Slashdot Mirror

Statistics on how well read the average article is are hard to come by.

That is why I simply say "insert statistical method here" and continue on.

Here is a fine example of usage. [link]

caesium 137 bioaccumulates.

Concentrates its way up the food chain.

There is no safe minimum dose once it is in your body, slowly disintegrating, radiating into your organs and cells.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

This should be modded UP to informative.

I am trying to understand why this perfectly reasonable informative comment, with a link provided, that accurately describes *exactly* what caesium 137 does when ingested has been modded down to -1.

This is a perfect example of mod trolls at work.

caesium 137 bioaccumulates.

Concentrates its way up the food chain.

There is no safe minimum dose once it is in your body, slowly disintegrating, radiating into your organs and cells.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

I'll see your sociology blog, and raise you an actual scientific study, which concluded:

In contrast to men, who killed nonintimate acquaintances, strangers, or victims of undetermined relationship in 80% of cases, women killed their spouse, an intimate acquaintance, or a family member in 60% of cases. When men killed with a gun, they most commonly shot a stranger or a non-family acquaintance.

(source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...)

Yep, no reason to assume that those death threats from random dudes on the internet are serious. I'm sure the only guys making threats online always fall in the 20% of male murderers who wouldn't dream of killing a stranger.

The argument isn't about burning fat when you sleep, per se. It's about burning fat when you're going about your daily activities, without additional exercise (e.g. sitting around a computer reading slashdot).

You burn carbohydrates if you have them to burn. If your stomach happens to be empty, or you're on a low carb diet, you will eventually get to burning fat as described here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Google may be your friend, but PubMed an NIH make for a better noise to signal ratio.

Well, Yes, I understand, but that methodology (comparing identical twins to fraternal twins) was already used in 1992 to study alcoholism, and among the reasons it was not definitive is that taste buds are genetically inherited (for example), and dopamine receptors are genetically inherited. They could not say that alcoholism was genetic because correlations /= causation, and it was possible that diet and other causes, e.g. habits affected by taste, were being measured. http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publ...

... It seemed to me that if the 1992 study could not determine whether alcoholism was genetic, or environmental, that the original poster had made a valid observation. If alcohol consumption could be caused by diet preference (e.g. people who love the taste of beer start drinking earlier in life, when the brain is developing, leading to stronger habits / dependencies), gut flora could also be affected by diet preference, habit, or tastes. I guess you could argue that is a genetic trait, but not nearly in as assertive a way as the Summary suggests.

That doesn't explain the high prevalence of toxo antibodies in some human populations. CDC estimates about 20% of the USA population has been affected by toxo at some time in their life. Toxo is a very prevalent parasite, suggesting that its modes of transmission are a lot more effective than parent post implies.

There is anecdotal evidence that women who choose to live with multiple cats are often polyamorous or blatantly promiscuous, take risks with social norms that lead to frequent loss of jobs, and are exceptionally tolerant of the stench of cat piss. Rats that have been infected with toxo have been shown to become more daring than the average rat, and to be attracted to the odor of cat piss.

https://www.drfuhrman.com/dise...
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
"Treating Type 1, Type 2, and Gestational Diabetes with Superior Nutrition ... With proper care, a type 1 diabetic can live a long and healthy life, with almost no risk of heart attack, stroke, or complications. Type 1 diabetics need not feel doomed to a life of medical disasters and a possible early death. With a truly health-supporting Nutritarian lifestyle, even the Type 1 diabetic can have the potential for a disease-free life and a better than average life expectancy. I find that when Type 1 diabetics adopt my high-nutrient dietary approach, they reduce their insulin requirements by at least one half. They protect their body against the heart attack promoting effects of the American diet style. They no longer have swings of highs and lows, their weight remains stable, and their glucose levels and lipids stay under excellent control. Even though the Type 1 diabetic will still require exogenous (external) insulin, they will no longer need excessive amounts of it. Remember, it is not the Type 1 diabetes that is so damaging, it is the SAD, the typical dietary advice given to Type 1s and the excessive amounts of insulin required by the SAD that are so harmful. It is simply essential for all Type 1 diabetics to learn and adopt nutritional excellence; they can use much less insulin, achieve a normal, healthy lifespan and dramatically reduce their risk of complications later in life."

An important aspect is getting enough micronutrients and fiber, which were not mentioned in your post (but you may well do).

