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F is for Fake, New Scientist, Feb. 19, 2000. Sorry, but you must give money or use bugmenot to view more than the first 2 paragraphs or so.

This long track record of forgeries came from sources just like what you describe: vendors, farmers, basically lots of extremely poor people out to make a quick year's wages. New Scientist had an article way back in Feb 2000 outlining just how bad it was back then. Now, would you conclude, given the incredible amount of money that can be had for so little labor in such an incredibly poor region, that such a practice would become more widespread, or less so?

Other skills I've acquired from games include a facility with logic I attribute to learning chess from my father at an early age. D&D and MMORPGs taught me a bit about group dynamics, and resisting the pull of addiction.

Exactly my point! Please understand that I'm not discouraging research. I'm discouraging things that make no economic sense, such as building things on the moon when it's far cheaper to build them here and ship them up.

Well, I strongly disagree with the ISS having supplies shipped up and down - I think they should be trying to close several of the open loops on the ISS, because in the long run, it's just a waste. That's part of the problem - people are taking much too short of a view on it.

Now, that being said, they are trying to close several loops (water, oxygen, etc.) but money keeps getting cut from those programs because no one expects the ISS to stay up there for very long. Because it's a cash cow. Because it requires resupply. Because it's nowhere near a closed system. Because no one expects it to be there very long....

Then it's buying overpriced materials, as I previously mentioned.

Only unless the upkeep cost makes the cost prohibitive, and if it does, that implies you need to do more research to maintain it with less money.

That's CHNP out of CHONP (the minerals needed for life).

Who said anything about life?

A crazy assumption at this point in time if you know anything about photovoltaic cell construction.

It's not that crazy. There's some research being done into things like this - it's just that there's no real economic incentive other than trivial grants from NASA. Granted, that research is in its infancy - right now they just produce the substrate - but to rule it out as crazy is a little much. Don't you think someone's going to win the Centennial Challenge for oxygen production in the next few years? I'd imagine that shortly after that would be solar cells.

(read Edwards' research on the subject that he did for his space elevator study - it's a small fraction of 1% efficiency).

That's because of size constraints of the climber (you miss portions of the beam). Microwave power beaming back in the 70s (ground-to-ground, granted) was about 56% efficient. The receiver needs to be much larger than the transmitter, for obvious reasons. The efficiency quotes that he had were 50% conversion losses, 30% absorption losses. That's 15% efficient. The remaining loss is due to the inefficiency in beam size.

Cheap space power is a myth for the exact same reason that lunar aluminum is prohibitively expensive until we get cheap access to space: launch costs are just too darn high.

Depends on the lifetime of the satellites, and also upon the expected cost increases of fossil fuels. Most people, when considering expenditures, don't usually take into account the fact that you might also be reducing the trade deficit (and possibly benefitting the local economy in other ways).

Which means that it can be economical for the government to sponsor the program, even if it seems like the program costs more money than it's worth.

The military interest was triggered by research published in 1999 by Carl Collins and colleagues at the University of Texas at Dallas. They found that by shining X-rays onto certain types of hafnium they could get it to release 60 times as much energy as they put in (New Scientist print edition, 3 July 1999).

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3406

So what can you do with that? make a UAV out of it.

The US Air Force is examining the feasibility of a nuclear-powered version of an unmanned aircraft. The USAF hopes that such a vehicle will be able to "loiter" in the air for months without refuelling, striking at will when a target comes into its sights.

But the idea is bound to raise serious concerns about the wisdom of flying radioactive material in a combat aircraft. If shot down, for instance, would an anti-aircraft gunner in effect be detonating a dirty bomb?

It raises political questions, too. Having Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) almost constantly flying over a region would amount to a new form of military intimidation, especially if they were armed, says Ian Bellamy, an arms control expert at Lancaster University in Britain.

But right now, there seems no stopping the proliferation of UAVs, fuelled by their runaway success in the Kosovo and Afghanistan conflicts. The big attraction of UAVs is that they do not put pilots' lives at risk, and they are now the norm for many reconnaissance and even attack missions.

The endurance of a future nuclear-powered UAV would offer military planners an option they might find hard to turn down. Last week, the Pentagon allocated $1 billion of its 2004 budget for further development of both armed and unarmed UAVs. .......

