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Fetal stem cell research is almost irrelevant. The Australians have extracted stem cells from baby teeth. It gives new meaning to why the tooth fairy leaves money. Then there is the process for extracting stem cells from body fat. Stem cell research does not need to be used as a reason for killing off unwanted pregnancies. Fetus's are not the only source of stem cells, they are just one of the first sources discovered.

Wired got scooped on this by a couple days by The New Scientist, if you want to read about it there.

frequent masturbation

The original article can be found here.

Rigid airships are a lot more complicated to build structurally, since they are carrying a bunch of rigid structure that does nothing to generate lift and can bend and break under stress. Blimps are not just one big ballon, but can and are compartmentalized for disaster containment. Blimps were built in large numbers during WWII as patrol craft, and operated in the US Navy in that role up to sometime in the 1960s. The USN gave up on rigid airships in the 30s, essentially after the Shenandoah went down in a storm.

Balloons are not blimps because they don't have maneuvering engines. A spherical blimp would have engines that move it, making it more than a balloon.

(An untethered Kite or parachute with an engine is called an ultralight, or an airplane)

One of the big issues with these proposals has been power generation and storage. The solar generators that are light enough and flexible to go on a blimp body have tended to be low efficiency compared to heavier crystal cells, according to this, though there are claims here that new products can do nearly as well.

Batteries are notoriously heavy, so it's a tradeoff that hasn't been economically possible yet. Things need to be efficient, light, reliable, and cheap enough. The proposed HAA is still using old lead-acid batteries! I guess this works if there is enough helium, and low enough power demand (related to low wind speed to fight).

here is an article that describes this in more detail.

-dB

If people want to go to a radioactive disaster, maybe they should pick a more current one and have a look at what depleted uranium weapons are doing to the locals. Levels of background radiation are 300 times what they were before the 'shock and awe' terrorist campaign.

Like I said, in a case like this, I dont give a flying f*** that they are public or privately owned. It does not absolve them from their responsibilities to deal with abuse and illegal activities.

My point wasn't that their being state-owned or publicly-owned having a bearing on how to tackle the spam, my point was your press release had this fact as the very first thing mentioned and you couldn't even take the effort to read the English website to verify it this most basic fact. So based on this observation, it's clear you were unaware of other important pieces of information such as by blocking their IP space you've just disrupted practically the entire country.

Websites lie, people lie, companies lie.

One person or company lying to you in the past does not give you carte blanche to treat others how you see fit.

Do not take me for an idiot. I understand perfectly what it [the company] is like.

You've failed to show that so far.

That was never intended to be a press release. If I had any idea that the AHBL would be put on the spot like that, you can sure bet your ass I would have written up something more formal.

I suspect the reason why you've been put on the spot is because your response is unjustified and completely inappropriate to the problem. The unprofessional press release with what amounts to a set of ransom demands is perhaps one more symptom of the way your organisation functions.

Perhaps you should have started by blocking addresses from Telefónica's IP space that repeatedly come up as these will probably be the Internet cafés?

And letting illegal activities come from your network, specifically ones that have gotten people murdered is irresponsible. TDE could have easily cut off the problem at the knees before it got this far by doing something as simple as blocking outbound port 25 connections from their dialup or Internet Cafe customers.

But they chose not to. That is not my problem.

They could have given us their dynamic blocks like I had asked.

But they chose not to.

Point being that I have seriously lost patience dealing with them, since I have better things to do then play their little games.

Did you first explain what your organisation does in your e-mails? Explain exactly what the problem was and what should be done to fix it? Or did you just say 'give me your dynamic IP blocks?' Did you find the correct contact e-mail address? Get it translated into Spanish if there was no reply? If there was still no reply, find the correct phone number and ring them up on that if all else failed? Perhaps there were no games, perhaps you took what amounts to an entire country's e-mail off the Internet because you were unable to get through to the right department?

