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The point is that very little consistency checking goes on. For example forensic evidence is used to convict someone. Then the fact that they were convicted is used as evidence to support the accuracy of the forensic evidence without external validation. This is a very common theme. And it's interesting to listen to forensic experts speaking. Some are incredibly sure of themselves and seem to be unaware of the existence of statistical variation. That maggot story is a prime example. Maggots aren't an entirely stupid way to date the death of a corpse. But it's all about chance - like how many flies just happen to be in a particular area at any one time. But courts sem to be particularly poor at dealing with probabilistic information. (And there are numerous publications on that subject.)

Career choice begins in womb

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg184247 12.700

Also, MRIs Reveal Differences in Brains of Women and Men

http://nursing.advanceweb.com/common/editorialsear ch/searchresult.aspx?CC=4127&AD=10/27/2000

So, maybe the complex interaction of biology and culture defies the simplicity of labels like "sexist" and "PC" and the knee-jerk reactions indicated by their use?

This isn't news, it's just slightly better than what the same professor announced almost a year ago.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4714

Try New Scientist if you can get it where you live.

A really interesting philosophical question is why not seed Venus with bacteria and orgnaisms able to tolerate the heat and pressure and try to terraform it? Why not? It's not like we'd be crowding out the Venusians.

I suggest we don't do that before we're absolutely 100% sure that there isn't any life already there. E.g., this suggestion from 2002 is interesting (if not very probable, I suppose).

..as it makes it seem the mammals were larger than the dinosaurs people typically think of, like the T-Rex or others, who are very, very large. But according to New Scientist, they were only around a meter long (and smaller) and would prey on very small dinos.

It's not surprising politicians and patent lawyers are severely ill-informed about the true implications of these proposed economically damaging extensions of patent law to software and business methods (falsely dressed up as restrictions to and clarifications of existing patent law) when journalists in high-profile publishing institutions with biased financial motives continue to write such absurdly misleading articles as "Europe fights tide of absurd patents" in the current edition of New Scientist.

Aside from looking cool and being important to penguins (the two things that the article seems to focus on) this can affect things that are actually important.

The ice tongue that the iceberg is going to hit is the ocean end of a glacier. If that is knocked off by the collision that could be like pulling the cork from a bottle. It may cause the glacier to discharge into the more rapidly than it otherwise would, raising sea levels.

Clickable link.

You're thinking of something like this.
Fresh water entering the antarctic isn't a problem, but in the arctic it could switch off the gulf stream and mess up the weather all over the atlantic.

You seem to know alot about the materials end of photovoltaics so let me ask you this. WTF ever happened to the multijunction GaN on sapphire systems that were supposed to achieve full solar spectrum conversion? This stuff came out like 3 years ago complete with huge fanfare and gushing mediagasm and then....nothing. Haven't heard a peep about it since. Sooo tired of this pattern of science by press release then nothing to show for it...

At least on my screen, the article is also only 15 lines long. It must be vying to be the world's shortest story about the world's smallest P2P app.

Camperio-Ciani stresses that whatever the genetic factors are, there is no single gene accounting for his observations. And the tendency of the trait to be passed through the female line backs previous research suggesting that some of the factors involved are on the male "X" chromosome, the only sex chromosome passed down by women. "It's a combination of something on the X chromosome with other genetic factors on the non-sex chromosomes," he says.

Recall that the Fine Structure constant is the inverse proportional of a woman's bodytype most closely approaching the area under the curves represented by Pamela Anderson's shape to the amount of clothing she has on.

Wait wtf were we talking about?

From 2004: The year in biology and medecine

Another study suggested that men may have swapped fighting for wooing and evolved into handsome hunks because of women's pickiness.

The article itself states "As our ancestors evolved, the ability to attract a female mate through good looks became [sic] may have become more important in the mating stakes than the ability to fight off male rivals..." and it goes on to say that the "changes were probably driven by choosy females who began to demand handsomeness, not brute force."

Unless I'm missing something here, the reasoning in the target article seems to be backwards. It could be that the author of the article in question is something along the lines of a Platonist about beauty (having a belief that there is an objective "form" of beauty that ancestral females had in mind when they were picking their mates). But, aside from that perspective, which is currently unpopular both philosophically and scientifically, I think that the reasoning usually goes more like this: we judge certain faces to be attractive (beautiful or handsome or whatever) because the people who have those features inherited them from ancestors who had greater reproductive success.

