Slashdot Mirror
Domain: nature.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nature.com.
Comments · 2,953
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The article in Nature
Also see the article in Nature.
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Sounds like meatlegging to me"Meat - a growth industry"
We certainly don't call any of our clients 'The Meat', or 'Pork Chop #1'. That's just tabloid nonsense. And while we're skewering misconceptions, the job isn't as glamorous as you might think. Although I go to club and restaurant openings, film premières, first nights, fashion shows and stay in first-class hotels all around the world, I'm not there to enjoy myself. I'm there to prevent any live cells from my clients' bodies falling into the hands of meatleggers.
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Re:Wrong on just about all countsSo we are seeing hypersexuality, earlier and earlier puberty, obesity, and a lot of neurosis.
I don't have anything better to do than argue with a eugenist on a Sunday morning, so here goes:
You are overstating the inevitability of very vague negative effects in order to support your beliefs. It sounds very Chicken Little-ish. For example, hypersexuality and neurosis? Do you have any real evidence that these are increasing? If you take an anthropology class you'll see plenty of people who don't "fit in" and get branded as a witch in tribal societies. It may be true that anxiety and depression levels are rising, but it could also very well not be true.
I also just read a very interesting article about Genghis Khan and how up to
As for obesity and a lowering age of puberty, you are correct about these. FYI, the lowering age of puberty may be an effect of better nutrition (see here). Our bodies are not used to eating as much and as well as they do. More on that later, though.
The only way out of this situation is to start applying deliberate selective pressure. Given that this would essentially mean giving up the right of individuals to reproduce at will, I don't see it happening any time soon. Plus, I would imagine that a lot of effort would be thrown at hot-button traits like homosexuality or intelligence which probably aren't even heritable. (I know there are a lot of people who say otherwise; there are good reasons for doubting them, starting with their very eagerness.)
Here's the real meat of where you're on the wrong track.
Let's start easy. Is a person who weighs 1000 pounds going to procreate less than, at an equal rate to, or more than, a normal weight individual? The reasonable answer is "less than." This is selective pressure. It only needs to exert itself at the extremes to have a gradual effect. Remember that evolution is a long process.
The same argument can be said for neurosis, even though I've disputed whether or not this is a new problem. Are people who are very anxious and depressed going to procreate less than, at an equal rate to, or more than a normal person? I'd argue that they are less likely to procreate than a normal person. Hence, selective pressure.
As for homosexuality and intelligence, you're simply off-base. Read this Science article to see that heritability of intelligence is pegged somewhere "below 50%". They say it this way because previous studies have found very large heritabilities for IQ, and it is significant that they found heritability to be "so low" as to be under 50%. Here's from the full text:Our results suggest far smaller heritabilities: broad-sense heritability, which measures the total effect of genes on IQ, is perhaps 48%; narrow-sense heritability, the relevant quantity for evolutionary arguments because it measures the additive effects of genes, is about 34%. Herrnstein and Murray's evolutionary conclusions are tenuous in light of these heritabilities.
Aside from this evidence, it's simple folly to think that genetics plays no role in intelligence. The number of NMDA receptors in your brain have recently been shown to play a role in memory, which has an obvious relation to intelligence. Does it not make sense that people with higher numbers of NMDA receptors would have better memories and be more intelligent? The number of NMDA receptors in your brain is definitely partially controlled by genetics. The degree to which it is malleable is the real question.
As for homosexuality, -
Er...
Wasn't there another slashdot article a few weeks ago about how blackholes don't exist? I think it was talking about this report.
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Cause: Air Pollution Effect: Global Cooling
Does air pollution help in the fight against global warming?
Maybe the earth is getting hotter due to the sun getting hotter.
Maybe I'll bump up my Sun Screen UV Factor and buy a darker pair of Oakley's next time a clean air act is passed. -
Speaking of SUN....
Earth's air is cleaner, but this may worsen the greenhouse effect.
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050502/full/050502 -8.html
Our planet's air has cleared up in the past decade or two, allowing more sunshine to reach the ground, say two studies in Science this week.
Reductions in industrial emissions in many countries, along with the use of particulate filters for car exhausts and smoke stacks, seem to have reduced the amount of dirt in the atmosphere and made the sky more transparent.
That sounds like very good news. But the researchers say that more solar energy arriving on the ground will also make the surface warmer, and this may add to the problems of global warming. More sunlight will also have knock-on effects on cloud cover, winds, rainfall and air temperature that are difficult to predict.
The results suggest that a downward trend in the amount of sunlight reaching the surface, which has been observed since measurements began in the late 1950s, is now over.
The researchers argue that this trend, commonly called 'global dimming', reversed more than a decade ago, probably following the collapse of communist economies and the consequent decrease in industrial pollutants.
The widespread brightening has remained unnoticed until now simply because there wasn't enough data for a statistically significant analysis, says Martin Wild, an atmospheric scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and an author on one of the reports.
Sunny days
Wild and his team looked at data on surface sunshine levels from hundreds of devices around the planet. They found that since the 1980s there has been a transition from decreasing to increasing solar radiation nearly everywhere, except in heavily polluted areas such as India and at scattered sites in Australia, Africa, and South America1.
A second study, led by Rachel Pinker from the University of Maryland, College Park, found a similar trend by looking at satellite data, although their research suggests the extent of the brightening is smaller2. Unlike ground stations, satellites can sample the whole planet, including the oceans. However, satellite data are difficult to calibrate, and so are considered less accurate than measurements from the ground.