It's entirely your problem. Your organisation must take all possible steps before pulling the plug on a country as what you do affects people and trade. If you do not, your organisation will lose credibility, ISPs will find others which at least operate with a modicum of professionalism and accountability, and that will be the end of your venture.

Nobody would stand for this if it happened with another method of communication like telephones or post and that's only because relatively few people know that realtime blacklist organisations actually exist and what they do, let alone how some of them operate.

If Telefónica is so guilty, why has Steve Linford of Spamhaus stated that he doesn't believe there's that much of a problem with Telefónica since they cracked down at the end of 2003 in the New Scientist? If Telefónica is so guilty, why has your organisation just taken a battering in Comms World

ISPs like Telef

Yeah, how could people possibly be skeptical about the possibility of getting something for nothing?

Or even instantaneous communications between two sub-atomic particles? What fools!

> And Bill Gates is going to send me $25 if I forward this ...
Don't assume the OP was talking about stuff in your inbox.

Here: two studies so far....

One of the chemicals mentioned in one of the earlier studies (parabens) was removed from many consumer products only in the past few years.

Here's a more critical look at both studies.
link

here's something interesting I read not too long ago:

Are fingerprints really infallible, unique ID?

How unique are your fingerprints? It's general held (and as er, The Register confidently stated just yesterday) that your fingerprints being found at the scene of the crime tied you up with it pretty conclusively, but a report published earlier this year by New Scientist claims that there is little scientific basis for the infallibility of fingerprints, and that the only research indicating that there is, is fatally flawed.

This could have major implications for the criminal justice system, and could undermine the basic premise of planned ID sytems in the UK, US and Europe. The report notes that the only known study, commissioned b y the US Department of Justice and only made public in summary form, was challenged in December. The study involved matching up 50,000 fingerprint images, and concluded from this that the probability of a false match was effectively zero. However, says New Scientist, "Although this produced an impressive-sounding 2.5 billion comparisons, critics point out that it is hardly surprising that a specific image should turn out to be more like itself than 49,999 other images."

The study wasn't designed to test matches between two or more different prints from the same finger, and it was even discovered that it originally included three instances of fingerprints being listed as similar but different, when they were actually different prints from the same finger. One pair was even found to be as dissimilar as prints from different people. And the sample size is seen by many critics as being too small to be seen as valid.

Despite the apparently shaky foundations of the little 'proof' that exists, there seems to be no government enthusiasm for further research. The DoJ has refused to sanction further research, and a Department of Defense and National Institute of Justice programme fell apart last year after arguments over dissemination and review of the material.

New Scientist points out that fingerprint evidence still has a value, but that it's such a long-standing technique that it has never been subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny. This could well be its undoing, as ID systems' need to match up prints from millions of people takes fingerprinting into entirely uncharted territory. It would surely be just a little bit embarrassing if a few years down the line governments' deployment of fingerprints in the war on terror resulted in the near overthrow of the criminal justice system, wouldn't it?

The laser and supporting equipment are large enough that the 747 was the smallest plane they could use.

The plan is to have multiple planes airborne over threat areas for extended periods of time.

There are plans for a 100+ KW solid state laser to be used with the Joint Strike Fighter and the Raptor.

Nothing is said about the range of this laser, so I'm not sure if it would work from space or not.

Chemical lasers aren't a good match for space deployment.

However, I suspect the ABL will be a pretty good antisatellite weapon... ;-)

It will also do fine in a pinch shooting down enemy planes, I'd guess. The range is 100 miles plus, under good conditions. The ABL will typically fly close to max. altitude.

Second gyro down two left.

