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Nature, of course, was the prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal that carried the story of the 1988 carbon 14 dating.

This article addresses most of the comments that have been posted in this thread.

Dan

Nature Magazine Commentary on Rogers.

The article states that since 1790 the earth's global temperature has risen 0.8 degrees. In almost a quarter of a millenia this is the change. Excuse me if I remain skeptical that this was caused by human activity.

LOL. Talk about misinformation and hype.
The group velocity exceeds c. The phase velocity does not. I'll refer you back to the modern research that started this public interest in superluminal motion:
Wang, et al. Gain Assisted Superluminal Light Propagation, Nature 406, 277 - 279 (20 July 2000); doi:10.1038/35018520

Someone submitted a comment with a link to an article in Nature that says it is the latter. The Doppler Wind Experiment is described at the bottom of the page as measurements of variations in the microwave signal between the Huygens probe and Cassini orbiter. Too bad. If it was the former, this guys 18 years of work could still have been salvaged.

You can find more detailed information about this sad story in Nature.

• One stunning landscape was produced by Mike Zawistowski, a freelance computer-repair expert based in Boston, Masschusetts, who describes himself as a "casual astronomy buff".
  
  Zawistowski used Terragen, a freeware program that converts the basic brightness data in aerial pictures into a topographical map, to generate the ground-level vista shown at the top of this page.
  
  He used information from one of Huygens' aerial photos (see second picture), and worked out the correct scale based on its resolution - about 20 to 40 metres per pixel. "The final image was adjusted for colour, with some artistic licence for dramatic effect," he says of his Titan landscape.
  
  Zawistowski hopes that when the radar data from the probe are released, his pictures can be adjusted to make them much more accurate.
  
  "There are lot of resources available to the scientifically curious," says Zawistowski. "This permits many talented amateurs who are technically savvy to participate on some level, even if they are not

• One stunning landscape was produced by Mike Zawistowski, a freelance computer-repair expert based in Boston, Masschusetts, who describes himself as a "casual astronomy buff".
  
  Zawistowski used Terragen, a freeware program that converts the basic brightness data in aerial pictures into a topographical map, to generate the ground-level vista shown at the top of this page.
  
  He used information from one of Huygens' aerial photos (see second picture), and worked out the correct scale based on its resolution - about 20 to 40 metres per pixel. "The final image was adjusted for colour, with some artistic licence for dramatic effect," he says of his Titan landscape.
  
  Zawistowski hopes that when the radar data from the probe are released, his pictures can be adjusted to make them much more accurate.
  
  "There are lot of resources available to the scientifically curious," says Zawistowski. "This permits many talented amateurs who are technically savvy to participate on some level, even if they are not

Dr Cox probably has something to do with this software. This article in Nature seems to fit the overal description of the model the software uses. Some people have used this model to suggest that trees should be cleared so as to stop them becoming a source of CO2 others have used it to suggest he is a stooge. I don't know much about Dr. Cox but it seems he is attacked by the fringe from both sides of Climate politics, normally a sign that someone is at least honest. Your quote directly relates to the "tree" debate and will drive both sides into a frenzy.

"The climate will warm more in the future but the ability of the land to store carbon dioxide will be compromised," he said, adding that warmer soil was less able to hold the greenhouse gas.

Now I'm no climatologist but it gets hot here in Australia. When the Roo's, Sheep, Cows, Dogs, and other big animals want to escape the afternoon heat, guess where they go. They even scratch at the dust every now and then to reveal cooler earth underneath. Experienced farmers (rancher's if you like) leave at least one big tree accessable to thier stock.

I recognise some of Dr Cox's research and I think his "complexity" approach to the Climate is very interesting. The "dimming" effect seems to me well documented but poorly explained by anything else other than soot from coal & oil. Just like I doubt he is advocating mowing down trees, I also doubt he is advocating pumping soot into the air to keep cool by "almost canceling out the greenhouse effect".

I think his message is that humans can influence the climate but at the moment that is sort of accidental, hard to quantify and potentialy very dangerous for Humanity. So we should aim to learn about the factors and how they interelate before we try "hacking" the Climate, say by suddenly eliminating soot without considering CO2 & methane concentrations, "cloud seeding", and all manner of biofeedback.

I think we are learning (possibly the hard way) that we do have a significant and often detrimental impact on the biosphere and if we continue to ignore it Humanity will end up like a neglected Goldfish.