Surprisingly, Wild's study shows a brightening trend in China, despite the fact that there is a booming, fossil-fuel-intensive industry in that country. Wild says he can only speculate that the use of clean-air technologies in China might be more widespread and efficient than has been thought.
In contrast, India's vast brown clouds of smog, which result from wildfires and the use of fossil fuels, have reduced the sunlight reaching the ground.
Just warming up
Researchers will now focus on working out the long-term effects of clearer air. One thing they do know is that black particulate matter in the air has been contributing a cooling effect to the ground. "It is clear that the greenhouse effect has been partly masked in the past by air pollution," says Andreas Macke, a meteorologist at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany.
Uncertainties remain part of the game because scientists have only a limited ability to track cloud cover and particulates, says Macke. Increased cooperation in programmes such as the NASA-led International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project should help to close the gaps in our knowledge of how dirty air affects climate, he says. -
Re:Science often reject dispersed papersEverything you say is untrue.
Peiser's work was not previously disseminated. Science just made that up. See Peiser's web page about this.
And Nature has always allowed--indeed, supported--preprint archives.
Moderators: please note that I've provided links to back up what I say; the parent seems to be a troll or similar.
(Peiser's submission to Science is available on his web page. It's short and easy to read. If it's right, then the original Oreskes paper was fraudulent.)
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Roland, here comes your killerYes, first of all, I am kinda jealous that when I submitted the same story on April 28, it got rejected and to my shock today, its in!!
Well,
what if one constantly sees a site like freshnews, would it not increase the probability of a story getting posted.. I mean it has all sites from cnet to techdirt to porn-tech site like madville, you name it they have it..
and then there are tech mags like nature, newscientist and trnmag, which have good articles.. so how can such a situation be tackled? or how does accepting of articles get streamlined and give a fair chance to all? I agree that it also depends upon the way the article is submitted instead of just sending the link and a line..
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Hey Roland, I'm violating your copyright! SUCK IT!
Secure Video Conferencing via Quantum Cryptography
If you use a webcam to talk with your mom, this tool is not for you. But if you're working for a company and that you have to routinely discuss about sensitive future projects or the possible acquisition of another company, you need more security, and this new video conferencing system based on quantum cryptography is a tool you need. According to this article from Nature, researchers from Toshiba have developed a system which can generate 100 quantum 'keys' every second, fast enough to protect every frame in a video exchange. This technology, which today is working over a distance of about 120 kilometers, could become commercially available within two years at an initial cost of $20,000. Read more...
Here is the introduction from Nature.
Scientists from Toshiba's Cambridge Research Laboratory unveiled their invention to business leaders and government officials at Britain's Department of Trade and Industry in London on 27 April.
Their system is capable of generating 100 quantum 'keys' every second. This is fast enough for every individual frame of video to be protected by its own encryption. "This makes the system highly secure," says Andrew Shields, who leads the Cambridge team. "It would take an enormous computational resource to crack this frame by frame."
Of course, today's videoconferencing tools using conventional encryption are already pretty secure. But if the NSA wants to check your conversation, I betit can. With quantum cryptography, this is a different story.
Quantum cryptography promises to stop such eavesdroppers. The system works by first establishing a 'key' that provides instructions on how to decode an incoming message. This key is built into the quantum state of photons. Intercepting a message breaks the key and alerts the sender and intended recipient to the security breach, because the very act of observing a quantum state changes it.
The Quantum Information Group at Toshiba gives more details on this subject on this page about Security from Eavesdropping . Below is a diagram illustrating the concept (Credit: Toshiba's Cambridge Research Laboratory).
Using single photons to carry the bit material for the key prevents undetected eavesdropping. Because each bit is carried by a single photon, it is not possible for a hacker to tap in and remove part of the signal, as shown in the illustration. Single photons do not split, so if the hacker (Eve) measures the photons on the fibre, they will not reach the intended recipient (Bob). Only the photons that arrive at Bob are used to form the key, so Eve cannot gain any useful information by this crude 'tapping' attack.
The first commercial applications of quantum cryptography are now about one year old. However, this new system offers new levels of performances, according to Nature.
Unlike previous systems, which become unreliable when they heat up, this device can run continuously for more than four weeks, says Shields. The quantum information can only go so far before being corrupted by random interactions with surrounding material, however. "We've shown this can work over 120 kilometres of fibre," says Shields.
Toshiba has already built a Quantum Cryptography Prot
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Call me sarcastic... it has been done before
but I think "bioterrorism detection" is simply a buzzword that helps attract a lot of money. Especially the use of the word "future" implies that they have not really an idea what to use their invention for. It's simply a neat trick. It has been done before, by the way, on a much smaller scale: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v394/n6693/a
b s/394539a0_fs.html -
Relevant research publications
::digs around for relevant info::
First off, here's the web page for Ron Weiss, the scientist mentioned in the article.
Here's (what I think is) the relevant publication on the topic:
A synthetic multicellular system for programmed pattern formation
Subhayu Basu, Yoram Gerchman, Cynthia H. Collins, Frances H. Arnold and Ron Weiss
Nature 434, 1130-1134 (28 April 2005)
Pattern formation is a hallmark of coordinated cell behaviour in both single and multicellular organisms1, 2, 3. It typically involves cellcell communication and intracellular signal processing. Here we show a synthetic multicellular system in which genetically engineered 'receiver' cells are programmed to form ring-like patterns of differentiation based on chemical gradients of an acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL) signal that is synthesized by 'sender' cells. In receiver cells, 'band-detect' gene networks respond to user-defined ranges of AHL concentrations. By fusing different fluorescent proteins as outputs of network variants, an initially undifferentiated 'lawn' of receivers is engineered to form a bullseye pattern around a sender colony. Other patterns, such as ellipses and clovers, are achieved by placing senders in different configurations. Experimental and theoretical analyses reveal which kinetic parameters most significantly affect ring development over time. Construction and study of such synthetic multicellular systems can improve our quantitative understanding of naturally occurring developmental processes and may foster applications in tissue engineering, biomaterial fabrication and biosensing.