The US moved signals faster than the speed of light.
here

Of course the Russians showed that matter can move faster than light, 1958 Nobel prize in physics.
here

--Tsiangkun

Okay, firstly I'd like to point to an article stating that Japanese are more prone to alcohol poisoning than Westerners because they lack or are deficient in an enzyme required for to break the substance down. Ergo, people from different parts of the world have different reactions when exposed to the same substances.
There's a similar case here.
What got me thinking about this was that a friend of mine often does clinical trials, and he mentioned one 'live-in' trial, in which 50% of the people were British/caucasian, and 50% were of cantonese origin. The trial was for a drug which was already on sale in the US/Europe, but the corp wanted to open the Japanese market, and so it had to be tested all over again.
Apparently there were no side-effects for the western subjects, but their oriental counterparts were in need of diapers fairly soon.
If you are a medical expert, then you might like to read Geographical/interracial differences in polymorphic drug oxidation, and Prostate Cancer Test Works Well for Black Men, in which it is stated that Black males have more of a certain enzyme than white males.
Would it be so easy to find a mixture of 773 asians, orientals, afro-americans, latinos and caucasians in Delhi?

Bioremediation has been around for quite a while - it is a good idea in many situations.

There are a couple of things that really come out in the article is this - "First, he treats the contaminated soil with chemicals that break the gold down into water-soluble particles. Then he introduces the crops"

Gold and mercury in the soil is a pretty nasty amalgam - and gold being otherwise so *noble* - so I'm wondering how he's mobilizing it -
The article says the plants had purple leaves - "The plants he harvested had purple leaves because they contained gold nanoparticles" - again not totally breaking news - but he must be using something that can break the gold down *that* small (when there is a lot of gold in mercury, you can literally strain the gold out essentially with a filter like a cheesecloth - that is the technique that is being used by most miners of this sort in the first place.
Then they literally *cook* the amalgam covered pice of gold in a frying pan (though it could be done with nitric acid - or other things to remove the mercury from the surface)
In the process, a lot of mercury ends up spilled - and the residue from the *cook* is dense and fuming - and ends up not far away (like in the soil, the streams, or the miner's brain before too long) - Gold too small to picked up in the straining - In fact any microscale gold has been the subject of pretty intense interest because it is much more abundant than the occasional nugget -

Cyanide leaching is a very common process in areas where there is a lot of sunlight, since the cyanide can break down in holding pools - I highly doubt he would be using any cyanide - even if it could be shown to break down - it would most likely do very poorly on the plant side. Some halide - Bromides? Let's hope not. AuCl ion? - That's the most likely - or probably the most hoped for. There really aren't that many things that can dissolve gold - But there are actually quite a few ways to do what is being suggested with plants - here's one using geraniums.

So which is it? The average computer or 1 in 20?

Computer scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle developed software to analyse network traffic and identify chunks of data associated with four known "spyware" programs - Gator, Cydoor, SaveNow and eZula.

They examined the traffic on the university campus and found that 5.1 per cent of all connected machines had one of these four programs running.

I quote from the university study:

"They examined the traffic on the university campus and found that 5.1 per cent of all connected machines had one of these four programs running."

So, to answer your question, they got one in twenty because they only scanned for four spyware programs.

Earthlink's scan (using Spy Audit) went further. But don't trust the editor's writeup (do we ever?), they did not find "28 programs", but "28 items": 4 programs and 24 cookies. Check out the real figures from Earthlink.

This is happening with the human genome. A lovely little thing that just happens to make us, well, *[b]us[/b]* is being patented. This has been widely reported in new scientist.

Although the laws regarding it have been toughened up, a huge number have already been granted. Whether companies have the right to patent what makes us unique has not been asked.

This is happening with the human genome. A lovely little thing that just happens to make us, well, *[b]us[/b]* is being patented. This has been widely reported in new scientist.

Although the laws regarding it have been toughened up, a huge number have already been granted. Whether companies have the right to patent what makes us unique has not been asked.

I don't see what politics have to do with what you say.

Of course for your argument you are going to use a reference provided by the military, which will show no toxicity whatsoever. Perhaps the military has a vested interest in showing those results, same as they've denied for years the gulf war syndrome in veterans.

In fact there is research in the toxicity in DU and there exist guidelines for exposure.

