Slashdot Mirror

Humans are indeed amazingly resourceful and those of us who live in industrialized countries are fortunate enough to have the technology and wealth to be resourceful with.
If you are a peasant farmer in the low lying delta of Bangladesh it's a different story see http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 93605.

• Try these:
• 
  
  • Telegraph | News | Four killed in Japan's worst nuclear power accident
    
    
  • New Scientist: Japan's nuclear safety "dangerously weak"
    
    
  • Wired News: Nuclear 'Glitches' in Japan
    
    
  • Japan Economic Institute: EXPLOSIVE FIRE BLASTS JAPAN'S NUCLEAR POWER PLANS - No. 16, April 1997
    
    
  • More search results
    
    

• • Corrosion and pollution in Japan: Maps and data
    
    
  • More search results
    

I noticed that some people mentioned MMR (Measles Mumps Rubella vaccination) as a possible cause for autism. Looks like it has just recently been retracted - Controversial MMR and autism study retracted

HOW THE FUCK IS THIS POST +5 INSIGHTFUL??

Because Bin laden essentially said "Even though you started this I'm willing to stop if you are"

OSAMA BIN LADEN is a murderer

So is Bush.

he targeted the World Trade Center, a CIVILIAN INSTITUTION. The World Trade Center was never a military building, it had nothing to do with the US military.

Civilians in a democracy are responsible for their what their government does - if it chooses to sanction the killing of civilians in other countries they should be surprised if some of them strikes back. And if they don't have a mega big army they are going to blow up smaller stuff.


Being "at war" is NO EXCUSE for targeting civilans. NONE.

Which is indeed what the UN said to Bush, don't go in because you are going to kill a lot of civilians - but he didn't care.

You say 15k civilians in Iraq were killed

Actually its more like 100000 civilians were killed because of Bush's illegal war against a country that hadn't anything to do with Bin Ladens attack. A lot of children are without parents down there right now, they hate the US and when they grow up they'll probably strike back in 10-15-20 years - I'm sure there lot of idiot voters who then will whine "why are they after us, we are so innocent"

How many people were being tortured, starved and gassed by Saddam when he was in power??

Very few in later years, people stopped fighting him.
Infact in later years more people were starving to death because of the US backed sanctions.

Don't get me wrong, I think Bin Laden is dangerous lunatic - but then so is Bush and everything he has done the last few years makes the world a more dangerous place, and now the world is stuck with him for 4 more damn years!

Oh we weep for the bad education of the americans.

Maybe a strategy for fairly sharing the rights to emit carbon dioxide worldwide has a chance? The Contraction and Convergence plan developed by Aubrey Meyer at GCI seems reasonable...

Saddam would have killed 2X the the number that have been killed this year just for the sake of repression.

Do you have _any_, and I mean _ANY_ evidence to back this claim up? I can provide you with one side of the equation. More than 100k people have died since the begining of the US invasion on Iraq, as a consequence of that invasion. Here's my source: New scientist.

Can you point us where it says that Saddam used to kill some 200-300k annually? Or were you just pulling the '2X' out of your ass, because 'we all know he was a murderous tyrant'?

The Iraqis as a people are much better off this year.

Yeah, right. +1, Insightful.

The figure of 100,000 - estimated by extrapolating the surveyed households' death toll to the whole population - is based on "conservative assumptions", notes Les Roberts at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, US, who led the study.

From the source NewScientist article: "The water quality index scores countries according to the cleanliness of their rivers and underground water, the amount of treatment that they give to sewage and the way they enforce anti-pollution laws."

So this is unpleasent, but unrelated. Germany scores terribly, too - 57 out of 122 - and the tap water here is excellent. The US are 12th, and the tap water I've had there is not so excellent (unless you like chlorine), although it's been a while and I am sure quality varies from state to state. General water quality of course depends on many factors, and I doubt it's a coincidence that the top three countries ("Finland, Canada and New Zealand") all have a fairly low population density: it's not too hard to keep your water clean-ish if every resident has the equivalent of an own lake! Of course that doesn't mean that Belgium and Germany shouldn't try and increase water quality.