This conference abstract is also pretty darned cool:
Dynamic Control in a Coordinated Multi-Cellular Maze Solving System
Hsu, Allen (Princeton Univ.), Vijayan, Vikram (Princeton Univ.), Fomundam, Lawrence (Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County), Gerchman, Yoram (Princeton Univ.), Basu, Subhayu (Princeton Univ.), Karig, David (Princeton Univ.), Hooshangi, Sara (Princeton Univ.), Weiss, Ron (Princeton Univ.)
2005 American Control Conference
Control system theory provides convenient tools and concepts for describing and analyzing complex cell functions. In this paper we demonstrate the use of control theory to forward-engineer a complex synthetic gene network constructed from several modular components. Specifically, we present the design and simulation of a synthetic multi-cellular maze-solving system. Here, bacterial cells are programmed to use artificial cell-to-cell communication and regulatory feedback in order to illuminate the correct path in a user-defined maze of cells arranged on a surface. Simulations were used to analyze the system's spatiotemporal dynamics and sensitivity to various kinetic parameters. Experiments with Escherichia coli were carried out to characterize the diffusion properties of artificial cell-to-cell communication based on bacterial quorum sensing systems. The rational design process and simulation tools employed in this study provide an example for future engineering of complex synthetic gene networks comprising multiple control system motifs. -
link to nature article
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Re:Its terribly sad....
Even better, how about some Non-governmental, non-profit space agency that gets funded by a bunch of geeks with nothing better to spend their money on? (and by the way, avoid paying taxes altogether) I bet there's already a web site...
Like the Planetary Society? On May 31, they'll be launching Cosmos 1, the first solar sail spacecraft. Here's a Nature article. According to the page, it'll be "the first space mission ever flown by a non-governmental advocacy group."
Another interesting philanthropic project was Elon Musk's Mars Oasis project to put an experimental greenhouse on the surface of Mars. He hired a team to do some preliminary designs and cost analysis, and found that actually building the thing was pretty affordable for him. However, the launch costs weren't as affordable as he wanted (they would've been the most expensive part of the entire project), so he decided to redirect his efforts towards SpaceX to lower those costs. I suspect the Mars Oasis project is still on the back-burner, and he may pursue it again once he gets launch costs low enough. -
Re:Isn't that what research is for?
It's not correct to say traditional publishers don't ask for money to publish. Some journals require you to pay fee(see in page charges heading). See this link for a debate on the open journals published in Nature
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Re:Isn't that what research is for?
It's not correct to say traditional publishers don't ask for money to publish. Some journals require you to pay fee(see in page charges heading). See this link for a debate on the open journals published in Nature
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Black Holes Ain'tFrom TFA: caused by neutrons colliding with blackholes
Didn't slashdot report that Black Holes don't exists
Whom am I to believe?
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Wrong.
It's contains all genetic information that determines how cells are formed and how they behave.
Not all. See a recent Nature article on some weed that self-heals DNA when genes from both parents are broken.
Oops.
How did that ability evolve? -
Not first by a long shot
Here's a 4 year old paper about a compound that doesn't only work in cell culture but also in animals. Sorry but who's first?
A highly selective telomerase inhibitor limiting human cancer cell proliferation
As an aside, would you rather take a pill or inefficient, potentially mutagenic gene therapy?
I know what I'd choose... -
Re:Science by AI
This reminds me of a Nature paper from last year:
Functional genomic hypothesis generation and experimentation by a robot scientist
The question of whether it is possible to automate the scientific process is of both great theoretical interest and increasing practical importance because, in many scientific areas, data are being generated much faster than they can be effectively analysed. We describe a physically implemented robotic system that applies techniques from artificial intelligence to carry out cycles of scientific experimentation. The system automatically originates hypotheses to explain observations, devises experiments to test these hypotheses, physically runs the experiments using a laboratory robot, interprets the results to falsify hypotheses inconsistent with the data, and then repeats the cycle. Here we apply the system to the determination of gene function using deletion mutants of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and auxotrophic growth experiments. We built and tested a detailed logical model (involving genes, proteins and metabolites) of the aromatic amino acid synthesis pathway. In biological experiments that automatically reconstruct parts of this model, we show that an intelligent experiment selection strategy is competitive with human performance and significantly outperforms, with a cost decrease of 3-fold and 100-fold (respectively), both cheapest and random-experiment selection.
New Scientist also had an article on it: "Robot scientist outperforms humans in lab." -
Re:Countermeasures & Conclusion
If you're going to cut-and-paste for karma, please CITE YOUR REFERENCES!
Dude, this isn't Nature. It's
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Two famous pages..."It has not escaped our notice..."
Of course, he could just be a crackpot. He'd better have some equations and data that support his hypothesis and contradict black hole theory.
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Re:The actual article
I don't know if his evidence is convincing, but the quantity is perhaps not the best measure. Besides, even a one-page paper can be pretty important.
