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I think this is what you're looking for.
There have also been US military studies done on the topic and there is a contest brewing as well.
Exciting times. :-)

Yes, the environment can certainly lead to changes in gene expression patterns. And yes, sometimes some of these can be heritable. Note that it's *not* a mutation in the DNA code itself, but a modification to the packaging proteins that DNA is bound to. This doesn't change the gene sequences but can control how strongly the gene is expressed (and possibly which form of a given gene is expressed), if at all. This can happen through several mechanisms that I'll admit I don't know a huge amount about: acetylation of histones, DNA methylation, etc. There's a well-written layman's introdution in this New Scientist article if you're interested.

However, I've never heard of these "epigenetic" changes affecting big, morphological features which tend to be *strongly* conserved:

If you raise 5 generations of mice in total darkness, at least one offspring will be born blind in the newest generation.

My first reaction is pretty strong septicism, so if you can point me to a reputable source for that, I'd be fascinated to read it.

If you're saying that environmental stresses directly lead to actual controlled and heritable changes in the DNA sequence, I'm even more skeptical and would really love to see a source.

...that they aren't being subjected to Frey effect experiments with stuff like this? ;)

Kidding, of course... right?

Only 261Mpixel? That's not particularly impressive, compared to GAIA (1.5 Gpixel!)...

As a matter of fact, fingerprints are different between identical twins. Source. Source. Source. Source.

Meanwhile, we *do* have projects to catalog all such asteroids *and* a mission to the asteroid belt in play right now. So what's your complaint?

This: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11356

Track eye movements. A wink is a click. A two-eyed wink could be back, or escape. Such a system could work with goggles or sci-fi contact lenses. If we need to add hands on top of that for gaming or CAD or Photoshop, that would be fine. But the basics start with what we're looking at, with our eyes.

The several years old 'Nouse'. Nose tracking for mouse movement, blinks for mouse clicks.

Quantum ghost imaging is a real effect that is potentially useful, but there is skepticism that it's an "entangled photon" quantum effect and not just an effect that is due to the ordinary interference of light waves (which is also ultimately quantum of course but can be predicted with classical physics).

No, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is in outer space. There's a Hubble picture of it at the supplied link.

Blue-Ray copy protection lasted a bit more than 10 years, if you are on this planet.

We also make the ridiculous decision to spend 100's of thousands of dollars to "save" tiny preemies (who are much more likely to have long-term deficiencies - incurring yet more costs to society). Yet, the same fetus could have, instead, been legally aborted for no medical reason whatsoever.

As a taxpayer, I'm confused why I should spend a penny to save a (living expelled) fetus's life when the government also allows the mother to kill it freely and legally for any (or even no) reason. If the "baby" has a "right" to health care at my expense, certainly it also has a right to not be killed by another party on a whim.

This is another inconsistency we need to resolve - and socialized medicine will make it more critical to do so.

(BTW, I'm generally against government bans on abortion -- but I don't find a constitutional "right" to abortion and believe, as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided).

I think we're referring to different cases.

The key thing to know is that the Ares I conveniently keeps ATK Launch System's workforce employed. That's the only explanation that makes sense for how the Ares I was chosen and implemented. Here follows a list of rookie mistakes that shouldn't have happened:

• The Ares I was selected on the basis of a 60 day study, the ESAS (Exploration Systems Architecture Study). There was no serious deliberation on the options past that study.
• The criteria was slightly out of reach for the EELVs (Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle), the Delta IV and Atlas V rockets. The manned capsule was originally (as I recall) about 10-20% too heavy for the Delta IV Heavy. I believe this was deliberate to throw the decision in favor of the Ares I.
• The safety numbers on the two options that used ATK's SRMs (Solid Rocket Motors) were IMHO greatly exaggerated with estimated loss of mission (which is not the same as loss of crew!) being roughly 1 in 400 (for a 5 segment SRM first stage and J-2S second stage) to 1 in 500 (4 segment SRM and SSME second stage). The key problem is that the failure rate in the SRMs alone is probably worse than 1 in 400. As far as I can tell, there's been around 300-400 SRM firings, either on a Space Shuttle or in tests. I understand there's been failures in test firings and of course, the Challenger accident (one of the solid rocket boosters (SRB) burned through on launch, destroying the vehicle and killing the crew). That yields a failure rate of more than 1 in 400 although I don't know how much worse.
• Meanwhile the risk of using the EELVs (somewhere around 1 in 100 chance of loss of mission) was calculated based on their current trajectories to orbit. The problem here is that the two launch platforms use a riskier trajectory today for launching the current unmanned payloads. The trajectories lack abort options in various parts of the flight (these are called "black zones"). But for manned launches, neither launch vehicle would use trajectories with black zones. That means risk for the EELVs was overstated in the ESAS.
• Economics of launch vehicles was not considered. Ares I launches maybe six times a year, Ares V maybe three times a year. Atlas V and Delta IV both are launching now. What that means is that the fixed costs of the EELV rockets can be split across NASA, the Department of Defense and anyone else who uses these rockets. Meanwhile the Ares I is a NASA-only vehicle. Fixed costs must be borne completely by NASA.
• The mass margins on the Ares I are too small. Henry Spencer does an excellent job of describing a similar situation during the Apollo program. Then the person, Wernher von Braun, in charge of designing the rocket, the Saturn V, had the authority to overdesign the Saturn V and he used it. Spencer speculates that even if a current manager anticipated the creep in mass requirements, they wouldn't have the authority to do anything about it.
• The solid rocket booster first stage is severely restricted by the physical dimensions of the motor. This contributes to the mass margin problem above. The motor is already as wide and as tall as it can be. That means no performance improvement can be had from the first stage as it currently is designed. The width is constrained by railroad tunnels between the Utah manufacturing facility and Florida. I see this as another indication of why the Ares I was chosen. While it'd be an expensive undertaking, NASA could move ATK's facilities to the other side of the Rockies, particularly somewhere on the coast. Or NASA could have used a liquid fueled first stage from the EELV makers. But that wouldn't employ Utah voters.
• The Orion capsu

"An Australian man has been issued with an innovation patent for the wheel after setting out to test the workability of a new national patent system." http://www.ipmenu.com/archive/AUI_2001100012.pdf http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn965-wheel-patented-in-australia.html

Also your claim that the moon shot will address poverty comes from the same school of thought that believes in the discredited "trickle down" theory of development which essentially says that if you continue to pamper the rich that the money will somehow magically reach the poor.

Technological development (like the moon shot) has nothing to do with trickle down economics (tax cuts for the rich). As a matter of fact, India's space research has thrown up quite a few benefits. See this New Scientist article for a few specifics. I remember reading about how their research into manufacturing solid fuel translated to a cheaper process for making fertiliser and how manufacturing technologies for the high-tech casings and motors "trickled down" to safer pumps/vehicles. Can't find that article on the web though - my google-fu is failing me.

What the hell is this? Or this? Or this? Or this?

Get the picture? These are all NASA robots with legs. Just because they haven't used one yet doesn't mean they aren't looking at them.

Actually, it is, in Australia.



And sorry that was the joke and it went over my head, but at least one sibling post didn't get it

Well rather than just guessing, lets find out what the climate scientists think about the recent "cooling".
In short while in general the mean atmospheric temperature has not risen since 1998, the sea has. Therefore the Earth is still warming.
Remember as well, climate scientists are not trying to prove global warming. They are trying to understand what influences the climate. Surprise. When they look at recent solar forcing or cosmic rays they find only a very tiny effect.

Yes it is: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn965.html

I don't.

Especially since:

http://www.newsday.com/news/health/wire/sns-ap-skull-stem-cells,0,5876836.story

While the above is not proof and more anecdotal (but I'm sure everyone was happy that the skull finally healed for whatever reason), it is also claimed to have worked with rats before:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4873

And also they've been coaxed into smooth muscle:

http://www.physorg.com/news72983041.html

So, just another step, not a leap. Useful step no doubt :).

I think there are plenty of people doing research in this area. Good news for the people who have grown extensive reserves ;). 1 kg of fat stem cells needed? No problem for them.

I'm from Earth, but I'm a cyborg. No, really, I am. You will be assimilated.

Anyway, back on topic. I just had New Scientest open, and they are running the same story:

One pilot said he was seconds away from firing 24 rockets at the object, which moved erratically and gave a radar reading like "a flying aircraft carrier".

It spent periods motionless in the sky before reaching estimated speeds of more than 12,000 kilometres per hour, said pilot Milton Torres, who is now 77 and living in Miami, Florida.

After the alert, an unnamed man told Torres he must never talk about the incident and he duly kept silent for more than 30 years. His story was among dozens of UFO sightings in defence ministry files released at the National Archives in London (see UK releases classified UFO files).

The files blame other UFO sightings on weather balloons, clouds or normal aircraft.

