have and are just plain weird. The problem comes in part because we don't have a clear definition of random.

Anyway, I've not read this article yet but it looks like it could be of interest: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v318/n6041/ab s/318041a0.html .

"Rather than ridiculing the EU Theorists, people should put serious effort into debunking them if they feel that they are wrong because what they are saying is very important"

It's actually pretty hard to debunk these claims without ridiculing them, because they are so poorly informed. You want "serious debunking"? Okay, I'll try.

Just as an example, the article about the "blueberries" doesn't make any sense, because it is founded on the mistaken impression that geologists think concretions form as isolated rocks on the sea floor that roll around for a while and then get incorporated into sediments. It's bizarre nonsense that even a casual glance at the literature (or a wikipedia page) would reveal. It reads like something out of the 19th century. Everything about concretions is inconsistent with such a scenario. For example, many concretions have sedimentary layers (bedding or laminations) that pass right through the concretion. Some of the "blueberries" also show hints of laminations on their surface, and they don't show the features typical of separate rocks (clasts) that are deposited.

Concretions are thought to form after deposition of the sediments by minerals being precipitated in the tiny spaces between the sediment grains, cementing the grains together as the minerals precipitate. It is usually fairly easy to tell if a particular structure formed separately and was incorporated into the sediment versus forming post-depositionally, and the "blueberries" are pretty clearly post-depositional.

Sometimes the growth of the precipitating minerals also causes expansion of the spaces, causing the concretion to displace surrounding sediments outward. This can create spaces within the interior of a concretion if the cementation and expansion is happening mostly on the outer surface (imagine the outer shell expanding in volume), resulting in some types of geodes (some types, because other geodes have nothing to do with concretion formation, and form by infilling of pre-existing cavities, such as bubbles (vesicles) in lava flows, but I digress...).

There is a fair amount of variation to the way concretions form, but there are probably hundreds of papers about them, including some good papers on the "Moqui marbles" that have been compared to the Martian "blueberries". There are some alternative interpretations for the "blueberries" (e.g., as condensate from impacts), but I don't think these are consistent with the bedding surrounding the structures, and they are quite different from anything "electrical".

Anyway, if "Electric Universe Theorists" can't even keep the very basics of the conventional theories straight, why should people take anything the "Electric Universe" people say seriously? And I don't know what is so "alarming" about supposed electrical effects -- the rovers seem to be driving around just fine without getting zapped, and they've got exposed electrical connections on their surfaces (i.e. the solar panels, as can be seen in the pictures).

For those with access the paper can be found here (PDF). Dr.Dobb's and PhysOrg also have the story.

For those with access the paper can be found here (PDF). Dr.Dobb's and PhysOrg also have the story.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v447/n7146/ab s/nature05896.html

Apparently, the serious engineering has been done and you can have ripple free liquid mirrors. There's a picture of both a huge mirror and an image obtained from it.

It's too bad this article and all the references are published in non free magazines. The $18 to $30 cost per article is steep. When you consider that all of the actual research is government funded, the cost of the information itself should be zero.

What's expected of us by Ted Chiang

I'm a bit sceptical about this, as a previous claim to turn adult bone marrow into stem cells, by Catherine Verfaille, later turned out to be impossible to reproduce. A critical article appeared in Nature, as well as a more popular article (in German).

I'm a bit sceptical about this, as a previous claim to turn adult bone marrow into stem cells, by Catherine Verfaille, later turned out to be impossible to reproduce. A critical article appeared in Nature, as well as a more popular article (in German).