Having said that, cloning a particle perfectly is nonetheless forbidden by the No Cloning Theorem. Basically (as I understand it) what this says is that there is an underlying principle of Quantum Mechanics that you can never know what position distribution a particle originally had, since the moment you measure it you focus it at that point and kill the original distribution. Cloning the particle would be a way of "cheating" that would let you get the distribution of the particle without destroying it, so it ends up being forbidden.

Now, even though you cannot perfectly clone a particle, you can imperfectly clone it, which is what these guys have claimed to have done. If you look at the abstract, you will note that they are only claiming a fidelity of 58% +/- 1%. (The theoretical limit is five-sixths (83%) according to this article in New Scientist.)

A non-perfect fidelity, however, isn't so bad. Alice and Bob probably can't get their own optimal fidelity when using Quantum Cryptography anyways; in theory they should expect to see 50% of the bits get through, and then worry if they see it goes down below that -- even, say, to 49%. In practice, their equipment might only be able to get 40% of the bits through, and sometimes even less than that, so they'll tolerate lower rates than 50% since they are figuring that eavesdropping would lower this rate all the way down to 25%, and that is something that they'd surely notice. However, by using the techniques like those discussed in the article you can apparently eavesdrop less than perfectly in a way that, while still lowering the bit transmission, does not make it as bad as 25%. Thus, if Alice and Bob were naive they'd just assume that their equipment was faulty and not that there was an eavesdropper.

So the moral of this story is that from now on Alice and Bob will have to make their apparatus work much more reliably so that they can expect a success rate of say, 45-50% rather than 35-50%, and thus be more likely to notice a slight degradation in the signal due to an eavesdropper.

and don't forget the robot camel jockeys!

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7705

There is an article in New Scientist that went into some statistics related to this.

Basically researchers found that the the disease was detected much later in well educated people, which accounted for the fact that well educated people deteriorate more rapidly. i.e. the underlying cause of the disease progresses at the same average rate in everyone, but it is likely to be detected in later stages of the disease for those with a higher education.
Unfortunately I couldn't fund an online copy of the article, only the intro: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg188253 01.300&feedId=health_rss20

What happens is that smarter people are able to compensate for longer the damage caused by Alzheimer's. Thus they tend to show the "show-stopping" symptoms much later than the average person. But by that time, the disease has ravaged the brain so much that the decline *seems* ("seem" is the critical word) to happen a lot faster.

There was recently an article on New Scientist precisely about this: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18825 301.300.html (unfortunately the whole article does not seem available for free on the web).

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18825 301.300.html This went on to explain that the same physical damage has less results in educated people, so when they do show symptoms at a recognised level the disease is already advanced.

How brainpower can help you cheat old age:
Why are well-educated, active people more able to fend off the symptoms of dementia and brain damage?...

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18825 301.300.html

yes, thats because:
>An algebraic result from the Hubbert theory says that the production rate peaks when half of the oil has been produced

Also, 'Peak oil' is not:
'peak oil production'
'peak oil consumption'
'peak oil discovery'
Its a combination and calculation taking into account these and other influences such as estimating undiscovered oil reserves, time taken to exploit, demand etc etc. shown in a graph form.

Maybe we should avoid referring to estimates and statistics and look at cold hard facts that are readily digestible:
We use oil.
We need to find this oil.
When we are finding less than we are using we need to prepare alternatives.

Sadly (just a couple of broad references as rants should only go on for so long):
"1965 was an incredibly significant year for modern civilisation. Because, although this fact went largely unremarked for three decades, it was the year in which our rate of crude oil discovery stopped rising and began to fall. It was the year of peak discovery, and since 1965 we have been steadily finding less."
http://www.thesharpener.net/?p=41#comments
"All or nearly all of the largest oil fields have already been discovered and are being produced" http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/07/markets/peak_oil/i ndex.htm

So i guess the time is right to find alternatives now ;)

Added thoughts (some discussed elsewhere in main thread, some not)
- Oil reserves are estimates. some of these numbers are simply wrong - lately we have seen a lot of reserve totals being decreased rather than increased - not good for us.
- What is oil? - we have lots of closish forms of oil, eg. oil shale, tar sands.
- see: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7616 to counter the argument that technology will save us
- "An oil well never runs completely dry; when the price is right, the oil can be made to flow again"
- Credit is due to some oil companies who are investing in researching alternative forms of energy but generally (IMHO) its not enough. I wonder how much influence public pressure has on this investment - do they do it to quieten down the rebels? After all, they are businesses and are expected to maximise profits which they are doing. I'd like to think that they are preparing for arguably their own futures - but i have doubts.
- "Food grains grown in the United States now contain between 4 and 10 calories of fossil fuel for every 1 calorie of sunlight."
http://www.thesharpener.net/?p=41#comments

oh,
"Given the long lead times required for significant mass-market penetration of new energy technologies, this result in no way justifies complacency about both supply-side and demand-side research and development."
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/featu re_articles/2004/worldoilsupply/oilsupply04.html

you know, fashion is a great thing. i say 'bring back the hippies'.