He also has a book out on it:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/shop/...
"This New York Times best seller offers a scientifically proven, practical program to prevent and reverse [type 2] diabetes -- without drugs. Diabetes does not have to shorten your life span or result in high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney failure, blindness or other life-threatening ailments. In fact, most type 2 diabetics can get off medication and become 100 percent healthy in just a few simple steps. This book offers no compromises, it is the most aggressive and effective approach to reverse obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart disease; which typically accompany type 2 diabetes. The information about Type 1 diabetes is simply life saving. It is a must read for every diabetic, as well as any nutritionally-aware person wanting to understand the failure of conventional medical care for diabetic treatments and the "no-brainer" of using nutritional excellence, not drugs."

Another aspect of this may be gut bacteria. You don't drink diet soda by any chance?
http://www.prevention.com/heal...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesa...

Ongoing research on vitamin D deficiency and diabetes:
http://www.nih.gov/news/health...

BTW, in general, I've heard that exercise, while good for our health, does not help with weight loss because we just eat more afterwards to make up for it. What controls weight in the long term is what we eat, especially micronutrients and fiber, but also good fats and some other things.

Anyway, thanks for the informative post! Glad you found an approach that works for you. Good luck. I helped manage my mother's diabetes for a time (including for a time after my father died giving her injections three times a day and monitoring blood glucose with finger sticks four times a day) and it was not easy (she had dementia and could not do it herself, and even denied she had diabetes sometimes). As you point ou

During prolonged darkness, plants with low carbohydrate reserves exhibited a lower whole-plant respiration rate, which decreased rapidly to almost zero after 24 h, and carbohydrate pools were almost exhausted in leaves, roots and flowers

From the NIH:

Genes play a significant part in susceptibility to type 2 diabetes. Having certain genes or combinations of genes may increase or decrease a person’s risk for developing the disease. The role of genes is suggested by the high rate of type 2 diabetes in families and identical twins and wide variations in diabetes prevalence by ethnicity. Type 2 diabetes occurs more frequently in African Americans, Alaska Natives, American Indians, Hispanics/Latinos, and some Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islander Americans than it does in non-Hispanic whites.

Recent studies have combined genetic data from large numbers of people, accelerating the pace of gene discovery. Though scientists have now identified many gene variants that increase susceptibility to type 2 diabetes, the majority have yet to be discovered. The known genes appear to affect insulin production rather than insulin resistance. Researchers are working to identify additional gene variants and to learn how they interact with one another and with environmental factors to cause diabetes.

Studies have shown that variants of the TCF7L2 gene increase susceptibility to type 2 diabetes. For people who inherit two copies of the variants, the risk of developing type 2 diabetes is about 80 percent higher than for those who do not carry the gene variant.1 However, even in those with the variant, diet and physical activity leading to weight loss help delay diabetes, according to the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), a major clinical trial involving people at high risk.

Genes can also increase the risk of diabetes by increasing a person’s tendency to become overweight or obese. One theory, known as the “thrifty gene” hypothesis, suggests certain genes increase the efficiency of metabolism to extract energy from food and store the energy for later use. This survival trait was advantageous for populations whose food supplies were scarce or unpredictable and could help keep people alive during famine. In modern times, however, when high-calorie foods are plentiful, such a trait can promote obesity and type 2 diabetes.

And on that point, has anybody actually isolated and sequenced a confirmed ebola sample from a human subject who died from that specific infection in the affected region?

Yes, there are complete genomes from 78 cases (not necessarily fatal, but with confirmed EVD) in this publication alone:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

This genomic sequence cannot be detected in uninfected individuals. It simply isn't there. Run the analysis on a thousand random blood samples from, say, the US or Europe, and you'll never see it. Does that suggest anything to you? (I assume from your language, which is similar to that used by HIV denialists, that it might not!).

Awesome. Go ahead and provide the citations for all those claims.

Citation.
Citation.
Citation.

There are dozens more. Dope makes you stupid. It also lowers reflex response time, and it makes you apathetic.

Marijuana should be legal, because people should be free to be stupid. But using dope is stupid.

Except not even that will happen.

A gene is a protein. As a protein it will be broken down and digested or passed out the other end, and thus poses zero threat.
No genes enter your body when you eat something, GMO or not.

A gene encodes a protein, but there's plenty of occasions where ingestion of particular proteins has very serious consequences (and even in cases we already know about with longer periods before diagnosis is possible than GMOs are tested over before release). For example., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
Secondary effects from things those proteins in turn produce are also problematic. The issue is that whereas with selective breeding we have the capacity to wreck one crop (and then, as noted in the original article with various factors making that less likely over time than GMO even in a single species), with GMO we are in a position to pollute all our food crops at once with something we later discover was harmful after all.

