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Ian

And I was right, sorry to reply to my own comment, but here is a link to the new scientist article on debugging by ear.

Old news, but the best article I've read on this yet is the New Scientistarticle from a couple of years ago in which they first (for me) described realtime rendering using existing games. Interesting stuff.

Yes I do personally very much believe Pfizer hate "viagra spam", here's why:

As we all known the brand name "Viagra" is instantly recognisable and generates a buzz of instant brand recognition which is almost on the same level as "Coke" or "Hover".

For this very reason a couple of years ago Pfizer realised that they could reorganize their Viagra sales teams as the Viagra brand literally sold itself therefore most of their original Viagra sales people were promptly reassigned to other products within Pfizer. Pfizer's own Viagra sales teams are thus now small.

Incidently drug sales is a bit like playing football, each competive company (side) have their own sales people marking each others, person for person. So changes in one companies sales force always impact on their competitors.

Anyway "Viagra" is still covered/protected by patents which (if my memory serves me correctly) were granted for something like 10 or 15 years, this means that legally 100% identical generic versions of Viagra or generic sildenafil can NOT legally be made for a number of years yet.

It is important to realise that commericially Pfizer will be interested in maintaining a good "brand" reputation for a high quality product, they will also be interested in maintaining Viagra at a fairly constant fixed price for as long as is possible during the duration of their patents.

Remebering the fact that Viagra sells itself and you soon realise that Pfizer therefore don't really need to or even want to spend time or money on agressive "spam" type marketing for "low cost viagra" as selling such a product would be counter productive to their own interests.

I am also reliably informed that the apparent "Viagra" that we see being advertised on the Internet are in fact "viagra" copies which have been altered/redesigned often in what are unproven ways to try to get around some of Pfizers patents. So it's very much buyer beware.... !

On a similar note it worth understanding that medcines like Viagra are licensed for treating one particular condition only, e.g. "erectile dysfunction" aka "impotence" in the case of "Viagra". So even though many people found that "Viagra" appeared to make some difference in females Pfizer legally could NOT and would NOT acknowledge this fact. Thus a entirely new drug with a totally different name was created, tested and then licensed/marketed for use by females only.

Please ignore the above comment in favor of the corrected comment below; I must learn not to post after having three beers, as I tend to mismatch HTML tags.

As a bonus for your patience, I've added a few links that lend support for the idea that physical and emotional pain are similar.

Physical pain (like that of the burn victims) is one thing; emotional pain is something else entirely.

There was a recent study (posted here?) that suggests that both physical and emotional pain are produced by the same mechanisms in the brain.

When you think about this, it makes sense: why would the organism produce -- and "pay" both the additional R&D on a species level, and the additional "construction" costs on an individual level -- an entirely separate faculty rather than adapt on already at hand?

Not only that, the reason an organism feels physical pain, and the reason it feels emotional pain are pretty much the same: both serve to signal to the organism that its current activity, in its current environment, is detrimental to the organism. A burning pain in my finger tells me that either I should modify my activity -- by moving the finger --, or the environment -- by moving the stove-top the finger is touching.

Similarly, emotional pain -- feelings of guilt, or rejection, or etc., -- exist pretty much to tell me that I'm earning the ire of my fellows, and that my ancestors became my ancestors by virtue of not doing those ire-raising things. Those organisms that too often ignored pain, either physical or emotional, of course failed to become ancestors by virtue of that, and so the genes for ignoring pain tend not to have propagated as much as the genes for heeding pain.

So if physical pain and emotional pain exists to do the same thing -- essentially behavior modification -- and if evidence exists that they are produced by the same structures in the brain, why do we tend to take for granted that they are not the same things?

Part of the reason, of course, is that emotional pain can last far longer than (many forms of) physical pain. My guess is that this is partly because emotional behaviors -- such as social awkwardness or shyness -- are resistant to change, and part -- as with grief -- is due to reinforcement by memory. I'll further guess that this reinforcement by memory is to some degree an "unintended" side effect of the greater precision of human memory.

Why are certain social behaviors resistant to change? Probably this is also an evolutionary adaptation -- research on pecking order in primates suggests that there are genetic components to social dominance hierarchies (proximally mediated by hormones, so that changes in hormone level by human researchers can subvert the hierarchy). Why is it adaptive to reinforce the social hierarchy even to the point of making the subordinates feel "bad"? Because feeling bad is preferable to challenging the hierarchy and literally having your head torn off. A geek who asks a girl who's "out of his league" for a date may only risk being laughed at today, but his reluctance may stem from an ancestor whose penalty for flirting with her might well have been death at the hands of the alpha male.