I should know, I never could get work as a physicist:-( There are other analyses that say a hydrogen economy is a daydream. you still have to GET the energy from some where If that is to be done without further burning of fossil fuels, we have to commandeer a huge amount of land for solar and wind farms and those are political and financial undertakings that are NOT an easy sell. Especially when the biggest fossil burning country reneges on Kyoto accords and is run by former president and vice president of oil or oil services companies.

fixed link:

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041229/multimedia/ 041229-2-m1.html

Is Nature really a scientific journal?

Absolutely. It carries some top science. It is cross-disciplinary, though, so it's supposed to be accessible to all scientists. The Nature Publishing Group is big business, and has a bunch of subsidiary journals that are also well-respected. For example, in my field, Nature Neuroscience publishes a lot of the top articles. Nature Neuroscience alone has a paid staff of about 10-15 people I think.

Is Nature really a scientific journal?

Absolutely. It carries some top science. It is cross-disciplinary, though, so it's supposed to be accessible to all scientists. The Nature Publishing Group is big business, and has a bunch of subsidiary journals that are also well-respected. For example, in my field, Nature Neuroscience publishes a lot of the top articles. Nature Neuroscience alone has a paid staff of about 10-15 people I think.

Miraón Lahr M. Nature, 431. 1043 - 1044 (2004).
Brown P., Sutikna T., Morwood M. J., Soejono R. P., Jatmiko , Wayhu Saptomo E. & Rokus Awe Due R.
Nature, 431. 1055 - 1061 (2004). .
Morwood M. J., Soejono R. P., Roberts R. G., Sutikna T., Turney C. S. M., Westaway K. E., Rink W. J., Van Den Bergh G. D., Rokus G. D., Rokus Awe Due , Hobbs D. R., Moore M. W., Bird M. I. & Fifield L. K.
Nature, 431. 1087 - 1091 (2004).

Miraón Lahr M. Nature, 431. 1043 - 1044 (2004).
Brown P., Sutikna T., Morwood M. J., Soejono R. P., Jatmiko , Wayhu Saptomo E. & Rokus Awe Due R.
Nature, 431. 1055 - 1061 (2004). .
Morwood M. J., Soejono R. P., Roberts R. G., Sutikna T., Turney C. S. M., Westaway K. E., Rink W. J., Van Den Bergh G. D., Rokus G. D., Rokus Awe Due , Hobbs D. R., Moore M. W., Bird M. I. & Fifield L. K.
Nature, 431. 1087 - 1091 (2004).

Copied from here

Morphing Marilyn into Maggie dissociates physical and identity face representations in the brain
Pia Rotshtein, Richard N A Henson, Alessandro Treves, Jon Driver, & Raymond J Dolan

How the brain represents different aspects of faces remains controversial. Here we presented subjects with stimuli drawn from morph continua between pairs of famous faces. In the paired presentations, a second face could be identical to the first, could share perceived identity but differ physically (30% along the morph continuum), or could differ physically by the same distance along the continuum (30%) but in the other direction. We show that, behaviorally, subjects are more likely to classify face pairs in the third paired presentation as different and that this effect is more pronounced for subjects who are more familiar with the faces. In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) shows sensitivity to physical rather than to identity changes, whereas right fusiform gyrus (FFG) shows sensitivity to identity rather than to physical changes. Bilateral anterior temporal regions show sensitivity to identity change that varies with the subjects' pre-experimental familiarity with the faces. These findings provide neurobiological support for a hierarchical model of face perception.

For example, it now looks as if laser techniques will allow us to build "tabletop" particle accelerators - see this report and this one. (You may not want a particle accelerator, but Intel might buy a whole bunch.)

So my bet is that the next breakthrough in fusion will be "Inertial" fusion, done with lasers. And our money would be better spent by dividing up ITER's six billion dollars, and instead giving 60 megabucks each to a hundred different research groups.

Some links:
http://www.llnl.gov/nif/icf/icf.html
http://www.lanl.gov/ICF/exp_campaigns.shtml

For example, it now looks as if laser techniques will allow us to build "tabletop" particle accelerators - see this report and this one. (You may not want a particle accelerator, but Intel might buy a whole bunch.)

So my bet is that the next breakthrough in fusion will be "Inertial" fusion, done with lasers. And our money would be better spent by dividing up ITER's six billion dollars, and instead giving 60 megabucks each to a hundred different research groups.

Some links:
http://www.llnl.gov/nif/icf/icf.html
http://www.lanl.gov/ICF/exp_campaigns.shtml

Shit, nature.com appears to be down. Sorry. Worked for me half an hour ago.