Although the details of this sort of reasoning may be somewhat debatable (e.g., why aren't the majority of people then considered to be beautiful or handsome instead of just your average Joe or Jane -- because of some technicalities having to do with the normal distribution of any given trait in the population and the fact that the people who happen to have all or most attractive features would be the statistically lucky ones at one tail of the distribution), it does make sense prima facie, as is evidenced by the use of a similar line of reasoning in the article on female attractiveness and fertility that is referenced in the same paragraph of the year in review.

I don't have access to the journal article that is referenced (in Biology Letters), so if someone is familiar with the particular article or the general debate in question, or if I'm missing some subtlety that makes things different in the male case, could you point it out to me?

From 2004: The year in biology and medecine

Another study suggested that men may have swapped fighting for wooing and evolved into handsome hunks because of women's pickiness.

The article itself states "As our ancestors evolved, the ability to attract a female mate through good looks became [sic] may have become more important in the mating stakes than the ability to fight off male rivals..." and it goes on to say that the "changes were probably driven by choosy females who began to demand handsomeness, not brute force."

Unless I'm missing something here, the reasoning in the target article seems to be backwards. It could be that the author of the article in question is something along the lines of a Platonist about beauty (having a belief that there is an objective "form" of beauty that ancestral females had in mind when they were picking their mates). But, aside from that perspective, which is currently unpopular both philosophically and scientifically, I think that the reasoning usually goes more like this: we judge certain faces to be attractive (beautiful or handsome or whatever) because the people who have those features inherited them from ancestors who had greater reproductive success.

Although the details of this sort of reasoning may be somewhat debatable (e.g., why aren't the majority of people then considered to be beautiful or handsome instead of just your average Joe or Jane -- because of some technicalities having to do with the normal distribution of any given trait in the population and the fact that the people who happen to have all or most attractive features would be the statistically lucky ones at one tail of the distribution), it does make sense prima facie, as is evidenced by the use of a similar line of reasoning in the article on female attractiveness and fertility that is referenced in the same paragraph of the year in review.

I don't have access to the journal article that is referenced (in Biology Letters), so if someone is familiar with the particular article or the general debate in question, or if I'm missing some subtlety that makes things different in the male case, could you point it out to me?

From 2004: The year in biology and medecine

Another study suggested that men may have swapped fighting for wooing and evolved into handsome hunks because of women's pickiness.

The article itself states "As our ancestors evolved, the ability to attract a female mate through good looks became [sic] may have become more important in the mating stakes than the ability to fight off male rivals..." and it goes on to say that the "changes were probably driven by choosy females who began to demand handsomeness, not brute force."

Unless I'm missing something here, the reasoning in the target article seems to be backwards. It could be that the author of the article in question is something along the lines of a Platonist about beauty (having a belief that there is an objective "form" of beauty that ancestral females had in mind when they were picking their mates). But, aside from that perspective, which is currently unpopular both philosophically and scientifically, I think that the reasoning usually goes more like this: we judge certain faces to be attractive (beautiful or handsome or whatever) because the people who have those features inherited them from ancestors who had greater reproductive success.

Although the details of this sort of reasoning may be somewhat debatable (e.g., why aren't the majority of people then considered to be beautiful or handsome instead of just your average Joe or Jane -- because of some technicalities having to do with the normal distribution of any given trait in the population and the fact that the people who happen to have all or most attractive features would be the statistically lucky ones at one tail of the distribution), it does make sense prima facie, as is evidenced by the use of a similar line of reasoning in the article on female attractiveness and fertility that is referenced in the same paragraph of the year in review.

I don't have access to the journal article that is referenced (in Biology Letters), so if someone is familiar with the particular article or the general debate in question, or if I'm missing some subtlety that makes things different in the male case, could you point it out to me?

my dreams come true, A lightning gun in real life. Now all I need is the Quad and I'm set. ooh ooh, even better, the Beserker Rune.

Umm... don't all digital cell phones (which almost everyone uses in the United States) use some kind of basic encryption? GSM phones do though it might not be perfect, I don't know about the other standards.

It was not completely successful. The two dummy satellites did not make it to orbit due to a problem with the first stage. You can read about it here: Boeing Rocket Launch

The study is (as always with cellphones) certainly a source for controversy.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6819

1. Commitment to something greater than oneself
2. Self-respect, but with humility, self-discipline, and acceptance of personal responsibility
3. Respect and caring for others
4. Caring for other living things and the environment

How do you explain the creation of artificial brain implants like this prostetic hippocampus? It appears to work just like the biological counterpart. Are you suggesting that prosthetic implants which mimicked other brain regions linked to emotional response wouldn't function? If not, how much of the brain would have to be replaced before "consciousness" is replaced by "programming"? Or is this an argument for dualism?