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April Fools Day Sites
Isn't April Fools Day just the best? =] For a 'full' list of sites pulling pranks today check out this list here
Here is a sample:
kellyosbourne.org - Sanctuary records group shut us down
nukefreezone.net - Making fun of atrios.blogspot.com
weebl.jolt.co.uk - Replaced with Cats-By-Mail
telecom.co.nz - Click 2 Brick
ytmnd.com - (NSFW) hacked by teens for christ
wingus.ampedhost.com - Site converted into Mingus' Gently-Used Furniture store. Oh dear. Why won't he be kind?
homestarrunner.com - Now a pay service.
whirlpool.net.au - Australia's biggest Luddite to head Australia's largest telco
thinkgeek.com - Fake product listings.
theregister.co.uk - Bush twins to join Air Force tech unit in Iraq
creativebits.org - Site purchased by Microsoft
ocremix.org - Now partnered with EA (or something like that). Called EA ReMix.
spacedaily.com - Bush Cancels Space Shuttle Program
planet.gnome.org - Switched sites with planet.kde.org
planet.kde.org - Switched sites with planet.gnome.org
ietf.org - RFC: Efficient Transformation Formats of Unicode
beejaysworld.de - Gentoo dropping livecds for x86
nature.com - Apollo bacteria spur lunar erosion
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov - Water On Mars
smh.com.au - (Free Reg Req) SMEGmail offers 1 terabyte storage
smh.com.au - (Free Reg Req) Linux looks to Hilton for exposure
thetoque.com - Canada Builds Own Missile Defense Shield
onion.com - U.S. Dog Owners Fear Arrival of Africanized Fleas
chron.com - Bush Twins in Maxim
ask.com - Jeeves has been replaced by a robot
animenewsnetwork.com - Viz Unlicenses Naruto
uninventthewheel.co.uk - New BMW technology to get around the EU ban on right hand drive cars in Europe.
newgrounds.com - changing to numagrounds.com
neopets.com - neopets adds 50 new pets
www.firstloox.org - The Loox is being recalled
packages.gentoo.org - Adobe doesn't sell products for Linux
pc.ign.com - Microsoft World of Wordcraft (Extremely Obvious)
spamusement.com - Page full of spoof banner ads
gentooexperimental.org - Gentoo using the NT kernel
moddb.com -
April Fools Day is Great isn't it?
For a full list of sites that pulled April Fools Day Pranks this year check out this list here -
Here is a sampling:
dotget.net - Microsoft to put P2P software
kylewenda.com - the government records your phone calls... scary
rfc-editor.org - RFC for "Requirements for Morality Sections in Routing Area Drafts"
planet.gentoo.org - Various things, CFLAGS, etc
fark.com - Many Jokes (keep reloading): BOOBIES!, Logged in as admin, North-Central Kentucky Bunghole-Discharge, page from 1999, BEER
2600.com - Formal Attire required for 2600 meetings today
forumsector.com - Changed the name to Nascar Sector
wikipedia.org - Britannica taking over Wikimedia
google.com - Google releases Google Gulp
kellyosbourne.org - Sanctuary records group shut us down
nukefreezone.net - Making fun of atrios.blogspot.com
weebl.jolt.co.uk - Replaced with Cats-By-Mail
wingus.ampedhost.com - Site converted into Mingus' Gently-Used Furniture store. Oh dear. Why won't he be kind?
homestarrunner.com - Now a pay service.
whirlpool.net.au - Australia's biggest Luddite to head Australia's largest telco
theregister.co.uk - Bush twins to join Air Force tech unit in Iraq
creativebits.org - Site purchased by Microsoft
ocremix.org - Now partnered with EA (or something like that). Called EA ReMix.
spacedaily.com - Bush Cancels Space Shuttle Program
planet.gnome.org - Switched sites with planet.kde.org
planet.kde.org - Switched sites with planet.gnome.org
ietf.org - RFC: Efficient Transformation Formats of Unicode
beejaysworld.de - Gentoo dropping livecds for x86
nature.com - Apollo bacteria spur lunar erosion
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov - Water On Mars -
April Fools Day is Great isn't it?
For a full list of sites that pulled April Fools Day Pranks this year check out this list here Here is a sampling: dotget.net - Microsoft to put P2P software
kylewenda.com - the government records your phone calls... scary
rfc-editor.org - RFC for "Requirements for Morality Sections in Routing Area Drafts"
waferbaby.com - amusing php error
planet.gentoo.org - Various things, CFLAGS, etc
fark.com - Many Jokes (keep reloading): BOOBIES!, Logged in as admin, North-Central Kentucky Bunghole-Discharge, page from 1999, BEER
2600.com - Formal Attire required for 2600 meetings today
forumsector.com - Changed the name to Nascar Sector
wikipedia.org - Britannica taking over Wikimedia
google.com - Google releases Google Gulp
kellyosbourne.org - Sanctuary records group shut us down
nukefreezone.net - Making fun of atrios.blogspot.com
weebl.jolt.co.uk - Replaced with Cats-By-Mail
telecom.co.nz - Click 2 Brick
ytmnd.com - (NSFW) hacked by teens for christ
wingus.ampedhost.com - Site converted into Mingus' Gently-Used Furniture store. Oh dear. Why won't he be kind?
homestarrunner.com - Now a pay service.
whirlpool.net.au - Australia's biggest Luddite to head Australia's largest telco
thinkgeek.com - Fake product listings.
theregister.co.uk - Bush twins to join Air Force tech unit in Iraq
creativebits.org - Site purchased by Microsoft
ocremix.org - Now partnered with EA (or something like that). Called EA ReMix.
spacedaily.com - Bush Cancels Space Shuttle Program
planet.gnome.org - Switched sites with planet.kde.org
planet.kde.org - Switched sites with planet.gnome.org
ietf.org - RFC: Efficient Transformation Formats of Unicode
beejaysworld.de - Gentoo dropping livecds for x86
nature.com - Apollo bacteria spur lunar erosion
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov - Water On Mars -
Nature paperAt first I'm extremely sceptical about this. But apparently they managed to get on the cover on Nature (one of the most prestigious scientific journals) so maybe they're onto something here.