As I understand it cellular death doesn't actually occur due to oxygen starvation for about an hour.

Brain cells are special and very sensitive to lack of oxygen. According to this it takes 5 minutes.

The research evidence is pretty strong that most of the damage is caused by reperfusion.

Care to cite any of this research? That may be true for other parts of the body where crush syndrome can cause death.

The most devastating systemic effects can occur when the crushing pressure is suddenly released, without proper preparation of the patient, causing reperfusion syndrome. Without proper preparation, the patient, with pain control, may be cheerful before extrication, but die shortly thereafter. This sudden decompensation is called the "smiling death."

So glyphosate, harmless to humans,

"Harmless to humans"? Wow, where did you get that?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

There's no need to wait and see. This idea is foo'd up for all the same reasons that HAM radio operators have a statistically significant higher incident of cancer. Why everyone is racing to drop the broadcast power of cellphones. And, why putting your head in the microwave is generally considered a bad idea.

Are you going glow green, set off radiation detectors at airports, or erupt in blisters and boils? No, but just because it isn't ionizing radiation doesn't mean its harmless.

Okay, we're done if you aren't going to believe the plethora of evidence that is trivially available. Hepatitis C can cause liver cancer. I mean, at this point you are asserting that everyone, the WHO included, is delusional or is in on a vast conspiracy.

This is not something that gets cited to a handful of peer reviewed studies (which you will reject anyway) when the causal relationship is known and was elucidated a long time ago.

Oh look, more trivial googling.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/...

You are asking me to provide a study that would make me change my mind that there is a causal link between chronic hep c infection and developing cirrhosis and subsequently liver cancer? Are you serious? How about you provide a reputable study that asserts chronic hep c infection is harmless and purports to show that this patient population has no increased risk for cirrhosis or cancer.

I understand you're skeptical, but here's how this particular claim works:
1) Chronic hepatitis C infection causes cirrhosis & cancer.
1a) This is caused by a virus (no, I'm not going to cite that either)
2) Current therapy regimens have abysmal cure rates, and often result in resistant forms of the virus causing refractoriness to the therapy
3) Sofosbuvir was designed to inhibit a specific virally coded enzyme (the viral RNA polymerase). This worked in vitro and subsequently in clinical trials.
4) Studies have shown sofobuvir can clear the viral infection as a monotherapy in the preponderance of cases.
5) Clearing the virus stops the ongoing damage to the liver that is caused by virus.
6) Thus, the hep c induced cirrhosis/cancer is "cured" before it has a chance to manifest.

Now, if you want to debate whether big pharma is acting ethically, we can discuss how they priced the curative therapy at 90% of the expected lifetime cost of care for a patient with hepatitis C, resulting in a charge of something like $90k per patient/course of treatment. This is controversial because, for example, the charge to California taxpayer-funded healthcarr programs alone would be in the billions of dollars.

Are there any issues with silicon solar cells that make them (protected against visible light, obviously) unsuitable? Compared to power silicon or anything for computation you can get enormous area for relatively little money.

Huh. I hadn't thought of that. A quick google search shows that solar cells can be used as radiation detectors, and they generally have large capture areas. I'll have to try this out.

This looks like a good background document for detecting radiation using semiconductors.

This is the type of amplifier you need as a 1st stage in your detector, should you want to build your own. (Google "Charge Amplifier" for more info.)

The radiation comes in as quick pulses (3 us or so in my circuits), so normal incident light shouldn't interfere with the detection. You could perhaps get both power and detection from the same cell.

I've been interested in detecting not only the radiation, but the direction it came from. A 3-d array of detectors with an incidence/correlation circuit can give a general idea of the direction of the source, relative to the detector. I haven't done this yet due to the complexity and expense of the detectors, but solar cells being cheap and easily available I might just try this out. Hmmm...

Thanks for the suggestion.

You were only looking at bulk description for commercial classification, in reality HFCS does have polysacharides http://www.usp.org/sites/defau...

Mercury was one concern, found in 9 out of 20 HFCS samples in 2009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

> in the last fifteen years the CDC budget has doubled

Think about the inflation when you provide numbers over 15 years. Since 2000, the budget is 188% bigger but inflation gives a 140% factor. The increase rate is given by (budget2000 - budget2014 * 140%) / budget2000 = 148%. Most increase is between 2000 and 2004 for NIH. After there is a decrease taking into account the inflation.

a primer for you http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/...