UFO expert David Clarke said the sighting may have been part of a secret US project to create phantom aircraft on radar screens to test Soviet air defences. "Perhaps what this pilot had seen was some kind of experiment in electronic warfare," he said. "Something very unusual happened."

<snip>

The documents contain no official explanation for the incident, which came at a time of heightened tension between the West and the Soviet Union. Planes were on constant stand-by at British bases for a possible Soviet attack.

"I shall never forget it," Torres told the Times. "On that night I was ordered to open fire even before I had taken off. That had never happened before."

The following is shamelessly plagerised from the following two articles; NASA to reboot Hubble Space Telescope and Hubble replacement part has glitches of its own

Engineers plan to send commands to the telescope switch over to a backup computer that has not even been turned on since before the telescope arrived in orbit 18 years ago. However there's very little ageing that goes on with an unpowered component in space. It's actually a very benign storage environment.

The errors were found in Hubble's science data formatter, which relays data between Earth and the probe's science instruments. There is an identical formatter â" known as 'Side B' â" on the telescope, and NASA is planning to boot up that backup system. That entails switching not only the telescope's formatter but also six other units over to their B sides, a process that is expected to take 47 hours.

Ground testing of the switchover was completed on Monday, but the Hubble team is still awaiting approval from top NASA officials to make the switch.

The following is shamelessly plagerised from the following two articles; NASA to reboot Hubble Space Telescope and Hubble replacement part has glitches of its own

Engineers plan to send commands to the telescope switch over to a backup computer that has not even been turned on since before the telescope arrived in orbit 18 years ago. However there's very little ageing that goes on with an unpowered component in space. It's actually a very benign storage environment.

The errors were found in Hubble's science data formatter, which relays data between Earth and the probe's science instruments. There is an identical formatter â" known as 'Side B' â" on the telescope, and NASA is planning to boot up that backup system. That entails switching not only the telescope's formatter but also six other units over to their B sides, a process that is expected to take 47 hours.

Ground testing of the switchover was completed on Monday, but the Hubble team is still awaiting approval from top NASA officials to make the switch.

New spots are beginning to break out on the face of the Sun and may signal the end of a dry spell in solar activity.

It's difficult to see how a geneticist could actually make such an absurd statement.

James Watson could probably explain it to you.

Not to detract from your main point, but MySpace is far from being the "latest fad" at this point. Instant messaging is even less so; I would consider it to be productivity software at this point.

Facebook is not so much a total waste of time as useful purely for social interaction (and wasting time). We can't all be reading Cicero in our spare time, I suppose.

I have always thought that Black Holes are "leftover" from the Big Bang (well some of them anyway).

These would be "primordial black holes". AFAIK there's no hard evidence that they do - or don't - exist, as yet. (Of course it's not like stellar remnant black holes are totally proven either.)

Hello APOLOGIST. I suppose you blame the prosecution of simple possession. But possession exist in order to consume. I doubt someone keeps hash just to look at it....

And when it gets consumed and abused it is SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN that it DAMAGES THE BRAIN. And I am talking just about hash wich is one of the lightest drugs out there.

Of course I want to emphatize the fact that it is proven by scientists working on facts rather than some pot smoking retard glorifying the miracles of his marijuana crap on a personal website or blog.

So when consumption it's done on a mass scale you get a society made up of amotivated morons with reduced mental capabilities. Isn't that more harmful than allowing piracy?

Stop making stupid examples.

Sources:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/03/2264063.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mental-health/dn14047-heavy-cannabis-use-linked-to-smaller-brain-parts.html
http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/65/6/694
http://media.uow.edu.au/news/UOW044791.html

This wasn't a good test for cosmic censorship, and wasn't intended as such, from my reading of TFA. A better test would have been two counter rotating holes striking slightly off center.
Anyway, it says nothing about unrelated simulations that have shown that naked singularities are likely.
Sorry about the new scientist link, but all the other references I found were unhelpful journal articles.

Ok, I'll believe that there are regions of space that are more dense than others. I'll even believe that we are in one of them. ( This is no harder than believing in dark matter and dark energy, and it's before breakfast ) But what I find hard to believe is that we are in the exact center of such a region. So therefore, the universe should appear to have different properties in different directions. Has anybody seen that?