But I also suspect that the main reason that we see physical and emotional pain as being different is that we see emotional pain as uniquely human, something that separates us from "the animals". This desire for separation from "animals" (scare quotes because, of course, humans are a kind of animal and not an image of God) seems to be a strongly engrained trait at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition -- as is the traditional Judeo-Christian belief in mind-body dualism. Since we know that animals feel physical pain but are less informed about the animals' psychological worlds, it perhaps predictable that we would see emotional pain

They use VR and graphics technology to simulate the visual and auditory hallucinations that sometimes accompany these diseases. NewScientist had a small writeup

According to this article, Venus may have microbes in its clouds.

The best alarms don't make a sound. They give the thief a minute or so to drive off and then cut off the fuel. The idea being that they will be in traffic by then where they are much too high profile to attempt to bypass the alarm.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 94697

It shows mostly sand-sized particles, but with a large number of apparently hollow spheres or tubes. The image resolution is about 30 microns per pixel - about the width of a human hair.

Such grains were completely unexpected. But John Grotzinger, a geologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says they closely resemble formations he has seen in soils in the southwestern deserts of the US [rm3friskerFTN - perhaps lending some weight to my earlier analogy to Arches National Park @ Moab, Utah, USA]. "There are little tubes that build up by capillary action," he told New Scientist, as salty water evaporates from the nearly-dry soil.

Here's a New Scientist article from January which argues for the presence of brine.

Not forgetting of course that it has been shown that nearly 80% of illegal movie copies come from film industry insiders, not "pirates."

But the size of a problem has never stopped the government from pretending to accomplish something with a gung-ho, high-visibility campaign.

It's being done with pianos:
See this New Scientist article

I will assmeble the ultimate real-life superhero team to Save the Universe! It will be called the Ultimate Super Hero International Team! The roster is carefully chosen to represent the most gifted and talented real-life adventurers from across the globe!

On it will be the daring leader and Weapons Expert, Angle Grinder Man! (Linked to above.) Also...

Aerospace Expert: Lawn Chair Larry!

Science and Technology Expert: Troy Hurtubise, inventor of the famous Bear Proof Suit! (Tested by real bikers! And bears! It's bear and biker proof!)

Matter Eating Expert: Sonya Thomas, the Black Widow!

Sneaking Across the Country Naked Expert: Steven Gough!

With these mighty heroes, the Ultimate Super Hero International Team, the Universe shall be Saved!

SoupIsGood Food

Pig-human chimeras contain cell surprise...at New Scientist...here:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 94558

Pigs grown from fetuses into which human stem cells were injected have surprised scientists by having cells in which the DNA from the two species is mixed at the most intimate level.

It is the first time such fused cells have been seen in living creatures. The discovery could have serious implications for xenotransplantation - the use of animal tissue and organs in humans - and even the origin of diseases such as HIV.

The adult pigs that had received human stem cells as fetuses were found to have pig cells, human cells and the hybrid cells in their blood and organs.

"What we found was completely unexpected. We found that the human and pig cells had totally fused in the animals' bodies," said Jeffrey Platt, director of the Mayo Clinic Transplantation Biology Program.

The hybrid cells had both human and pig surface markers. But, most surprisingly, the hybrid cell nuclei were found to have chromosomal DNA that contained both human and pig genes. The researchers found that about 60 per cent of the animals' non-pig cells were hybrids, with the remainder being fully human.

...The injections must be given after the body plan of the fetus has developed, but before the immune system is active. The former ensures the animals look like normal pigs and sheep....

I CANNOT believe that these animals looked like "normal" pigs. If the Pig and Human nuclear DNA mixed, and the animal was 60% percent human, one would think that the animals were more human than pig.

Cloning isn't so bad when compared to an experiment like this gone awry.

full text here: Follow that human


"Most people doing social robots believe that human faces will turn people off and will disturb them. I think that's ridiculous," Hanson said. "The human face is perhaps the most natural paradigm for us to interact with."

Most experts disagree. They cite one of the principles of social robotics, the so-called "Uncanny Valley" theory.

First described by pioneering Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, the theory goes like this: humans have a positive psychological reaction to robots that look somewhat like humans. But if a robot is made to look very realistic but somehow isn't quite right (it has an odd smile, or it doesn't blink, for example) it seems grotesque instead of comforting.

There was a piece in New Scientist last year making this exact point, and the researcher was able to explain most effects that are otherwise explained by dark matter, by slightly changing the theory of gravity.

Artificial rain making operations may have caused a storm that nearly wiped out an English village in 1952.

I dunno guys this sounds kinda scary. I would be kinda apprehensive of the Nissan dealer down the street owning one of these. Wouldn't you?

Been there done that.