They can't even decide where to build it! Why can't I vote to spend my (US) tax money on putting one of these over here. Even as a test bed it will give the contry it's in some home field advantage.

That isn't a problem any more. The EU decided a few weeks ago to build ITER in france by themselves and inviting the Japanese to join if they like (dont know what's happening with the US participation, but considering that they didn't join until a short while ago and wasn't paying much anyway it hardly matters)

On the other hand, they look quite committed to actually go through with it (judging, for example, from the notes on the French ITER website [in English]). As the EU is the largest sponsor on the project and China and Russia support the French site, it looks like they can actually pull this off. The US is committed to the Japanese site; it is unclear as to whether this is due to the recent anti-French stance of the US administration or other factors. However, since the US contributes next to no money, their position doesn't really count that much. (Note, however, that ITER is not expected to actually generate power until about 2020.)

The Japanese had other ideas, such as building a datacenter in France and the reactor itself in Japan, but it looks as if they're seriously under pressure now.

I agree, best to look at the Nature story itself. However, the actual article is not online, although you can read a summary here.

Read it, draw your own conclusions. Just respect the science they put into it. What you are accusing them of is a huge breach of scientific ethics - the deliberate fudging of data (or in this case, models) to support the conclusion you want. I'm guessing you have no evidence for this.

I agree that having peer reviewed articles, in reputable journals, is important to assess the validity of the results, but you cannot turn that into a dogma. What you are defending is just an argument of authority, instead of discussing the facts. Read an article about the memory of water, which later became accepted as a ludicrous concept, and that was published in Nature.

This is my last rejected submission on climate change - posted anonymously to avoid karma-whornig accusations.

New evidence of climate change unprecedented in human history seems to arrive almost every day. Two new studies have added more data to the mountain of evidence supporting the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis. A UN Environmental Program report shows that the world faces a 'staggering threat', with the Arctic already being severely affected, with thawing of much of the sea ice and the Greenland icecap predicted.

The extinction of polar bears and seals seems likely. Worse, the decrease is salinity will affect the thermohaline pump that drives the North Atlantic drift, potentially stopping the Gulf Stream and reducing Europe to an icy wilderness. But it's not all bad news - the reduced ice cover will open new areas for gas and oil extraction!

Meanwhile, at the other end of the planet, Nature reports that the respected British Antarctic Survey has shown that loss of sea ice has causedAntarctic Krill populations to crash; this is the probable cause of crashing populations of various species, including the Gentoo penguin. (BAS press release here.) Sceptical readers may be interested to note that the US government now accepts that human CO2 emissions are causing climate change.

In case people are interested, you can find the actual article in the most recent issue of Nature (abstract is free but you pay for the full text). Also, there were stories about this on NPR and in the Washington Post.

Some of these stories stress that if the study is seen as proof that the preponderance of the evidence points to fossil fuels as the source of deadly heat waves, then people may begin trying to bring civil suits against fossil fuel producers and distributors on that basis. That seems far fetched to me, since it seems like the you'd have to prove the specific corporation you're suing is responsible, but who knows? It would seem to be a very liberarian solution to the problem of global warming, though, so /. oughta like it.

Speaking of Science, which like I said is one of the top two science journals and even from U.S. :), has an editorial with the title The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change --- well worth reading.

The original Nature article about summer 2003 blame is reviewed here, reading the article itself requires a subscription either from you personally or from your institution. Possible speculation about juridical consequences is also there.

Speaking of Science, which like I said is one of the top two science journals and even from U.S. :), has an editorial with the title The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change --- well worth reading.

The original Nature article about summer 2003 blame is reviewed here, reading the article itself requires a subscription either from you personally or from your institution. Possible speculation about juridical consequences is also there.

Technocrat.net provides more links to other media reporting about this news, including to their source which is a paper published in Nature Medicine.

One fact is remarkable: its merely tested on mice and monkeys while 'the biological reaction of a given animal species to a given substance does not allow meaningful and reliable prediction of the biological reaction of humans. Extrapolation to man of the experimental behaviour of another species is hazardous and thus devoid of any scientific value.' (3rd link)

Technocrat.net provides more links to other media reporting about this news, including to their source which is a paper published in Nature Medicine.