Here's the issue of Nature. You can access the full article text if you've got a University connection or something.
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Re:How this impacts evolutionary theory
An important thing to remember is that plant genomes undergo frequent duplication of the entire genome. Many important crops (eg cereals) are polyploid and have at least four copies of everything in their genome. If a plant has been polypoid at some point in history, some of these genes may have moved around in the genome and explain how the extra copies got there. Normally these extra copies would be deleterious to the plant as they would be out of balance with other genes, and silencing of them would evolve. All that would be required is that the silencing be removed, and if the plant is going to die there is strong selection for this to happen. I agree with other poster who suggested this is likely to be epigenetic ( a change in the way the DNA is packaged, rather than the DNA itself) to explain the high frequency. However a similar finding in bacteria turned out to be a greatly increased mutation rate in the dying bacteria as the cell systems stopped working correctly.
For those of you in unis or with access to Nature journals the link below summarizes the debate on the previous apparently lamarkian results in bacteria.
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/n rg/journal/v2/n7/full/nrg0701_504a_fs.html&filetyp e=pdf -
Nature
The source on this article isn't the New York Times, nor as suggested the LA Times or New Scientist, but Nature (vol 434, p 505 - subscription only)
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Nature
The source on this article isn't the New York Times, nor as suggested the LA Times or New Scientist, but Nature (vol 434, p 505 - subscription only)
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Article on Google Library from tomorrow's Nature
for your possible interest
Declan
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/n ature/journal/v434/n7032/full/434425a_fs.html/
News
Nature 434, 425 (24 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434425a
France takes on Google in scanning race
DECLAN BUTLER
Jacques Chirac calls for proposals to digitize Europe's libraries.
[PARIS] French president Jacques Chirac instructed his government last week to come up with proposals for digitizing the collections of libraries in France and other European countries.
His statement, issued on 16 March, asked Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, France's minister of culture, and Jean-Noël Jeanneney, the president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, to come up with proposals to accelerate the dissemination of French and other European works on the Internet. He called on France and Europe to take "a major role" in a "vast digitization of knowledge".
Chirac's move is widely interpreted as a response to Google's announcement late last year that it intends to scan millions of library books -- primarily from collections at the universities of Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford, as well as that of the New York Public Library -- over the next ten years. But this plan is being viewed with trepidation by backers of existing, public-domain projects that aim to do the same kind of thing.
One backer of the public-domain approach is Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive project, based in San Francisco. In December, Internet Archive teamed up with Carnegie Mellon University, the Library of Congress American Memory Project and universities in Canada, Egypt, India, China and Europe to digitize 9 million books over the next four years. More than 50,000 of them will be digitized by the end of this month.
Kahle says that the Google project could have three possible outcomes. The first is that funding for public-domain projects could dry up, with library collections effectively being privatized by Google. Alternatively, the Google move might result in healthy competition and an increased demand for a public-domain service, Kahle says. He cites as a precedent the human genome project, where the private company Celera's plans to sequence the genome galvanized the public consortium's determination to deliver its own version. The third possibility, Kahle says, is that Google might collaborate successfully with the public-domain efforts.
The Internet Archive's annual administrative costs of about $2 million are met by grants from the US National Science Foundation, the Library of Congress, national archives such as those in Britain and France, and philanthropists such as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. But its scanning costs -- which could amount to $230 million over four years -- are due to be paid by participating libraries. There is now "fear, uncertainty and doubt" over this, says Kahle, with some libraries "waiting to see if they can get a handout from Google" instead.
Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg -- the first ambitious attempt to digitize libraries, launched in 1971 and based in Urbana, Illinois -- expresses concern about the proprietary nature of the Google project. He fears that his and other public projects could be hurt if funders think Google can do the job alone.
A public effort is essential, argues Hart, because it should provide users with access to the full text of books and high-quality images that they can use in whatever way they wish, without restriction. In contrast, Google's current system allows users to search texts online and to browse images, but provides access to only a small portion of the texts.
However, Raj Reddy, a computer scientist who is the founder and director of the Universal Digital Library at Carnegie Mellon University, welcomes the competition from Google, and says that, if anything, it should inc -
Re:Astronomy
We also have a preprint server that is free that most astronomers post their articles to (except for Nature articles because Nature won't let them).
The Nature policy you claim is apparently not true. In the most recent issue of Nature, an editor writes:So please let's put a myth about this journal to rest. As first stated in an editorial in 1997, and since then in our Guide to Authors, if scientists wish to display drafts of their research papers on an established preprint server before or during submission to Nature or any Nature journal, that's fine by us.
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Interview with Jimmy Wales in News@Nature
There's a News@Nature.com about Wikipedia, which includes an interview with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. For those who aren't familiar with it, Nature is pretty much the most widely-read scholarly research journal out there.
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Re:Should be interesting...
If we could find the mechanical outcome of what we think when we listen to music.