Yes, actually... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14814-galaxy-flow-hints-at-huge-masses-over-cosmic-horizon.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

hrm... well i guess it's a good thing that i've only let my battery die once or twice since i got it. with replacement batteries costing $40~50 a piece, i'll have to be more attentive about my charge state.

i seem to remember seeing several different stories on /. about "revolutionary" new battery techs, but i still haven't seen any alternatives to traditional li-ion batteries being sold at commercial retailers. IMHO lithium-titanate batteries look promising. manufacturers are claiming that these new lithium batteries can recharge in under 10 minutes--and that's for use in electric vehicles. this New Scientist article reports that mobile devices using lithium-titanate can recharge in 6 minutes, and each battery is capable of going through 20,000 charge cycles.

i'm guessing this technology is probably still too expensive to bring to market. it'll probably only be used in electric vehicles or other such applications which require much more durability and longer life-spans than traditional Li-ion batteries currently provide.

Sampling of such articles here:
(1) "Fire Under Arctic Ice: Volcanoes Have Been Blowing Their Tops In The Deep Ocean" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140649.htm
(2) "Arctic ocean volcano blew its top â" even under pressure" http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19826625.800
(3) "Arctic Volcanoes Found Active at Unprecedented Depths" http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080626-arctic-volcano.html

Possible methods to resolve question:
(a) send robot submersible with video camera down the methane plume to see what is happening on the ocean floor (i.e. seeing is believing). Is it cold & dark or warm and glowing red?
(b) audit regional distribution of frozen methane on arctic ocean floor, plotting location/concentration relative to undersea arctic ocean volcanoes and hot-water vents
(c) place sensors on ocean floor to measure temperature & pressure

Many people would look foolish if it later turned out the frozen methane was melting due to localized heating of the seabed caused by magma (lava) flows and/or geysers spewing hot water as happens along various undersea ridges

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2088

"The release of massive clouds of methane from icy hydrates buried under shallow ocean floors is the leading suspect for the most devastating extinction in the fossil record, according to a new analysis.

Methane best matches the unusual carbon-isotope fingerprints found at the scene of the crime, says Robert Berner of Yale University in Connecticut, US, though it cannot explain atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at the time.

Berner says: "It's possible that you could have a combination" of effects causing the mass extinction that ended the Permian period, 250 million years ago. The event wiped out the vast majority of marine species and left Europe a near-desert."

Oh shi...

On the bright side, we might get to test this theory. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2088

Just today, to my delight i found out that some chap in australia has patented the wheel back in 2001 and won the prestigious IgNobel Prize for it too.

Oh what other marvellous things have we forgotten to patent still, IBM will you enlighten us ?

Obviously, there's so much evidence behind evolution, so much correlation between other sciences; but we cannot actually demonstrate evolution in a lab environment.

Sure we can.

Not everyone agrees.

This was covered a few days ago on New Scientist...

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn14818-discovery-of-worlds-oldest-rocks-challenged-.html

Tao apparently really is the head of the Temple University physics department. He is the author of "Electrorheological Fluids: Mechanisms, Properties, Technology, and Applications", which is relevant, because electrorheological fluids are ones where the viscosity and shear stress change when an electric field is applied. This effect is sometimes used for specialized clutches; attempts to make robot muscles using it have been tried, which is why I know about it. So he ought to know something about viscosity changes in an electric field.

This is his second attempt to come up with a mainstream application for this marginally useful physical effect. The last one, in 2006, was a scheme for treating crude oil to reduce viscosity for pumping. Tests indicated it required more energy to reduce the viscosity than it saved in pumping.

This effect only works on liquids which carry along particles of a different substance; it won't do anything for a homogeneous pure liquid. So it's unlikely to do anything for gasoline. Diesel, maybe; #2 diesel fuel is a mixture of a broad range of hydrocarbons.

There's a whole industry selling Diesel fuel treatment additives. Unlike gasoline additives, which are mostly bogus, Diesel additives sometimes have some value, because there are various impurities which can appear in Diesel fuel and cause trouble. Also, since many large Diesel fuel users store fuel for long periods, deterioration in storage is a problem, and so there's a real role for additives there.

Because Diesel fuel is so variable, any tests involving it have to be coupled with lab tests to find out what was in the batch of fuel being tested. Was that done here?

From there, ten toes

And from there, your ear.

Cano and his colleagues claim to have built up a menagerie of 1500 ancient microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi and yeast, over the past three and a half years. A few weeks ago they toasted their success with beer brewed from dinosaur-age yeast, which they dubbed Jurassic Amber Ale (the first batch is described as "pretty bad", but there are hopes of better brews soon).