SMACK!

Try this link.

... seems to blow all that other crap away, even if the news was released in december. evidence of water once being on mars is big... but hardly surprising enough to rank at #1.

According to an article I read in New Scientist (can't find it online atm), chips in a Zigbee networks are programmed to synchronise their transmissions, so that they are all either switched on or in sleep mode at the same time. Since Bluetooth is always listening out for transmissions, it means that they can drain the batteries of whatever item in a short period of time. This is fine for a laptop or a cell phone, that is recharged often, but can lead to disaster if you're not near a charger.
Zigbee devices can have a maximum battery life of hundreds of days, compared to about 7 days for a bluetooth device.

This New Scientist article discusses the evidence for a link between regular pot use and schizophrenia. There is also a possibly a link between pot and depression, but it's hard to tell because regular dope smokers often fail at education and end up unemployed - not exactly a great outcome either.

It's always bothered me how few people in the tech community are clued into the cruelties associated with factory farming.

I've been waiting for the day that lab grown steaks become commonplace. If it could be a more practical and economical way of producing meat then I'm sure companies wouldn't have a problem using it in place of factory farming. I have to admit pleading ignorance and being in deliberate denial of how meat ends up on my plate, because part of me knows that it involves a gruesome process that I couldn't handle doing myself. That wouldn't be the case if it was grown in a lab.

It was in a cell phone
And some theory behind it from the previous slashdot article.

(I emailed this comment to the author. My slashdot Login is Shaneh0, I'm posting as A.C because after writing the author I wanted to share it with you)

I modded your comment down, "-1 Overrated."

I did this because I think your post is every bit as ignorant as you claim we are.

"China may not have googlenews, but how many subbed Chinese new stations do you have in America?"

While we don't pick up any Chinese TV networks, Google News does sample Chinese news sources--which, from what I've seen, are about as reliable as Pravda--sometimes even linked as the top story. So it's ironic that you argue our ignorance to the Chinese press. I wouldn't have the world Xihuana (sp?) in my vocabulary if that were true, and I'm certainly not the only one.

'Is it not America that closed down reporting of Iraq from stations like al jazeera"

The fact is, we are AT WAR with Iraq. Like it or not, it's true. Part of war is controlling propaganda, and it's been that way for a long time. I disagree with the war in Iraq but now that we're involved, I support doing what it takes to win.

"China has the great Firewall. - You have Fox."

EXACTLY! We have Fox, and CNN and NPR and CSPAN and Countless others, including ultra-independent bloggers who would probably be arrested in China.

"How many Americans still think Saddam had an active WMD program? ... Al queada links? How many of you think most of the world support your actions?"

Honestly, I'd say that at LEAST a majority of Americans knows the truth about these things. Contrary to YOUR ignorant belief, most Americans are NOT un-educated or un-informed about domestic and world issues.

I didn't personally vote for Bush (either time) but I do know many people who did. Bush supporters aren't ignorant to his mistakes, or the state of affairs in Iraq, or the worlds opinion of America. They just felt he would be the better president.

If you think America on its worst day is ANYTHING CLOSE to as bad as China on its best, you've completely lost perspective on reality. China rolls over it's own citizens with tanks when they dissent. The government is filthy rich while it's citizens are starving to death in record numbers each year.

There is no due process, no civil liberties and no hope of reform.

America has her share of problems, far too numerous to list here. But you go around the world to Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America and you ask them if they'd rather live in China or in the United States.

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a chemist, chemical engineer or even a biologist.

Dragline silk is made primarily of two proteins, called ADF-3 and ADF-4. These are produced in a gland in the spider's abdomen, using the same amino acids that your body uses to produce skin and hair. ADF-4 allows for the rapid production of fiber, and ADF-3 regulates this production. Each protein is made by a specific gene.

Gat's team put these genes into a genetically engineered virus, then let the virus infect the cultured caterpillar cells. The cells produced silk proteins, and then spider fibers formed spontaneously in the petri dish.