One fact is remarkable: its merely tested on mice and monkeys while 'the biological reaction of a given animal species to a given substance does not allow meaningful and reliable prediction of the biological reaction of humans. Extrapolation to man of the experimental behaviour of another species is hazardous and thus devoid of any scientific value.' (3rd link)

While you're at it, why not check out the original paper. Warning: hard to read.

a dead virus is one that is no longer infective. your description of a virus is accurate, in that they are protein shells around genetic material (most of them, at least, some have enzymes in there and/or different shells)

From what I gather reading the actual article abstract, they're inactivating or killing them with a compound that breaks off small portions of the capsid (general idea abstracted here), but leaves the majority of the capsid intact. The slightly damaged capsid is unable to initiate infection, giving the host time to mount a defense against the real thing.

While this study (Nature Medicine Advance On-line publications Subscription required) shows promise, it is only a preliminary trial that included 18 participants. Sixteen of the participants were female and two were male. The figure stated in the /. article, of a 90% total drop in viral load, is not quite accurate. The article states that the patients plasma viral load levels were decreased by 80% (median) over the first 112 days following immunization. It then goes on to say that a prolonged suppression of viral load (up to 1 year after inoculation) of 90% was seen in only 8 individuals.

From my analysis of the HIV RNA expression data from this paper, after 1 year, eight of the patients had viral loads reduced by 90% or better, two patients had their viral loads reduced between 80% and 90% six patients had viral loads that were reduced somewhere between 10% and 50% and two of the patients actually had an increase in plasma HIV RNA levels.

Melting people's faces is bad. Melting political opponents' faces is awesome. Because, honestly, they're political opponents.

Um, perhaps you should go back and take a basic physics course.

No. That's not the problem here. The problem is that you are thinking at the macro scale. Stop that. Stop that right now. You're bad. BAD kirkjobsluder!

1. Nanotechnology has nothing to do with...

...anything I'm talking about. Right. I'm talking about manipulation at the particle level. When you read what I say and then talk nanotechnology, you're like a chaste priest who is trying to explain their views on sex to a sensible human being. We're not even talking about the same things. You're talking about some sillyassed ideas from a book that say that abstaining is a good deal, and I'm talking about getting my partner to have multiple orgasms more than once a day. No wonder we're not communicating.

2. Fission is only a viable energy source if you have a large quantity of already unstable radioactive material

Again, bzzt. Not talking about fission. Not talking about fusion. Talking about particle manipulation one tiny group at a time, using whatever power it takes to handle them one tiny group at a time, which is not much in present day terms. Look at a vacuum tube. Know what is flying off the cathode towards the plate? Particles. Electrons, to be specific. And how much energy does it take to get those little puppies flying about? Not much, as it turns out. Now we need to make some free protons, neutrons, and then figure out how to stick 'em back together in a new configuration. We've got a hundred-plus models of handly configurations of electrons, protons and neutrons. Sounds like fun to me. A lot more fun, and who knows, perhaps it'll even be more more practical, than cobbling together little robot assemblers at the nanoscale. There sure are some problems there!

Anyway, you're still locked into thinking at the macro scale - molecules and nanoassemblers are crude by comparison. We're not there. So you have to ask other questions. Is your (true) assertion about what works for fission and fusion so because unstable radioactive elements are the only ones with powerful atomic bonds? No. That's not the case. Right? Right. Instead, it is so because they are simply easy prey for our current level of technology. That's the only reason. They come apart easily because they are already coming apart. The frigging things want to come apart. It's almost cheating, in a way. It's so easy, even nature has done it by accident. But all elements carry these same, ultra-powerful bonds. And it may well be the case that taken one at a time, radioactive elements may not be the ones we want to be playing with. For several reasons, one of which, obviously, is safety.

Particle level manipulation seems no less likely than nanotechnology, and is a whole lot more fun to think about. And like I said, perhaps even more practical. We are already moving some of these around.

Apparently, this took place over a long time... I didn't realise just how long it takes to shut down a government website... (or how quickly it goes from necessary and useful to redundant...)

October 1999 http://www.pnl.gov/energyscience/11-99/art2.htm - PubScience opened.
http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/gov/pubscience02.html

2001 http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb010709-1.htm - they decide to cut funding, suggesting that the system be shut down.
http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Arti cles/butler.html

2002 http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb020819-2.htm - decision to close... Comments invited...

2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename= article&contentId=A17568-2002Nov20&notFound=tr ue - it's closed...