ar from it. All of the components of a space elevator will be revolutionary, not just the ribbon. The climber's mechanical parts have to work flawlessly for about 100,000 km.

That's all well and true, but none of this is all that impressive on the tiny scale they're currently working at. Cables longer than this hold up bridges all over the world (before you get some bridge lengths to dispute, remember that the cables are much longer than the bridges), and the mechanical climbers that install those cable strand by strand have climbed much higher than a few hundred feet to pull it off decades ago. When they get the climber up a a few miles on a cable that's light and thin enough to not break under it's own weight, then I'll be impressed with their cable and their climber technology. Until then, this is a much more interesting and technologically advanced project, and it's cables will be more than twice the length this elevator test is using.

Although these events were separated by about 57 years (approximately 2 Saturnian years) there is yet no explanation why they apparently follow a cycle -- occurring when it is summer in Saturn's northern hemisphere.

September 2004: Google omits controversial news stories in China

Ok Mr. "With all do respect", I mentioned one skeptic of global warming. I didn't say there is only one. There are many credible scientists who are skeptics of global warming "alarmism". Not just many scientist, but even a considerable number of climatologists. Here is an article that points out a FEW in the skeptics camp ( http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg185248 61.500 ). They are mostly just not as outspoken about the theory as most will agree there is a warming trend going on they just don't believe it is anything to be hugely alarmed by. There have been various warming and cooling periods in this planets history before we existed here and many since we have come to exist most likely. Not only that, but there is plenty of geological data that suggests much sharper warming and cooling than anything that has happened during this industrial age of humans. If you want "Alarmist" science to influence your view of the future go ahead, but I myself don't buy into even the most scientific crystal ball. In the 1950's scientists in these same fields were warning of "global cooling!" They had 50 years of data then and have 100 now yet have changed their mind about the trend direction and probably will again in another 50 years of gathering data. The billions of years of earths existence has almost definately seen a higher and lower mean temp than any during the time of humans so to think that we could somehow influence such a thing is what is bone-headed.

http://www.rifleshootermag.com/gun_accessories/sig hts_092105/index2.html
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/dn75 96

Here's a link to an article about the hair care products. It says the research is not conclusive, but rather suspicious. Apparently about half of all black girls in the United States start developing secondary sex characteristics before age 8 (yikes! didn't know that), while the rate is much lower for black girls in other parts of the world (e.g. Africa).

There are other parasites that infect grasshoppers and snails in a fashion more similar to the Goa'uld.

The fungus you refer to is mentioned in this article, which ironically was linked to from a past Slashdot story. They just call it an enslaver fungus, they don't actually name the species they are referring to.

But it sounds like this type of adaptive mechanism is more common than you would think. Quite amazing actually - how on earth would a parasite evolve the right chemical signal to trigger its host to jump into water or perch at the top of a tree? Very bizarre.

However, kudos to the AC to did the research and provided a link to an article on the study. (Just repeating that above the default threshold.)

The study that parent is referring to:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3628

heh, filthy rich toff.
They send mine to a parrot to add up using mental arithmetic. For those with a subscription

On the contrary, I've asked for references to scientific works, but all you've provided are references to non-technical work.

How convenient; in other words, there is no need to investigate the information I provided because it conflicts with your pre-determined outcome of what you believe science should prove in the future.

The scientific basis for that work seems hard to discern, to the point where I question its existence.

Doesn't this statement contradict your previous statement? If you refuse to investigate how can you possibly have an opinion about something you have never studied?

You appear to have a strong faith in things that are at odds with the evidence in the world around us, and your explanation for this discrepancy is a supernatural one, based on faith.

What evidence, unproven scientific theories that throw away data in order to prove there is a possibility they might be right without actually proving their theory?