DU is at least as toxic as lead (that much is obvious), with the added problem that unlike lead, Uranium oxidizes very easily upon impact and becomes a fine dust which is breathable. So DU is not very toxic in unexploded ammo, because it is not in dust form. However after use it turns into dust which is quite toxic. Also it can pass into drinking water and become toxic there. As a heavy metal it can concentrate in the body (it is not excreted) and the chemical and radioactive components do have a cumulative effect.

So it somewhat safe to handle but not good for you to visit a battlefield where DU has been used and much less to drink the water there.

Other references: here, here, or here .

I keep telling everyone, not only does it not cause blindness or send you to hell (that's just a myth), but it's actually good for you.

Wait.

Never mind.

If this TV show adds anything to the story above (which I rather doubt), apologies.

(4) Monsanto/Scott thinks that you are responsible for their inability to control their products.

Crops contaminated by GM organisms

GM Canola spreading out of control

Farmers are now suing Monsanto in self-defense, and even suing each other:

Litigation in the Wind

And it's not just pesticide resistance that is spreading:

New Scientist Article

Many crops are being engineered to produce pharmaceuticals now. Yes, chemicals with active functions in the human body. Slashdot had coverage of this in a recent story:

Would You Like Drugs in Your Rice?

It's not a ponzi scheme. It's evolution.

Sucks doesn't it?

Yes, absolutely it sucks for everyone. Just maybe not right away.

In the short term, a few will do well and be happy. In the long term, everyone will suffer. I guess that's OK because we'll all be long gone. The joke's on our descendants. Ha ha, suckers!

The world is full of examples where "best" short term strategy == very bad long term strategy. In my town, the groundwater is radioactive because some company needed to maximize their profit margins a few decades ago. The island nation of Nauru is 90% wasteland because they allowed mining companies to remove almost all of their potassium-rich topsoil for lots of money in the 70's and 80's. They've now burned through all that money, and they have to import all their food and drinking water from Australia by jet because nothing will grow there.

Oh, and here's a gem from today:

Greenland ice cap 'doomed to meltdown'

I'd suggest not planning on passing any waterfront property down through your family, unless you're planning to have them start a shrimp or oyster farm.

Do our [US] ground based missles still represent a nuclear deterent when compared to missle delivery from the moon? Are our detection systems (radar, etc.) capable of detecting a missle coming from the moon with enough time to keep up our end of MAD (mutually assured destruction)? Again, answer in terms of political and strategic consequences.

I ask you now, should we go to the moon?

Chinese officials have previously said that some sort of permanent, most likely unmanned, base could be established on the Moon's surface by 2010.

In any case, the problem with aluminium is that it is softer and melts more easily, which is also part of what happened to Columbia. There's more on aluminium in ships here.

If you have powdered alumimium (or indeed most metals, including iron) and preferably a strong oxidiser mixed with it, then you can get aluminium to burn. In a thermite reaction, powdered aluminium reacts directly with powdered iron oxide in an extremely exothermic reaction which is self-sustaining. But these aren't the conditions you'd get on a ship under attack.

Realistically, the missile and or explosion would just rip more easily through the softer metal, and any resulting fire would weaken the structure. In a vessel of that size and with the thinner dual hulls, that would be fatal enough even with a steel hull. A ship like this really has to rely on stealth or countermeasures to survive.

Interesting article at this link on the New Scientist website casting doubts on the reliability of finger printing as a way of proving identity.

Fingerprint link

What's the bet that the first Al-Queda terrorist arrested through matching fingerprints turns out to be an 80 year old nun from Canada?

One problem was that the mines might not work in winter if they became too cold, so the army proposed wrapping them in fibreglass pillows.

This does have a semblance of truth about it. The Blue Peacock nuclear landmines are certainly genuine - they were declassified last year.

The business with the chickens is most likely the same as every other crazy idea - mentioned as a one line "why don't we try ..." in some discussion document. It's certainly no stranger than a lot of other cold-war ideas: Operation Mongoose, using psychics or bugging cats.