Looks like the stuff might be easy to spin into silk, since it does it on a molecular level on its own. Maybe all you need is these silk protiens stored in a solvent that evaporates rapidly, stored under pressure; who knows. I suppose the result wouldn't be too unlike a can of crazy string or spider-man's wrist-mounted launching device.

Combine that with some gecko-tape gloves and shoes and you'll be fighting crime in no time.

Rather, what you see in the case of lying is specific activity in the areas of the brain that are involved in the regulation of the emotional response, including ones (such as the amygdala) involved in fear and planning (prefrontal cortex).

Not to mention those involved in sequence completion (hippocampus) and configural learning (hippocampus). Configural learning has some similarities to what-if scenarios, as does sequence completion. Naturally, this is why the hippocampus is good at both.

And yes, I am a huge fan of the hippocampus.

This issue was well covered in the NewScientist a while ago.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 91543
Also longer article here (subscription required)
http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/art icle.jsp?rp=1&id=mg18324585.500

This issue was well covered in the NewScientist a while ago.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 91543
Also longer article here (subscription required)
http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/art icle.jsp?rp=1&id=mg18324585.500

Amniotic fluid may hold 'ethical' stem cells

The federal ban is basically federal government research dollars shouldn't go towards research into the non-approved stem cell lines. The National Science Foundation has a chart that shows how much federal money is spent in the US by year, compared with a study by AAAS on R&D funding by state. 2002 totals come in at $84.9 billion by federal and $88.3 billion by states, in 2002 dollars. So, money could very well come from the state levels of governments, where the states that approve of the process can push their own money towards their goals... One could argue that that is the preferred path, to reduce the dependence on federal government, but I digress.

The core issue for most people is "should the government fund projects that I am morally opposed to?" It's a tricky argument, one used for and against the National Endowment of the Arts for years... Whether its Maplethorpe (S&M photos), Ofili's Madonna (elephant dung on the Virgin Mary), or any other controvercial art, these are just personal expressions of speech ... while it may offend, noone is harmed at the end of the day.

But when it comes to embryonic research, there are people that believe that the fetus is viable from the moment of conception, and that the process of extracting the cells is in effect "killing" a potential human. For them, it ranks as an abortion. Whether or not you believe that a life is being taken, many religious people do, and thus they want the practice to stop.

I would also counter that we are arguing two slightly different points. We both agree that there are two tracks that are available for research, embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. Your argument appears to be that the government should not abandon the embryonic path simply because a minority are opposed to it on (their) ethical grounds, that there are many sick people who can benefit from the results of this research. My argument is that the government should be pushing its resources towards adult stem cell research, given that both technologies are on equal footing with this one being free of any stigma, and at the end of the day they are benefitting just as many people.

Personally, I'm about 50% against / 50% for embryonic stem cell research, but 100% towards adult stem cell research. I'm discouraged (yet not surprised) that there are just as many discoveries being made every day in adult stem cells (with more successes), yet the uninformed public only hears that embryonic stem cells are the only method.

I agree that the government should stop legislating moral statements, but then the constitutionalist in me also thinks that the government has no business putting any limits on first amdendment activity anywhere... This does not mean Freedom From Religion, that means Freedom Of Religion (like it reads), that the government needs to stop telling people that they cannot bring their symbols into schools and work, that the schools need to teach an objectively balanced education (as opposed to atheist) when it comes to religion. But that's an issue for another day.

Already invented:
Mini nuclear reactor could power apartment blocks
A nuclear reactor designed to generate power in the basement of an apartment block is being developed in Japan

Don't overdo the antibiotics? Are you in the US? Antibiotics (eg: tetracycline, penicillin and streptomycin) are used as growth promoters in cattle and other animals. Antibiotic resistance genes are being transferred from the environment into our bodies: New Scientist for the scary details.

Second, in recent years they have done a pretty solid job at cleaning up the health risks associated with coal.

The 2003 blackout shows otherwise: coal power plants are still generating a lot of sulphur dioxide and ozone that is Bad For Earth. As for "cheap", I really wish you Americans stopped evaluating everything in terms of price. Sometimes you have to pay a little more now to save more later. In this case, a "greener" energy source may cost more now, but may damage the environment less so it'll cost less later. Think of solar power as Linux and coal plants as Windows.

would buy only German or Russian weaponry

Hmmm...you mean like the Torpedo's in the Kursk, which used a technology the Navy stopped using as the risk of explosion of the propulsion system was too great ?