PS: Oh well, I checked again and I noticed I was wrong, the article does, in fact, link to the relevant UNESCO pages. But now it's too late and I can't be assed to rewrite my post. If you want to find out whether my guess is right or not, you're welcome to do so!

It's almost as if they don't speak english.

But alcohol can be good for you.

also see:
1
2
3

But alcohol can be good for you.

also see:
1
2
3

But alcohol can be good for you.

also see:
1
2
3

But alcohol can be good for you.

also see:
1
2
3

New Scientist also has an article which figures the civilian death toll to be around 100,000. One of the other undereported items is that while roughly 1,000 US troops have died, four times that amount have been wounded severely enough to be sent home, and over 8,000 total have been wounded thus far.

Evolutionary processes yield really wierd results sometimes. Ever hear about this one? This guy set up a electronically modifiable circuit board that could change it's architecture by loading a logic gate schema into it and let loose a genetic algorithm to turn it into a voice recognition program (distinguish between "Stop" and "Go"). Not only did it generate an impossibly small program from random numbers extremely quickly (one that no human could possibly have written), they can't figure out how it works. It apparently uses some physical property of the gates on that particular board. And then there was the one that simulated a walking humanoid and went from random flopping to a confident stride in less than 20 generations. Along the way, it also produced programs that moved by doing somersaults and rolling around. So it really is not necessary to invoke god into genetics and natural selection. They are tools far powerful beyond what they appear to be.

Well, if you take into consideration the premise of fallen humanity and the corruption that would be expected to follow that, it's not so surprising. Note that most of the leading causes of death in the develped world are lifestyle diseases, which is directly related to the human condition whether you subscribe to evolution or creationism. And the Judeo-christian God I read about was big on consequences for our actions.

The leg thing is kind of interesting since they've done tests in insects, and a simple transcription error (duplicates of the right piece of DNA) will cause multiple segments to grow. Which begs the question of why it didn't happen more often, whether you believe in micro- or macro-evolution.

We also have a good example of strange behaviour in the mammalian line, with the platypus. It has both bird-like and mammalian sex chromosomes, and 5 pairs of them. Here is an interesting article about them, and their unusual relationship to birds. I'm not sure if it would be easier to get something like that through random occurrence or intelligent design, one way or the other. It seems to fall on both sides of the bird-mammal fence (literally with the sex gene!), in a fairly random manner.

Hmmm... Let's see, man tells his son to blow himself up. Is that protecting him?

... and remember that processed sugar shortens life expectancy. Erm, and that a study has recently proved that fat could damage the brain. No dessert? Fine by me.

Any comments on the recent news on the artificial hippocampus (link #1 link #2)?

OK. The article is total bollocks here is the New Scientist version. NOTE that it is referring to prenatal levels of hormones not the amounts flowing in peoples bodies when they are adults. Which means that a difference in levels of hormones hardwires the brain for programming, research whatever to a large extent.

Also that the social sciences are where the 'normals' end up.

There was something about stramlining the TCP protocal which could speed up the internet and other networks. See http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 93799 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAST_TCP

and apparently it's safer, too

J. Craig Venter himself, apparently.

No, this is different, Gravity Probe B is a separate project, this was an Italian research group who used freely avaliable data from the past 11 years of the two LAGEOS satelites, who's orbital paths have been monitored for that time. Space.com has a good summary, and so does New Scientist

The two-slit experiments have been done in such a way as to test whether an observer is required.

Do you have a reference to that? I haven't seen any discussion of it before.

Here's an interesting theory that you might be interested in -- one of the methods for observation to take place without requiring consciousness. Ironically, it was proposed by the same Roger Penrose who believes the same thing you do, but for different reasons...

I see what you mean about the entropy of the data... in the end though, I think what's wrong here is that you're applying a subjective interpretation of entropy where an objective one is required. This page has an interesting discussion on what entropy is and isn't.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 95039

1. Antibiotic resistance in GM plants is intentional, an artifact of the manufacturing process (see parent for reference).