So apparently the news is that it doesn't taste as bad anymore for some strange reason? marketing? ;)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14619792.500-they-came-from-40-million-bc.html

Furthermore, considering false positives; they claim a 78% success rate in detecting "malintent".

Right off that's a little ridiculous, nothing can detect "intent" of any kind. What they're actually detecting isn't "malintent", as they show in their cartoon here

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/tech/FAST.JPG

but different biological cues ... heart rate, respiration, pupil dilation.

Which sounds to me like they're basically detecting stress.

So I guess the brilliant assumption they based their design on was that nobody in an airport is going to be stressed unless they're a terrorist.

They sort of pre-emptively account for weaknesses like this by saying, in the literature I've glanced through so far, that their system doesn't detect GUILT, but is just used as an indicator that somebody maybe should be looked at more closely. Sort of a catch-all weasel-out, indicating that they are aware that they are going to be generating a lot of false positives, but, YOU KNOW, we are just going to be having a LOOK at false positives, not arresting them. Don't WORRY too much about that.

But even with that weasel-out, I think the end result is ridiculous. I mean, of all the people who are going to register the stress-type indicators they are detecting, is it even more likely than a random guess that they are terrorists?

I mean, you look at the group of people showing stress in an airport, what percentage of them are terrorists? It's an absurdly small number. I think they would probably do just as well to harass every traveler wearing green socks, for the practical advantage it would give.

But worse, personally, I hate flying. I always find airports stressful. So they put this idiotic system in place, and I can just see it now, their stupid robot terrorist detector will probably flash an alarm on me every time.

Great.

I find it easy to imagine. The security guys, sympathizing with me, and saying they hate the stupid system as much as I do, but, you know, ya can't argue with a computer!

Welcome to the future, where we have invented sophisticated electronic systems to order us to do idiotic things.

can anyone answer why i can't get a pdf writer that renders a web page reasonably? two recent examples (which have different problems) from the front page of slashdot are:
http://www.expatica.com/be/articles/news/European-Patent-Office-staff-on-strike.html
and
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/09/precrime-detector-is-showing-p.html

Love the cartoony explanation. Don't forget the "After I get through I'll play my pirated movies while waiting for my plane" scenario.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925331.200-take-a-leap-into-hyperspace.html

A nanotube cable would also be extremely light.

For example, this article says a cable capable of supporting a human could weigh only 10 mg per km (obviously it'd be insufficient for a space elevator, but you get the general idea).

Organic chemistry describes the chemistry of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and a few more elements. Since carbon and hydrogen is present in space it appears likely that organic molecules are formed. Nothing more magical about that than inorganic molecules forming in space. The step from - in this case - napthalene to living organisms is not to be underestimated and in my mind this reports adds very little further weight to the panspermia theory.

In my mind the recent news that simple living organisms - water bears http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade - can survive a journey in space and come back to life when conditions permit adds much more weight to the panspemia theory.
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14690-water-bears-are-first-animal-to-survive-in-space.html

you actually can get the minutes back by reversing time.

There are real time eaters out there, they exist beyond three dimensions and exist in several dimensional space. If you saw how they really look, you'd go insane like I did when I first saw them.

First learn about super strings and then we can discuss how the universe and multiverse actually work. Hawking got a lot of things wrong, the Hawking paradox was but one of them and the information and matter and energy does not simply disappear, it ends up in a different dimension. One you Terrans have not discovered yet. But keep guessing, you'll find it eventually and then learn how to reverse time.

Does anyone actually believe this to be anything other than poor science or even worse election year propaganda masking as science?

There may be some objective simple definition of "spin" that you could use to create a automated measuring system, but is this really spin?

Human language is virtually infinitely complex, and there are layers of meaning both conscious and unconscious expressed by body language, tone, cadence, content, etc. Then there's the intention of the speaker, and the context of the speech. But no, we get a elementary school level simple bar chart that clearly shows that obama is a complete spinster, and McCain is a "straight talker". Excuse me, but what a load of horse shit! Disclaimer: I'm not voting for Obama or McCain.

LS

just look at the "spin graph"...
...
McCain lowest, Obama Highest?
To me, it seems more a political decision than "real" statistic.
i mean... come on... lowest/highest?? and Bush is almost in the middle?
note:I'm not american, so i'm out of the McCain vs. Obama war...

Am I the only one that finds it a bit strange that the Presidential Candidates are on the opposing ends of that
"spin" graph?

It kinda gives a bit pseudoscience with political motivations feel to it.