Here is a quote from http://www.fredheeren.com/boston.htmpaleontologist Jun-Yuan Chen:

The debate over Haikouella casts Western scientists in the unlikely role of defending themselves against charges of ideological blindness from scientists in communist China. Chinese officials argue that the theory of evolution is so politically charged in the West that researchers are reluctant to admit shortcomings for fear of giving comfort to those who believe in a biblical creation.

"Evolution is facing an extremely harsh challenge," declared the Communist Party's Guang Ming Daily last December in describing the fossils in southern China. "In the beginning, Darwinian evolution was a scientific theory .... In fact, evolution eventually changed into a religion."

Here are some more links that talk about data "Neo-Darwinian" believers don't want to discuss:

http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=news&action=vi ew&ID=51Dinosaurs, Grasses, and Darwinism

http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&actio n=view&ID=2033The Devastating Issue of Dinosaur Tissue

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6874La rge mammals once dined on dinosaurs

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/248836_dino 18.htmlDinosaur poop shows grass is older than it seems

You can write me off as some kind of crackpot; though, the mounting evidence keeps rolling in. Why is there an abundance of C14 in everything from diamonds, coal and dinosaur fossils? The list gets very large very quickly, though as I have been saying all along:

There is a principle which is a bar against all information,which is proof
against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep man in everlasting
ignorance.
That principle is condemnation before investigation.
--Edmund Spencer

Not really related to your post exactly, but I was a little surprised to open a copy of New Scientist a week or two ago and find an editorial penned by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (paid link, summary only), talking about what his administration has been doing about climate control. Schwarzenegger is a Republican who appears to have bought into global warming wholeheartedly. I'm not well-versed enough in his policies to really be able to analyze whether his views are all just smoke and mirrors, but New Scientist is not really all that well read in the United States vs. the UK. As such, I just thought it was interesting.

Also do something about the draining of peat bogs in Indonesia, so they don't catch fire. They could have emitted as much as 2.6 billion tons of carbon in 1997-98. There could be as much as 50 billion tons remaining to burn.

That's exactly what the US, Australia and Great Britain are doing.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20 060111-8.html

And they are getting crap for it.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7744

Please list all scientific facts (or accepted theories) that have been censored by the government. If you can't list a single one, then I can only assume that they are 'censoring' this scientist from making policy statements as head scientist of NASA.

1. Climate change is happening
2. Something can be done about it
3. It needs urgent action now

4. 1. Over to you.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3488

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18925 351.200.html

It cannot be the answer, because in rural america people do not understand technology, but in India they do. Big difference.

That's the biggest line of bullshit I think I've ever seen. Typical of someone who hasn't spent a day outside of the city.

Having grown up in rural America, I can safely say that we understand technology just fine. Not just mechanical technology such as engines, combines, hay bailers, and other complex machines (which any farmer certainly knows better than you). There are plenty of examples of high-tech equipment that rural America understands better than you.

How about irrigation technology? With the price of water rights and well permits going up, farmers have to be especially concerned with water delivery systems. Farmers know what kind of irrigation systems deliver the most irrigation to the ground while minimizing evaporation. Do you?

What about the role of GPS in farming? How about Zaurus PDAs used in cattle herding?

Shall we talk about milk next? Technology in that field is fairly advanced, too.

Yes, rural America understands technology. You clearly don't understand rural America.

The linked in the story sort of breaks down at the end... I think that the New Scientist might be more informative. However, I don't have a subscription.

Makes you wonder how Quantum Viruses would be.

The NS article had some very interesting moral and ethical questions too.

You want to pass a polygraph after comitting a murder. Could taking these pills before committing the crime help that? If this were the case, could the presence of metabolites of the drug in your system be used to incriminate you?

Do we really want to raise an army where the soldiers experience no guilt whatsoever no matter who and how many they kill? Soldiers are members of society too. Do we really want that kind of future society?

The philosophical argument is interesting too. Memories are a fundamentally defining attribute of the human experience. What happens to us as human beings when we choose to modify that?

There's no doubt that trauma patients in A&E benefitted from receiving these kinds of drugs. Their experiences and states of mind after the fact were demonstrably better than those who didn't get the drug.

I can totally see scenarios where this could have great value.

I'm just saying that it could be a very sharp double-edged sword.

Thoughts?