On a related note, these military robots use "swarm technology" to mimic a group of ants or other "swarm" animals. Kind of a cool approach to A.I. At least it's not nanotechnology like in the (bad) novel by Michael Crichton.

Details on the filesystem problem are also at New Scientist.

Yeah, that would be cool. I've seen it play, and it's pretty much just like the Windows WinDVD.

Another article on their LinDVD based Instant On product in NewScientist

They had it first.. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 94591

New Scientist's article on this study notes,
'In an accompanying experiment, the team also showed that the poor performance of the "wakers" was not simply because they were tired.'

Intervideo is the company that makes WinDVD, InterVideo Home Theater, and a bunch of others. The story is at New Scientist. Basically it is an "InstantOn" PC with LinDVD (which is developed by InterVideo) that fits on a read-only memory chip. Linux handles TV, DVD, CD, MP3, radio. The twist to this product is that it also has a bootable MS Windows XP OS so you can run any of the MS Windows app that you still want/need.

/. has turned to the dark side and I am running for my tinfoil hat!

CNN has an article about Bush's sudden fascination with the space program and it points out how he never once visited the NASA facilities in Houston while he was governor there. Also the convenient timing of his announcement that just happens to coincide with the Democrat front-runners ganging up on Howard Dean is mentioned.

One of the first casualties of the cuts that are necessary to make Bush's 'vision' a reality has been the Hubble, as reported in New Scientist.

See also some concise reporting from the Economist that takes a cold, unemotional look at the question of whether or not we actually need manned spaceflight at all. From that article:

[H]is grand announcement this week may not, in the end, amount to anything more than starry-eyed campaign rhetoric. Of course, only an incorrigible cynic could possibly conclude that Mr Bush knows this perfectly well--and intends simply to let the whole thing fade away after it has helped him get re-elected.

I digress.

That paper has long held an anti-manned-spaceflight view, which I would say is a bit short-sighted in view of the vulnerability of Earth to catastrophic bombardments from above.

This was discussed in NewScientist yesterday.

This reminds me of an old British kids game, conkers, except that conkers is played with a cheap and readily available resource -- horse chestnuts. H2G2 has an entry on it here. Ah, but even a game like this can face significant legal pressures (you don't have to be GTA). Why, conkers have even been hit with performance enhancing scandal!

typical reporters fscked their facts in the story.

qoute "The first and easily the best known is SETI@home, which since 1999 has enlisted half a million people to analyse data from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, looking for signs of alien life."

I believe distributed.net's client was the first program of its type to download information from a remote server, use idle cpu cycles to calculate whatever, then resubmit it back to the central server. I ran distributed.net back in 98, more then a year before seti came out.

On the other hand, one slashdot comment was that the Wright's had controled flight, but if this fellow had working ailerons, I suspect that his flight was controled. Rather one should say that the Wright brothers significantly advanced the science of flight, and for that, they deserve a significant place in the history of flight.

Practical immortality is getting damn close, I second that.

But you forgot electrogravitic engines and free energy from zero-point. The technology for those has been around for up to 80 years, but we're only getting the theory behind them now.

Interesting times indeed ;)

To the people who are using their brains instead of their warm fuzzy feelings over cute animals... it's not about worshipping animals. It's about not being a glutton, and taking only what you need.

Read the food questions:
How many Earths do you need?

Even worse than having that song stuck in your head, irresponsible scientists have now figured out a way to stick it in your DNA! AIEEEEE!!

Interesting, I've read several reports (here and here) discussing that there will be too little oil for global warming. According to the stories all of the petroleum reserves will run out before the atmosphere heats up enough to have any effect. I guess this just goes to show that atmospheric chemistry isn't always an exact science.

Of course, it didn't occur to me to take a look at the Science section before submitting my own copy of this story (which, since it has several other useful links in it, follows):

Michael Shafer, a graduate student at Michigan State University, took time out for a "short victory dance" upon learning his computer had discovered the 40th known Mersenne prime as part of The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search. The number itself is 2**20996011-1 and when expressed in base 10, has 6,320,430 digits (zipped copy). However, this is not necessarily the 40th Mersenne prime; there could be another between the previous largest known prime (M39=2**13466917-1, also discovered by GIMPS) and this one. Also worth noting is the still-standing USD$100,000 EFF prize for the discover of the first prime of at least 10 million (decimal) digits. GIMPS clients are available for various operating systems as well as information on how GIMPS would distribute the prize. A press release on the achievement is available as well as several articles. Of course, this also means there's a new largest known even perfect number in town.

What is even more stricking is that it's coming from a woman.

While we are on the topic of Scandinavian female matematicians, there is an interview in New Scientist with Norwegian mathematics professor Ragni Piene where she discusses why there are so few women mathematicians.