> (1) the parent post is brought to you by the USian govment
> propaganda machine. indirectly, by way of one of its drones.
Well, make sure you watch out for those black helicopters too.

> (2) t's'ok, the DEA guys have to support themselves, too.
Tsk tsk... let the truth help you out here... I am neither American nor European.

> (3) no laws against any drug is fair.
Laws exist for our protection. Why do you need me to repeat this historyto you...?: ... the British traders generously bribed Canton officials in order to keep the opium traffic flowing. The effects on Chinese society were devestating. In fact, there are few periods in Chinese history that approach the early nineteenth century in terms of pure human misery and tragedy. In an effort to stem the tragedy, the imperial government made opium illegal in 1836 and began to aggressively close down the opium dens.

I think if you went back two centuries, and you'd happily function as a British opium trader -- intent on his own self-interest, uncaring of the misery he is causing thousands of people. Go back two centuries more, and you'd be happily be selling limitless quantities of liquor to Red Indian tribes -- with similar effect.

Could you be a little more caring of other people?

> USian laws and their emulations
> (BR laws, even) aren't fair. they treat people who take drugs also on
> pair with people who trade drugs.

Google was valuable in neutralizing your reality distortion field:
Federal drug trafficking convictions may result in denial of federal benefits for up to 5 years for a first conviction, ...
Federal drug convictions for possession may result in denial of federal benefits for up to 1 year for a first conviction ...

> (4) alcohol has worse social effects than marijuana.
> tobacco has worse health effects than marijuana.
You're sounding more coherent now, but still wrong about marijuana v/s alcohol. (More on that below.) Note, wine etc is good in moderation. Pot is Not. The answer to abuse - whether alcohol or drugs - is enforcement of laws that protect the addicts, including "inebriate orders" (a.k.a forced detox)

Looks like this needs repeating... NOTE: most governments do not BAN hard drugs, they REGULATE them to ensure that only those that NEED them get them. For eg: tons of opium [ieo.org] are legally shipped to countries like the US and Japan each year.

> marijuana is not a hard drug (and will not make you madder than booze)
> regardless of what Uncle Sam told you.
Sorry - inadvertent misclassification of marijuana as a "hard" drug (not that the distinction is great)...

4.1. I have some personal testimony on the damaging effect of pot: My friend is a pothead. He has very obvious signs of damage from his decades-old pot habit (shakes, general dimness - sad to see in an otherwise very bright person, working in computers). When I point this out to him, he doesn't see it (or rather doesn't want to admit it), and covers it up with... "ah, you can't get addicted to it.. I've got it under my control,... blah blah blah...". Well, he just got back from vacationing for some weeks with his brother, and said something that surprised me. He said: "I never thought I would ever tell you this... you *can* get addicted to pot". Apparently, his brother - who is another pothead - is addicted to pot (he cannot function without it) and is in a much worse state than he is.

4.2. Marijuana is instead often a gateway drug
Researchers looked at over 300 pairs of same sex twins, both identical and non-identical, in which one twin started using cannabis before hi

Now here is something else. Planes have numbered days unless they come up with something.

Soya oil. They are currently testing a 40% biofuel. OK, it doesn't completely solve the problem, but it gives us more time...

I think the selling of everquest items is reasonable. The items have a real use, just in some virtual environment where people spend a lot of time. Who cares that the item has no use in the _real world_, it will see just as much use (or more) in its virtual world than many items in the real world. Concepts like price also make sense because everquest items have rarity or are difficult to acquire. Really there's no reason the economics of the real world can't carry over to a virtual world.

and they do -
article
another article

On an asteroid? WTF? How exactly are these examples of life you speak of hopping a ride on an asteroid?

The idea is called panspermia.

OP comes from New Scientist, picked up by the Washington Post.

Further details can be found on New Scientist

The simulator link is incorrect. It points to 2004 YN1. The correct link. For a good view in the simulator, tilt the 3D view to straight down, center on earth and zoom in all the way.