As for the sub fire, there is no final cause released yet, although there is some evidence of a second fire being caused by an oxygen canister igniting.

considering the time & a probable computation error

from ./ ... "Seems as though the Genesis spacecraft was able to launch from earth, travel through space, avoid aliens, and cruise back into the atmosphere to be caught by stunt pilots waiting patiently with their helicopters. Alas, the brakes didn't work because a sensor was designed upside down.

With all the advanced technology, nothing similar or remotedly comparable happens in the new millenium.

CC.

Here's an article that discusses the trade offs of trading up to a more environmentally friendly car, or running your old jalopy into the ground. As you can see, it is far from a clear cut issue. http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/article.jsp?i d=lw900

Luckily, here in Ontario we are forced to have our cars checked every couple of years (after the first four) for pollution, so we will have a better idea of how polluting our cars actually are. If it's not up to spec, the government can force us to fix up the car so the emissions are better. Perhaps this can be a better idea, than buying a new car.

In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins.

I'm not sure I like having an easier path for viruses to migrate.

Even if that study is 90% off, that's still 10,000 innocents.

Those Iraqi soldiers probably didn't prefer dying as civilians.

the conservative one (by their own account)

The realistic one because of its methodology

Personally, I love crap like that. Because it's cool to demonstrate to people that such software exists today.

Think about it -- how difficult is that software to write? You just described its functional specifications and wrapped them in a single paragraph, including complaints. Sure, it would need to be customized on a city-by-city basis, but for a city the size of New York it wouldn't be impossible.

As a matter of fact, I thought the whole idea was so cool I just now googled for more info. I found searching for the terms AeroTriangulation found a few software vendors who have products that combine maps and photos. Rockware seems to sell a lot of it. And I remembered that in a previous Slashdot story that there's a company performing a photolocation service! Here's the article.

So, isn't it actually even cooler that the technology you reported them using was actually lower tech than the current state of the art in photolocation software? In reality nobody has to click on the Empire State Building, because the software already recognizes it! How cool is that?

New Scientist (a British science weekly) has a great online gift guide.

It is primarily suggestions from readers (and a few from the editors), so it's probably a lot more honest. Many of the items are only available in England, but many are available in the US or worldwide.

Here is some supporting material I read a while ago... As well as the good news, at least in canada you can get some medicinal marijuana to treat this Also on a side note I submitted this earlier this morning. To much PC can make you Blind?! Tuesday November 16, @09:14AM Rejected

We are technically at war with North Korea, and have been for 50 years now. The North Koreans are a major source of ballistic missile proliferation as they continue to develop and export a range of sophisticated missiles to nations such as Iran and Yemen. They have tested components for a missile capable of reaching the United States. They either have, or are close to having nuclear weapons. The North Koreas bought 12 decommissioned Soviet submarines and have used them to advance their technology and may deploy weapons on them.

North Korea regularly threatens to attack the United States.

To get a sense of the nature of the North Korean government you can just look at how they treat: orphans, the US deserver who just returned after 40 years, the Japanese they kidnapped to teach their spies, and last, but not least, the victims of their gulag.

The North Koreans could teach lessons to the Iraqi Information Minister. They deny having dug the tunnels into South Korea, some of which are big enough to drive vehicles. (A handy thing if you were of a mind to invade the South, no?) They no doubt also deny their regular attempts to infiltrate groups of agents into South Korea.

The North Korean Army had million soldiers in it in 1992. The North Koreans have been willing to starve the population, significant numbers to death, in order to sustain the army.

North Korea is a designated member of the "Axis of Evil."

They seem like a bunch you might want to protect yourself against.

Actually, that is not the first intended use -- although it is one. The primary use of this technology is to apply it to missles. The idea that the US could learn that (evil axis country X) is launching a missle, then bombard them to complete rubble BEFORE said missles reach the US is really useful, right? uhh.. well, anyway, here's my source:
newscientist
More to the point -- this craft (which, along with it's two predecessors, cost about 230 million dollars) is being crashed into the ocean. How are we feeling about those tax dollars going to NASA now?

Today, scientists can't say anything that appears to agree with the church, because they'll loose their funding, their credibility and possibly their lives.

Stop. Just stop. And learn something about how science really works before you start on the persecution complex, okay?

Scientists can say anything they bloody well want providing they have the evidence to support the statement. That's how science works. That most of science does not agree with the church is entirely because the church's claims are supported by little to no evidence. Even the most respected scientists in the world must support their claims with evidence. And even Steven Hawking can be wrong.