That's okay. Since you can't be bothered to google it yourself, I'll help GP a bit and show you one.

I think you may have linked to the wrong paper.

The one you linked to doesn't have the word "geothermal" in it, and the science daily write up about the paper didn't mention this either.

I have never seen any study suggesting that, except the single widely ridiculed Yale study. Not surprising given how nearly identical sucrose and HFCS are in the gut.

Yeah, most of the HFCS criticism is built on "natural foods" lore and wacko hysteria about chemicals. It *could* be that HFCS is worse than some other sugars, but the vast majority of studies have shown no significant difference in response to HFCS vs. sucrose.

Just to be clear what we're talking about here, HFCS is not the same as pure fructose, and a lot of the lore about HFCS compares studies on fructose with sucrose or other things, rather than HFCS. Commercial HFCS is generally either 42% or 55% fructose, and almost all glucose otherwise. Sucrose, on the other hand, is a molecule that breaks down in the first stages of digestion to 50% fructose and 50% glucose -- so, as the parent said, they are basically identical in most of digestion. (It's called "high fructose" corn syrup, by the way, because it's much higher than normal corn syrup, which has very little fructose. But acting like pure fructose and HFCS are the same thing in studies is highly misleading.)

Also, for the natural foods buffs, please note that honey is mostly fructose and glucose in almost the same concentration as HFCS, so if HFCS is bad for you, "natural" honey is probably not a solution to this problem.

For further details, here's a link to a recent (2013) metastudy that summarizes what is known. From the abstract:

[A] broad scientific consensus has emerged that there are no metabolic or endocrine response differences between HFCS and sucrose related to obesity or any other adverse health outcome. This equivalence is not surprising given that both of these sugars contain approximately equal amounts of fructose and glucose, contain the same number of calories, possess the same level of sweetness, and are absorbed identically through the gastrointestinal tract. Research comparing pure fructose with pure glucose, although interesting from a scientific point of view, has limited application to human nutrition given that neither is consumed to an appreciable degree in isolation in the human diet. Whether there is a link between fructose, HFCS, or sucrose and increased risk of heart disease, metabolic syndrome, or fatty infiltration of the liver or muscle remains in dispute with different studies using different methodologies arriving at different conclusions.

In general, our dietary issues are probably a result of excess sugar consumption in general. Switching from HFCS to cane sugar is probably not a significant improvement unless you simultaneously decrease overall sugar consumption.

How about the mercury used in the production of HFCS? I believe something like 50% of more HFCS products have mercury traces and it is used as an input in the HFCS synthesis process. You can google this study yourselves.

Who cares that it behaves identically to sucrose if it's tainted by mercury?
In addition, i believe there are studies showing that mice who consume HFCS become obese compared to mice fed some equivalent dose of Sucrose/Glucose. In other words, just because some differences in structure are difficult to spot, doesn't mean two compounds are processed identically.

That's not entirely correct. Yes, your lungs do play a big role, but not in this regard. I have CKD, so I have to pay attention to this.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline...

You have it wrong... there's no recommended daily dose of Refined sugar for sure.
You definitely need to eat products that contain sugars, or you will die.

I know that not eating fats and proteins will kill you, but not eating sugars (or at least extremely low quantities) will not kill you (I might be wrong, I'm not a doctor). For example Ketogenic diets have been studied for almost a 100 years by modern medicine, and is used very effectively to control epilepsy. A general public version is known as the Atkins Diet.

There are even some studies that suggest that such diets can protect against Alzheimers:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

The ketogenic diet is a high-fat content diet in which carbohydrates are nearly eliminated so that the body has minimal dietary sources of glucose. Fatty acids are thus an obligatory source of cellular energy production by peripheral tissues and also the brain.

In the absence of glucose, the preferred source of energy (particularly of the brain), the ketone bodies are used as fuel in extrahepatic tissues.

there is evidence from uncontrolled clinical trials and studies in animal models that the ketogenic diet can provide symptomatic and disease-modifying activity in a broad range of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, and may also be protective in traumatic brain injury and stroke

I don't have any specific citations but some believe that Alzheimers is like a form of brains diabetes, where the brain cells are no longer able to absorb sugars, which might be caused by modern high sugar diets. Switching to a Ketogenic diet, bypass the brain inability to feed on sugars and is fed ketone bodies instead, potentially reversing the symptoms.

You have it wrong... there's no recommended daily dose of Refined sugar for sure.
You definitely need to eat products that contain sugars, or you will die.