New Scientist has an interesting article in their latest issue.

For a more technical explanation, read the paper presented at the Lunary Planetary Science Conference last week.

Nevermind all those boring sciency-type experiments, I want to see "Space Boobies Unleashed!" (already TM'd by FOX, I hear) on HDTV-enabled widescreen DVD!

" The problem was considered in the 1973 science fiction novel written by Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama, in which he wrote: "Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after the transit of a well-upholstered lady officer through the control cabin."

here are your sources:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 94804
and
http://science.slashdot.org/science/04/03/23/16442 42.shtml?tid=134&tid=160

No, we need something nerdier and more useless, like the biggest prime number ever.

Here's the skinny on vanderpool.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 94215

It actually seems a really interesting technology. The CPU itself can generate virtual machines that can run different OS's simultaneously. Kinda like hyperthreading but on a much lower level.

More precisely, they are bots that report to law enforcement.

40% of global e-mail is spam

Seems to depend on who you ask(dated Jan 1 '04):

The latest statistics from UK-based email filtering company MessageLabs indicate that 62.7 per cent of all global emails sent during December were spam. The company scanned over 463 million messages. In November the figure was 55.1 percent and in October 50.5 percent. In some countries, for example Australia, more than two thirds of all December messages were junk.

What SPF do I need for that threat?

In this modern age, it is good to be reminded that you should look out for the simple stuff - like rocks falling on you.

It looks like it is going to get much cheaper soon. They are talking about constructing an entire home in one day. This article doesn't mention it, but they plan to be able to do full construction, including plumbing, electric, paint, and wallpaper eventually. More info is avilable from Khoshnevis's home page.

A robot for "printing" houses is to be trialled by the construction industry. It takes instructions directly from an architect's computerised drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs.

I think there should be a great deal of concern of new search engines in China. The major customer in China is the state and a number of companies including Cisco, Yahoo, and Microsoft have been catering their software to permit Chinese censorship. The Chinese government has also been active in removing certain keywords from use in popular search engines, like google.
If I type in 'Falun Gong' or 'VIP Reference' (page 30-31)' in any of these new search engines, I recieve no content. Sure these my offer new commerical opportunities, like MP3 searching. Both they are part of state control in China. Companies back in 2000 had to agree to self-censorship. These new sites represent a growing trend of corporate complicity in Chinese censorship. And if common search engines are actively controlling what is 'found' on the Internet, there is great concern that average citizens will become acostumed to a regulated Internet.

fenn

(Initial text of the article:)

Coffee-breaks sabotage employees' abilities

18:41 13 February 04 NewScientist.com news service Taking a coffee break at work may actually sabotage employees' ability to do their jobs and undermine teamwork instead of boosting it, suggests new research. Dosing up on caffeine is particularly unhelpful to men, disrupting their emotions and hampering their ability to do certain tasks, suggests a report by psychologists Lindsay St Claire and Peter Rogers at Bristol University in the UK. Many people take coffee breaks at work believing this will reduce their feelings of stress. But theories about the effects of caffeine are conflicting. Some studies suggest caffeine can worsen anxiety and trigger stress, while others show it boosts confidence, alertness and sociability, making certain tasks easier. But this latest report, released by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council on Friday, backs the view that coffee exacerbates stress, especially in men, and makes people less co-operative when working in teams. "Our research findings suggest that the commonplace tea or coffee break might backfire in business situations, particularly where men are concerned," says St Claire. "Far from reducing stress, it might actually make things worse."

I knew it looked fammiliar... see this article

Check the date. Tmsuk is responsible in both cases, though it seems Sanyo got the most of credit in 2002.

Try reading this newscientist article.

Downsizing raises risk of death in workers

And then start looking for a new job.

Could it be that this second meteorite was rich in poisonous metals, tainting the soil world-wide for years to come? This article is interesting, but I have not seen mention of the theory elsewhere.