There was actually Nature paper a few days ago about that very topic:
Musical imagery: Sound of silence activates auditory cortex
Auditory imagery occurs when one mentally rehearses telephone numbers or has a song 'on the brain' -- it is the subjective experience of hearing in the absence of auditory stimulation, and is useful for investigating aspects of human cognition1. Here we use functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify and characterize the neural substrates that support unprompted auditory imagery and find that auditory and visual imagery seem to obey similar basic neural principles.
Here's a popular press article.
"We played music in the scanner (FMRI) and then we hit a virtual "mute' button," said David Kraemer, a graduate student in Dartmouth's Psychological and Brain Sciences Department and author of the study, published recently in the journal Nature.
With familiar songs, "we found that people couldn't help continuing the song in their heads, and when they did this, the auditory cortex remained active even though the music had stopped," Kraemer said.
The researchers said the findings extend previous research that showed sensory-specific memories are stored in the brain regions that first experienced those events.
"It's fascinating that although the ear isn't actually hearing the song, the brain is perceptually hearing it," said co-author William Kelley, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences. -
Open questions in Physics
John Baez, quantum gravity reseacher have an exellent list on his site of Open questions in Physics
It includes:
sonoluminescence - plasma core in the bubbles of liquid
high temperature superconductivity
turbulence and Navier-Stokes equations -mathematic of chaos
what is meant by a "measurement" in quantum mechanics? Does "wavefunction collapse" actually happen as a physical process ?
What happened at or before the Big Bang?
Why is there an arrow of time; that is, why is the future so much different from the past?
dark energy
dark matter
The Horizon Problem: why is the Universe almost, but not quite, homogeneous on the very largest distance scales
When were the first stars formed, and what were they like
Is the Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis true? Roughly, for generic collapsing isolated gravitational systems are the singularities that might develop guaranteed to be hidden beyond a smooth event horizon?
Why are the laws of physics not symmetrical between left and right, future and past, and between matter and antimatter?
Why is there more matter than antimatter, at least around here?
Is there really a Higgs boson, as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics?
Why do the particles have the precise masses they do? Or is this an unanswerable question?
Are there important aspects of the Universe that can only be understood using the Anthropic Principle?
The Big Question(TM)
This last question sits on the fence between cosmology and particle physics:
* How can we merge quantum theory and general relativity to create a quantum theory of gravity? How can we test this theory? -
Re:Testing?
It is a well-established fact that women are generally better with (human) languages, and given that a lot of IT is not about advanced math but is about manipulating symbols you would therefore expect women to do rather well in those areas of IT.
Established facts like Maths skills survive linguistic damage suggest that there is no common 'symbol manipulation' library hardwired in out brains, contrary to Chomsky's hypothesis.
Anecdotal evidence from my secondary school period also suggests that (future) programmers are better at Mathematics and decoding the dead languages Latin and ancient Greek, but not noticeable better at speaking or quickly understanding living languages like English, French, and German.
The exodus of women is probably related to the exodus of underqualified, superfluous personnel after the burst of the IT bubble. During a hausse you are more likely to take factors like the skewed distribution of sexes in you company into account when hiring than during a recession. This has no bearing on the capacity of women to learn programming. It simply reflects the history of the IT industry, the relative scarcity of truly qualified women, and the fact that employees married to their job are usually young men.
Unemployment among ethnic minorities also tends to rise during recessions. Political correctness goes out the window when it becomes difficult to make ends meet. -
Re:Interesting logic
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Re:Why not do as Most online mags do ?.
Look at Science http://www.sciencemag.org/ or Nature http://www.nature.com/. There are targeted advertisements towards the scientific professions. It's certainly feasible to do something similar here.
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Re:No bias here
You might also consider that Mann refuses to release the complete dataset on which he based his research as well as the algorithm used to generate the graph. This means his work cannot be validated by anyone else because he is not making available the conditions for the experiment.
Go here if you want the data Mann, Bradley and Hughes used for the 'hockey-stick' paper.
You can also get them from Nature.
Regards
Luke -
Re:Why no terrain model?With very slight additional effort these researchers could have released a terrain model based on the paralax offset of features in the image and saved us all from straining our eyes.
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Catch 22From the nature article: Rong's chip produces laser light when it is 'pumped' with another laser.
This is old stuff (see bottom note on the article, result was published in Oct 2004). Intel showed they can lase silicon with another laser. So how am I going to find another laser to pump this one ?
Silicon is indirect bandgap semiconductor. There is no easy way to make lasers out of it unless you introduce some traps to facilitate optical transistions. Can anyone explain how does it work ? -a
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Link to the Primary Source Paper
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/
n m/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nm1192.html
Lentiviral vector retargeting to P-glycoprotein on metastatic melanoma through intravenous injection
Kouki Morizono1, 2, Yiming Xie1, 2, Gene-Errol Ringpis1, 2, Mai Johnson3, Hoorig Nassanian1, Benhur Lee1, 4, Lily Wu3 & Irvin S Y Chen1, 2, 5
1 Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
2 UCLA AIDS Institute, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
3 Department of Urology, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
4 Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
5 Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, 10833 Le Conte Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
Correspondence should be addressed to Irvin S Y Chen syuchen@mednet.ucla.edu
Targeted gene transduction to specific tissues and organs through intravenous injection would be the ultimate preferred method of gene delivery. Here, we report successful targeting in a living animal through intravenous injection of a lentiviral vector pseudotyped with a modified chimeric Sindbis virus envelope (termed m168). m168 pseudotypes have high titer and high targeting specificity and, unlike other retroviral pseudotypes, have low nonspecific infectivity in liver and spleen. A mouse cancer model of metastatic melanoma was used to test intravenous targeting with m168. Human P-glycoprotein was ectopically expressed on the surface of melanoma cells and targeted by the m168 pseudotyped lentiviral vector conjugated with antibody specific for P-glycoprotein. m168 pseudotypes successfully targeted metastatic melanoma cells growing in the lung after systemic administration by tail vein injection. Further development of this targeting technology should result in applications not only for cancers but also for genetic, infectious and immune diseases. -
Re:State of Fear
For evidence, 90% of the worlds glaciers are in retreat.