2. When bacteria eat DNA, they can incorporate it, mutating without dividing; this is called transformation :

3. DNA from food can linger in the intestines a while.

Given those three facts, the risk and speculation is just that the commensal (normal resident) gut bacteria will take up the antibiotic resistance genes from food, and that pathogenic bacteria will in turn be transformed by the commensals.

In general, I'd love to see more Slashdotters read reading bioscience at PubMed, a service of the (U.S.) National Library of Medicine. There you'll find abstracts of biomed journals, textbooks, genomic and proteomic databases, and free full text of journal articles. Stanford Press's HighWire offers even more free journal articles, as well as all of the abstracts that PubMed indexes.

Perhaps I'm biased, but I think the world needs more nerds to help interpret and synthesize the thousands of pages of biosience research that's being published each week.

-ldg

Liam D. Gray, public health student, former Qualcomm embedded software engineer, BS ECE '95 CMU

"Correlations have been shown, and some effects have been linked to the temperature increases, but while many people, including some Slashdotters, have said that other ideas have all been debunked, I've still seen no evidence of it."

New Scientist

The New Scientist is the UK's preeminent scientific publication produced weekly.

Relevant Climate alteration page

The major point is that the Bush Administration backed away from other nation's reports. Another poster in the thread mentioned other nation's motives, but this is a misnomer because this isn't a national issue, but a global one. Given Governmental speed in dealing with such things, it would have been an idea to entertain the notion in 2002 rather than roll out think-tank advisors, which is actually what happened.

"That bothers me, because it just seems that the people arguing against them don't want to deal with them as they might upset their worldview."

Likewise some of us trying to get people to avoid dismissing the whole idea of Global Warming on the basis that it's not proven find that worldviews or personal paradigms are the hardest thing to change. I'm personally willing for the whole thing to be bunk; I've frequently argued against the 1970s idea that the population of the world would increase to the point where it cannot support itself. Starvation and disease are a feedback loop in themselves, the latter looking more interesting in the light of recent avian flu's crossing species lines with startling ease.

Likewise there are problems with the green movement in terms of a lack of real knowledge, but to dismiss everything based on the label 'tree hugger' is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

This was covered on New Scientist and IndiaTimes a few days ago. Their articles:

-New Scientist
-IndiaTimes

I'm sorry but I don't believe anything scientists say about the climate.

If you read http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/environment/ it's quite obvious climatologists have no idea what the hell they're talking about as almost every article contains something about "this new information radically changes the way scientists think about xyz."

Don't get me wrong, we do need to stop burning fossil fuels, stop driving SUVs and shoot trash into the sun. Climatologist is still synonymous with quack in my book.

Uh, check the links. The story about the intestine robot is a dupe. It links to the EXACT same New Scientist story. If he were actually editing, he could've removed it.

Wing-warping was a dead-end technology from the get-go.

Maybe not:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 92813

Michael: When you rip off posts from Drudgereport.com, The New Scientist and other well-read sites, make sure you follow the thread through to the point where they explain that the story was nothing more than a political hit piece.

For instance, check out an earlier NY Times piece that actually reinforces the administration's position. Or you could review that this hit piece was to be joined by CBS News in another attempted effort to push fraudulant information and sucker all the sheep out there.

Or should we expect a post from you about "critical national guard documents damage Bush" and experience a deja vu Slashdot experience?

Slashdot readers - you too can read it before Michael (or some alleged anonymous reader, just like the CBS anonymous sources) reads it and makes up a libelous headline damaging Slashdot credibility and objectivity:

Drudge Report
The New Scientist

and other excellent critical reads include:

Power Line
Weekly Standard
Little Green Footballs

Oh... I should warn you - if you're determined to vote for Kerry in spite of everything, do NOT go to the any of the above sites. It'll destroy any opportunity for ignorance you might have.

The cover has Gates in a gorilla suit.

Natural decaf coffee plant is not genetically modified (as opposed to this other decaf evil plant) and is great news since it will be much tastier than today's decaf but also much cheaper to produce, maybe even opening a new market for the strugling third world countries producing your coffee.