What is even more stricking is that it's coming from a woman.

While we are on the topic of Scandinavian female matematicians, there is an interview in New Scientist with Norwegian mathematics professor Ragni Piene where she discusses why there are so few women mathematicians.

"guess what I'd like to see is a combination E-Bomb/MOAB. "

Already on the drawing-board: mini-nukes - you get the destructive power of several MOABs and an EMP into the bargain.

• 25 gigaflop CS301 clearspeed vector microprocessor
• clearspeed
• General Purpose Computation Using Graphics Hardware -Gpgu.org
• Is it behind IBM's cell processor ??? hmmmm
• IBM and Texas University's Trips 1 trillion ips vector processor

There has been a lot of developement into finding self solving systems. Here is an article to get you started, then just follow google.
readme

the EUCD sounds bad, but this article suggests the courts might not completely abandon users. It reckons their might be a legal loophole that means copyright protection measures could be legally cracked.

Google News rocks! Here's some better articles about the same thing:

New Scientist
Nature
The Economist

To store the memory, the researchers use the wires and the diode surrounding the PEDOT blob to run either a high or a low current through it.
...
In their paper in Nature, the researchers describe just one such junction. But for a memory application, the device will need many more.

You said: "of course humans also dectect phermerones with their noses. why wouldn't they if other mammals do? i know science is about being skeptical and all, but is it that big of a jump and illogical to expect that humans detect phermerones by smelling?"

Scientists believe that pherormones are suppressed in humans. One point of evidence cited is that about the time that homonids developed color vision, a pheromonal pathway gene mutated and became unusable. One item of speculation from that is that color vision gives advantages of finding mates from a distance rather than close up as would be required when recieving pheromones. This would make the need for pheromonal pathways much less important (so much less important that subsequent mutation didn't affect survival). Additionally, many other mammals don't have color vision and tend to be much more receptive to pheromones than humans.

Yes, I seem to remember that some reaserch was done a number of years ago saying that you could live on 47 pints of Guinness , 1 pint of orange juice and 1 pint of milk a day as it actually contained a very balenced selection of vitamins and minerals not to mention the reasonable calorie content. The healthy state of your liver might be called into question though :)

MagiQ is NOT the first company to sell a quantum encryption system, ID Quantique was, last year.

<sarcasm>

The sun is angry; we are doomed. These flares are just the beginning, they will increase in magnitude until they are so big, they penetrate the Earth's magnetic field, destroy the entire ozone layer and sanitize the surface of the Earth with UV rays - just like an autoclave. Not even bacteria will survive except underground and deep in the Ocean.

The signs are showing, this is the END OF THE WORLD! The sun has been showing more activity since 1940 than it has for the last 1000 years put together. Doom is imminent!

Scientists don't act worried, they think they understand the sun and how it works, but science it just guesses. Maybe the sun is made of iron instead of hydrogen where would all the theories that say we are safe be then, if such a basic 'fact' about the sun turned out to be wrong?

As the flares grow in size and number you will all see that my theory is correct! "What is my theory?" you ask. It is that since the END OF THE WORLD makes a good movie plot point, that it must be happening NOW! These are going to be interesting times... We should all start storing canned food and porno mags in bomb shelters now before it's too late and we get cooked by the MASSIVE RADIATION STORM!

And what if the sun should stop flaring, and I should get proven wrong. WE ARE STILL DOOMED! In the same way that load from a light socket makes the generators in a power plant harder to turn, so geomagnetic storms transfer the kinetic energy of megatons of speeding charged particles directly to the magmatic dynamo at our planet's core. Small purturbations can affect this chaotic fluid flow in unpredictable ways but the most worrying is that the shock from the kinetic energy of all those particles will cause avalanches at the core/mantle boundary this will cause massive vulcanism that will cover the earth with lava!

If that doesn't get us, terrorists wielding viruses will.

Get out your sandwich board and whisky! Walk the streets and warn! THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!!!!

<sarcasm>

New Scientist

http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/clim ate.jsp?id=ns99992958
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/clim ate.jsp?id=ns99992249

As the rest of the replies to your post said, it's not about "the planet is not getting warmer!" (which in absolute terms it is, duh!), it's about WHY, and we don't really have a clue about how the complex system works, far from enough to make any reliable "models".

http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/clim ate.jsp?id=ns99992958
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/clim ate.jsp?id=ns99992249

As the rest of the replies to your post said, it's not about "the planet is not getting warmer!" (which in absolute terms it is, duh!), it's about WHY, and we don't really have a clue about how the complex system works, far from enough to make any reliable "models".

Another good article about this here.