There are one hundred sixty thousand glaciers in the world. About sixty-seven thousand have been inventoried, but only a few have been studied with any care. There is mass balance data extending five years or more for only seventy-nine glaciers in the entire world. So, how can you say they're all melting? Nobody knows whether they are or not. *
Look at the pictures of Kilamanjaro in the 70's and compare them to the ones taken now. The effect is far more dramatic in the Andes mountains, where an entire city may have to move as their primary source of water (a glacier) is now down to only 2% of it's original size. That's just in 40 years.
Actually, Kilimanjaro has been rapidly melting since the 1800s--long before global warming. The loss of the glacier has been a topic of scholarly concern for over a hundred years. And it has always been something of a mystery because, as you know, Kilimanjaro is an equatorial volcano, so it exists in a warm region. Satellite measurements of that region show no warming trend at the altitude of the Kilimanjaro glacier. So why is it melting?
Because of deforestation. The rain forest at the base of the mountain has been cut down, so the air blowing upward is no longer moist. Experts think that if the forest is replanted the glacier will grow again. **
* H. Kieffer, et al., 2000, "New eyes in the sky measure glaciers and ice sheets," EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 81: 265, 270-71. See also R. J. Braithwaite and Y. Zhang, "Relationships between inter-annual variability of glacier mass balance and climate," Journal of Glaciology 45 (2000): 456-62.
** Betsy Mason African Ice Under Wraps, Nature, 24, November 2003. -
Oh, really?I used to believe this kind of thing till I read about the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age of the 17th century... solar activity declined for several hundred years, reaching a low point in the 17th century when there were actually no sun spots at all for decades! And at that time, they had the coldest weather in Europe since the last ice age.
Solar physicist Sami Solanki from the Max Planck Institute in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, and his colleagues found in November 2003 that the Sun is more active now than at any time in the past 1,000 years1. This, along with several record-breaking solar storms that occurred at around the same time, has triggered intense debate about why the Sun is now so active.
Hmm.... -
State of Fear
I am in the middle of reading Michael Crichton's book State of Fear. It is a novel but based on solid science. In the book there is an eco-terrorist group trying to create some disasters to make its point that dramatic climatic change is going to destroy the world. The good guys point out that while while the average air temperature at the Earth's surface has increased by 0.06 C per decade during the 20th century, and by 0.19 C per decade from 1979 to 1998, the average temperature in Antartica has decreased and the thickness of the ice there is increasing. See article in Nature. This is important since Antartica has 90% of the world's ice. Greenland has 4% and the rest of the world combined has only 6%. So even if the world's temperature rises, there appears to be no danger of the sea level rising dramaticly.
Crichton overall message is that the scientific evidence for global warming is thin and that the environmental movement, ignoring science, has gone off track. He thinks we live in a 'State of Fear,' a 'near-hysterical preoccupation with safety that's at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism'.
Personally I think there has to be a balance where we work to protect the enviroment but do not have to tramatize our kids with scary tales of the world ending in their lifetimes. -
Re: Agreed
Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, Archemedes...
Most of the great minds in the history of science and mathematics were religious people.
...Thomas Edison, Stephen Hawking, John Conway, Woody Allen, Stanislaw Lem, Terry Pratchett, Steve Wozniak, John Carmack, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Bill Gates... Oh, wait a minute... They're all atheists! Heretics!
As a matter of fact, only a small minority of greater scientists believe in god or in soul, and that number drops with every year:
god:
1914: 28%
1933: 15%
1998: 7%
immortality:
1914: 35%
1933: 18%
1998: 8%
(Source: Nature)
Merely 7% and decreasing is hardly "most of the great minds in the history of science", isn't it?
Athiests tend to just sit around and write bad science fiction. That, or post flamebait on Slashdot.
It's "atheists" for the love of god! And this is not "Insightful". Have you ever used a GNU/Linux system? Both RMS and Linus re atheists. Obviously they don't "just sit around" but actually create something valuable, wouldn't you agree? -
Re:Ummm
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/
n ature/journal/v411/n6841/full/411986a0_r.html&file type=&dynoptions=
Not the most readable link, and definitely not very technical. It also doesn't suggest exactly what I mentioned, but rather the possibility that our brane could be folded back on itself, permitting gravitons to pass from one section of a brane to another section faster than photons can because the folded section is much closer when you don't have to stay on the brane. These "shadows" of other matter on our brane would thus account for dark matter.
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Wired (perhaps) isn't confused. You (perhaps) are.
Hi --
Distinguishing between baryonic matter -- stuff that bears any resemblance to everything around you, whether it is visible or not -- and other "dark" matter that does not fall into that category, is actually pretty commonplace in astrophysics. This seems like semantics, but turns out to be an important distinction.
The point is that the fraction of baryonic matter in the universe is, we think, reasonably well constrained (by both observations of light element abundances in conjunction with Big Bang nucleosynthesis models, and by measurements of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background) to be only about 5% of the total mass/energy density. Yet there's an additional matter component (accounting for about 25% of the total density) that we know little about -- this is what most astronomers mean when they say "dark matter" these days.