What is cause for concern are the number of critical tipping points we seem to be hitting. Specifically:

• Melting permafrost to release billions of tons of methane - as the northern reaches thaw, trapped methane and carbon dioxide is released. The methane is of particular consequence since it is a much stronger greenhouse gas and persists much longer than CO2 does. As more permafrost outgases, the temperature rises and bakes even more of the frozen north. There is even bi-partisan acknowledgment and concern over the problem. Alaska is literally melting
• Loss of polar sea ice changes albedo - warming sea waters melt ice faster, as the surface of the earth in that region changes from reflective white to darker colors more heat is retained, in turn melting more ice.
• Global warming to speed up as carbon levels show sharp rise - this is BIG news. Why? Because there's no corresponding relative increase from human emissions or other known sources. The implications are that we've tipped a balance with CO2 and triggered a feedback loop. Even if we ceased all industrial activity today, the natural source might continue until the planet is again uninhabitable for oxygen-breathers.
• Those paranoid wackos at NASA have also noticed problems if the ocean currents shift which some reports say has already begun.

It's not that things might get a bit warmer (or colder), or that a "few people" in low-lying areas might have to move (actually, it's 53% of the U.S. population according to the census). What's really scary is that we are changing the atmosphere on a scale that may not recover for thousands of years if ever, and which has no guarantees of being suitable for higher life.

Perhaps a nearby supernova that hits the earth with a medium strength GRB wiping out
almost all life with residual radiation for extended period of time .

One white dwarf is close enough to us right now that if it went supernova this could
happen , but fortunately it is moving away from us, and it looks like we have some time .

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2311

A DNA bank might be a good idea of all life on earth, kind of a bio repository catalgue .

Ex-MislTech

• http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalsci ence/constant_changing_010815.html
• http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/S peedOfLight/speed_of_light.html
• http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6092

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg189253 43.700

I think it's really more about preserving genetic diversity rather than being a hedge against world-wide disaster.

More elaborate article on this can be found at NewScientist.com. Some sketches (2) over the vault available on the online Norwegian newspaper TV2 Nettavisen.

Also, I'm a bit disappointed that BBC missed out on the whole "security-details provided by roaming polar bears"-thing.

Cambridge University has created the first Quantum microchip.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/m g18925344.900

But, hey!...I suppose it isn't a glorious patriotic genocidal good ole' USA chip......

This was also reported by New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8564.

Trouble is due to the placebo effect, it might fool the brain so well that it behaves as if it is indeed caffeinated.

See Neuropharmacological Dissection of Placebo Analgesia,The Neurobiology of Placebo Analgesia and "13 things that do not make sense".

Then there's also the homeopathy thingy - see num 4 in the newscientist article.

The New Scientist had a more detailed article on this last month. It also has a link to an AVI of a bee flying and a reference to the full journal paper.

I wouldn't call this timely news as there was a flurry or reports about determining the physics of bee flight in late November 2005 Deciphering the Mystery of Bee Flight
Secrets of bee flight revealed">
Longstanding Puzzle of Honeybee Flight Solved at Last

But as wikipedia shows this problem had been essentially resolved since the early 90's, though I'm sure I been hearing that this problem is "Finally Solved" every year or two and has been since the early 70's.

Researchers will continue to refine their understanding of the process and claim to finally or fully understand the problem at last.
Some, mostly religious types, will claim scientists don't understand the process because there was some mystery at some point a few decades ago. It seems every few years we get similar pronouncements about the trajectory of a thrown baseball.

While Bee flight does little to disprove ID, ID proponents do frequently use examples like bee flight to bolster their ID arguments regardless of what the current scientific consensus is. Urban legends and wives tales do not die easily.

My last journal entry was actually on the topic of ID Christians in Scientists' Clothing

I would suggest not trusting those either.

It's a well-known fact that wearing corrective lenses causes the eye to learn to depend on the lens

No. It's a well-known "common sense" idea with no scientific backing. Although many optometrists have long believed it to be true, when put to the test, it turns out that it's a myth.

Hydroelectric dams produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane.

When you dam up a river, you end up converting all of the organic material drowned into methane over time through biological effects. Over the longer term, organic material from upstream washed into the new lake also decays because of stagnant water.

There is no more event horizon.

If you google hard enough you may yet be able to find a pdf of the lecture notes used by the bright young physicist/mathematician who presented the new proof of the mathematical theory. I forget what his name is but reading through the referenced materials in those two articles could lead you to him very quickly.

You do know the downside to that, though, right? Rainforest destruction.

Why not just post a link to http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/m g18925331.200.html instead you turd.