Hmm, maybe I don't get it right, but this article: nature says "Its epic 80-million-kilometre journey has taken 13 months, compared with the four days taken to cover 400,000 kilometres by Apollo 11 during the first Moon landing mission.".. If it has taken 13 months to do 80 million kilometres, then it would have taken.. like 2 days to do 400,000 kilometres?

Nature has a better article here.

The group's publications page is here (click on observations section), but they don't seem to have a preprint of this paper. Nature will let you read the abstract of the paper for free.

The research seems to be just a more direct confirmation of something that was already thought to be understood, but had never really been verified.

What's not clear to me is the value in Slashdot putting up a pointer to an article that can only be read with subscription service that costs an arm and a leg, and is usually only freely available only to lucky folks in the .EDU domains.

The full text of the article (including a PDF link) is here.

The reason he looked like he was hiding something was... He was hiding himself. The UN inspection team was crammed with US spies and Saddam was more than a little paranoid. He didn't want them roaming his home planting bugs and bombs to assasinate him. He also wanted to appear strong in front of his neighbours and own people, and what better way than to lead the UN and US by proxy in a wild goose chase. Sadly for Saddam the US was utterly duped by his bluff and in no mood to play games. Unfortunately for America (and the 100,000 Iraqi's who have died since the war http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041025/full/041025 -20.html) Bush was extremely gullible and possesed by an burning desire to crush Saddam long before he became president, and so there was a war which cost a lot of innocent lives, an unimaginable amount of money and a massive debt for your great grandchildren to pay off.

On the contrary. The evidence is quite good.

I have no freaking clue what you are talking about the Earth's magnetic field. For one, it has *NOTHING* to do with global warming.

Read this and this and then get back to me. The magnetosphere blocks solar radiation from penetrating the lower levels of the atmosphere.

About the sun, well, let's see. Sunspots are actually cooler areas of the Sun. So the more sunspots, the cooler the sun!

Read this and then get back to me. Sunspots are indicators of higher solar activity.

On the contrary. The evidence is quite good.

I have no freaking clue what you are talking about the Earth's magnetic field. For one, it has *NOTHING* to do with global warming.

Read this and this and then get back to me. The magnetosphere blocks solar radiation from penetrating the lower levels of the atmosphere.

About the sun, well, let's see. Sunspots are actually cooler areas of the Sun. So the more sunspots, the cooler the sun!

Read this and then get back to me. Sunspots are indicators of higher solar activity.

Anandtech
Ars Technica
BBC Science/Nature
BBC Technology
CNET News
Nature Science Update
Slashdot
Space.com
SpaceWire
Wired News

Unfortunately, most people don't have online access to Nature for the full text of the original article. (For those who do, it's here. If you actually check the data--they have a plot of just the last thousand years comparing various methods--the match with the records from 1610 on is actually quite good.

They also comment that, "The slightly negative values of the reconstructed SN [sunspot number] during the grand minima are an artefact; they are compatible with SN = 0 within the uncertainty of these reconstructions as indicated by the error bars." I'm not surprised that their calibration might be a bit off when they've had to extrapolate sunspot numbers lower or higher than we've seen with firm data in the last four hundred years.

There's a comprehensive Nature Special on it. If you're a subscriber you can also download the original articles.

From their site:
A glycoprotein, Fel d 1, secreted by the sebaceous glands, is the major cat allergen. This allergen is found in the fur, pelt, saliva, serum, urine, mucous, salivary glands, and hair roots of the cat.

Allerca cats will only lack one of the potential cat allergens... potentially deadly for people allergic to other proteins secreted by the cats. In addition, the gene silencing technique (I assume they refer to RNAi perhaps using siRNAs) cannot be guaranteed 100% effective--all it takes is one mutation.... More info about RNAi here and here.

However, as someone with moderately severe cat allergies, this is definitely a start.

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN GENOME SEQUENCING CONSORTIUM

Link to summary

link to pdf

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN GENOME SEQUENCING CONSORTIUM

Link to summary

link to pdf

Essentially what they're saying is, mouse genomes contain large (millions of bases long) intervals which don't appear to do anything, and that there are no noticeable effects on the mouse if these sections of their genomes are removed. Which begs the BIG question, "What are those sections of the genome actually doing there?"

It is possible that they really do nothing , but such an "explanation" would be even more disturbing than finding that they do something which we don't understand yet.

Someone mentioned Greg Bear's "Darwin's Children" series of books, and I agree that Bear is a good writer. But his explanation of these oddities of genetics is equally unsatisfying too. Nice books though - and Bear does keep his finger on the pulse of the science.