This article says nothing at all about that 25%. It does, however, provide some clues towards a more complete accounting of the 5% that is "normal" (i.e. baryonic) matter. This is a very significant result, but the slashdot writeup and most of the comments to this article are completely distorting it.
The puzzle regarding the "normal" 5% was this: in the local universe (redshifts less than 2), only 10% or so of it is luminous matter, stars and galaxies and the like. More (40% or so) has been accounted for by studies of cool clouds of gas residing between stars, but this still left 50% in an unknown reservoir of baryons. Theory/simulation had suggested that one such reservoir might be the "warm/hot intergalactic medium" -- gas that is heated to millions of K.
The problem is that detecting low-density gas at that temperature is quite difficult, partly since most bound electrons have been lost. Only the more massive elements retain any electrons, and so can be visible in absorption in the FUV or X-rays.
What the paper discussed here (published today in Nature) does is to describe a plausible-looking detection of such filaments of "warm-hot" gas, through X-ray absorption. They use this detection to extrapolate a matter density of this WHIM component, and find that it could account for 30-50% of the baryonic mass, and so constitute the "missing" baryonic matter.
Note that this says nothing at all new about the 25% of truly "dark" non-baryonic matter.
One fairly large quibble is that the 30-50% number represents an extrapolation from just two absorbers, over a comparatively short distance, to infer the WHIM density in the whole universe. That's sort of a big jump, in case that part wasn't obvious. But you can't do this sort of analysis for very many sightlines -- you need a really bright emitting object on the other side of the WHIM clouds if you're going to see them, and such objects are few and far between -- so for right now that's what you get.
If you happen to be somewhere that has a subscription to Nature (most universities do), you can check out the two articles related to this in today's edition:
There's a "news and views" article by Mike Shull that's a nice summary of the issues involved. And there's the full research article by Nicastro et al.
Hope that clears at least a few things up. If I have time later tonight, I'll try to come back and respond to some of your other points.
cheers. -
Wired (perhaps) isn't confused. You (perhaps) are.
Hi --
Distinguishing between baryonic matter -- stuff that bears any resemblance to everything around you, whether it is visible or not -- and other "dark" matter that does not fall into that category, is actually pretty commonplace in astrophysics. This seems like semantics, but turns out to be an important distinction.
The point is that the fraction of baryonic matter in the universe is, we think, reasonably well constrained (by both observations of light element abundances in conjunction with Big Bang nucleosynthesis models, and by measurements of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background) to be only about 5% of the total mass/energy density. Yet there's an additional matter component (accounting for about 25% of the total density) that we know little about -- this is what most astronomers mean when they say "dark matter" these days.
This article says nothing at all about that 25%. It does, however, provide some clues towards a more complete accounting of the 5% that is "normal" (i.e. baryonic) matter. This is a very significant result, but the slashdot writeup and most of the comments to this article are completely distorting it.
The puzzle regarding the "normal" 5% was this: in the local universe (redshifts less than 2), only 10% or so of it is luminous matter, stars and galaxies and the like. More (40% or so) has been accounted for by studies of cool clouds of gas residing between stars, but this still left 50% in an unknown reservoir of baryons. Theory/simulation had suggested that one such reservoir might be the "warm/hot intergalactic medium" -- gas that is heated to millions of K.
The problem is that detecting low-density gas at that temperature is quite difficult, partly since most bound electrons have been lost. Only the more massive elements retain any electrons, and so can be visible in absorption in the FUV or X-rays.
What the paper discussed here (published today in Nature) does is to describe a plausible-looking detection of such filaments of "warm-hot" gas, through X-ray absorption. They use this detection to extrapolate a matter density of this WHIM component, and find that it could account for 30-50% of the baryonic mass, and so constitute the "missing" baryonic matter.
Note that this says nothing at all new about the 25% of truly "dark" non-baryonic matter.
One fairly large quibble is that the 30-50% number represents an extrapolation from just two absorbers, over a comparatively short distance, to infer the WHIM density in the whole universe. That's sort of a big jump, in case that part wasn't obvious. But you can't do this sort of analysis for very many sightlines -- you need a really bright emitting object on the other side of the WHIM clouds if you're going to see them, and such objects are few and far between -- so for right now that's what you get.
If you happen to be somewhere that has a subscription to Nature (most universities do), you can check out the two articles related to this in today's edition:
There's a "news and views" article by Mike Shull that's a nice summary of the issues involved. And there's the full research article by Nicastro et al.
Hope that clears at least a few things up. If I have time later tonight, I'll try to come back and respond to some of your other points.
cheers. -
The original article
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phylogeny of languages
What struck me first about the schematic was the sexual reproduction or lateral gene transfer between languages in the '70s and '80s compared with the speciation into distinct languages by the late 1990s. In the past, it seems, ideas were often combined into new languages (Scheme = Lisp + Algol), while now they've stratified into identifiable species (Python, Ruby, Java, Perl, PHP, etc, where a recent exception would be C#).
However, further inspection shows that the timeline is distorted, making recent changes look more significant. Unlike more complete evolutionary records, this phylogeney shows languages that are important enough to remember (read: ancestors of currently used languages). A more complete tree would probably show that new languages are still being created that are amalgamations of ideas implemented in current languages. Some of these new languages we'll all be using in 15 years, but right now no one would think to include them in such a diagram.
A more interesting study would track language features, and show features transferring into languages, e.g., the addition of OO to Perl.