This story appeared on Slashdot a while back. It mentions the use of near-infra red light to actually stimulate the healing of retinal cells. NASA has more information about it on their website as well. Here is a quote from the New Scientist article mentioned in the Slashdot story...

The US Defense Advance Research Projects Agency is funding research into the method and hopes to use it to treat people whose eyes are damaged by lasers. A number of US military personnel, including a helicopter pilot over Bosnia in 1998, have suffered laser eye injuries.

It seems to be very pertinent to the situations of the Delta pilot and Canadian Navy helicopter pilot in the current story. Some companies make devices using this technology for medical purposes.

Is there technology to see radiation (plutonium) signatures from space in real-time or near real-time?

Alpha particles (high speed helium nucleii ejected from the heavy elements) don't travel very far. Neither do Beta particles (high speed electrons). Even gamma rays only have a range measured in thousands of metres. The brilliant beam of blue light as described by the Chernobyl was never detected.

The only way to really detect such radiation sources is the flash from the explosions. Although meteorites burning up in the atmosphere can generate similar signals.

This article describes a similar material that is liquid below 20 C and solid above 32 C. Medical researchers hope to use it if they are able to perfect 3D printers that generate organs by spraying cells onto a substrate. The gel is used to reserve open spaces for blood vessels. Once the organ has been formed they cool it and the solid turns to liquid and runs out.

BTM

If you like stories about animals sniffing things, they also have stories about giant rats sniffing out tuberculosis and dogs sniffing bladder cancer just to name two recent stories. I check out their news section first thing in the morning, then the nytimes, then slashdot.

If you like stories about animals sniffing things, they also have stories about giant rats sniffing out tuberculosis and dogs sniffing bladder cancer just to name two recent stories. I check out their news section first thing in the morning, then the nytimes, then slashdot.

If you like stories about animals sniffing things, they also have stories about giant rats sniffing out tuberculosis and dogs sniffing bladder cancer just to name two recent stories. I check out their news section first thing in the morning, then the nytimes, then slashdot.

If you like stories about animals sniffing things, they also have stories about giant rats sniffing out tuberculosis and dogs sniffing bladder cancer just to name two recent stories. I check out their news section first thing in the morning, then the nytimes, then slashdot.

As opposed to now, when the FDA acually tries to shield drug companies from lawsuits associated with people dying from lethal drugs which are on the market with FDA approval.

Here's some food for thought.

Related article on NewScientist says "[t]housands of zombie PCs created daily" Also if you want this story de-uglied click here

To further increase eco-friendliness of this house they should also consider equipping it with materials that convert waste heat directly to electricity.

http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/art icle.jsp?rp=1&id=mg18324635.100(Subscription required)

Although the technology is still in its early stages , it looks promising enaugh to reduce energy waste in households.

This study doesn't prove anything of the kind. As reported, it only shows that people can learn language. Of course that includes the capability of developing language constructs. How else did we ever start speaking? It also shows that you don't need to be able to talk or hear in order to develop language skills, and that's not really new either.

Anyway, the New Scientist article http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 96411 had more details. But notice that some of the people in the study have other agendas and hope that acceptance of this study can help them further their own views http://mcneilllab.uchicago.edu/topics/gp.html.

I couldn't find the article but I read that as well as cat brains they have piped wires into a cockroach brain and have suceeded in a RC cockroach, that can carry a small camera, great for earthquake rescue, or running it through cheerleader changing rooms...

That bio/mech device that was implanted into neo in the matrix, imagine something similar, but a bio animal which really is a bug. in both senses.

or even reptilious: cute Gecko in lew of real cockraoch article

Have fun

This has already been done back in the 60's (i think), harnessing the electric field of the human body was enough to power a simple radio.

I think http://www.newscientist.com/ had an article about this in their magazine not so long ago.

This is an article about the quantum encrypted bank transaction in Vienna, Austria, which was mentioned in the post.

I don't know about that.