I know that not eating fats and proteins will kill you, but not eating sugars (or at least extremely low quantities) will not kill you (I might be wrong, I'm not a doctor). For example Ketogenic diets have been studied for almost a 100 years by modern medicine, and is used very effectively to control epilepsy. A general public version is known as the Atkins Diet.

There are even some studies that suggest that such diets can protect against Alzheimers:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

The ketogenic diet is a high-fat content diet in which carbohydrates are nearly eliminated so that the body has minimal dietary sources of glucose. Fatty acids are thus an obligatory source of cellular energy production by peripheral tissues and also the brain.

In the absence of glucose, the preferred source of energy (particularly of the brain), the ketone bodies are used as fuel in extrahepatic tissues.

there is evidence from uncontrolled clinical trials and studies in animal models that the ketogenic diet can provide symptomatic and disease-modifying activity in a broad range of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, and may also be protective in traumatic brain injury and stroke

I don't have any specific citations but some believe that Alzheimers is like a form of brains diabetes, where the brain cells are no longer able to absorb sugars, which might be caused by modern high sugar diets. Switching to a Ketogenic diet, bypass the brain inability to feed on sugars and is fed ketone bodies instead, potentially reversing the symptoms.

It's far more likely it's the caffeine, but they aren't being specific enough. If it was just sugar, then pretty much everything would be doing it and I wouldn't see how they could possibly have a control group.

Not so likely, given caffeine is widely available in other beverages that don't have the same affect.

Most likely is the phosphoric/carbolic acid content.

The most popular cola available is highly acidic with a pH of about 2.5 (which is why it needs so much sugar to taste good). Healthy digestive systems can buffer the acid so that blood acidosis doesn't occur, but they mobilize calcium phosphate from bones and teeth to do so. Several studies have already shown links between telomere shortening and blood calcium levels, so while there's no smoking gun, there's a known mechanism for the result.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

And here is the author's disclosure from the article, available on PubMedCentral: "Author disclosures: J. M. Rippe, consulting fees from ConAgra Foods, PepsiCo International, Kraft Foods, the Corn Refiners Association, and Weight Watchers International." Still think the study is credible?

It's a myth that Sugar causes diabetes. I'm so tired of that FUD being spread around.

There is no direct link between sugar and diabetes.

Diabetes is directly linked to brain damage and blindness to evidence that would be obvious had you spent 5 seconds required to Google them.

Sugar causes weight gain and obesity, which can lead to diabetes.

Enjoy your sugar sweetened ignorance cola..

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

And here's another study that's not from Yale and doesn't use a red herring to confuse people.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

It has been suggested that increased fructose intake is associated with obesity. We hypothesized that chronic fructose consumption causes leptin resistance, which subsequently may promote the development of obesity in response to a high-fat diet.

What gives you two away as shills is that you use strong, unscientific words. There's no, "should," "could," "may," etc, but talk of what is and isn't. Then you both misrepresent the research by pretending that you're citing the one and only peer-reviewed source. This is all capped off with the classic tactic of misrepresenting the body of evidence that disagrees with you. Both of you could be hired social media climate change denialism shills just as easily. Learn some new tricks.

If you know how to use PubMed, then you can't play up ignorance as an excuse. Go tell your bosses at Coca-Cola or wherever that we're not buying it. But tell them not to worry, because we'll all slowly kill ourselves with their delicious, delicious products anyway.

I have never seen any study suggesting that, except the single widely ridiculed Yale study. Not surprising given how nearly identical sucrose and HFCS are in the gut.

Yeah, most of the HFCS criticism is built on "natural foods" lore and wacko hysteria about chemicals. It *could* be that HFCS is worse than some other sugars, but the vast majority of studies have shown no significant difference in response to HFCS vs. sucrose.

Just to be clear what we're talking about here, HFCS is not the same as pure fructose, and a lot of the lore about HFCS compares studies on fructose with sucrose or other things, rather than HFCS. Commercial HFCS is generally either 42% or 55% fructose, and almost all glucose otherwise. Sucrose, on the other hand, is a molecule that breaks down in the first stages of digestion to 50% fructose and 50% glucose -- so, as the parent said, they are basically identical in most of digestion. (It's called "high fructose" corn syrup, by the way, because it's much higher than normal corn syrup, which has very little fructose. But acting like pure fructose and HFCS are the same thing in studies is highly misleading.)

Also, for the natural foods buffs, please note that honey is mostly fructose and glucose in almost the same concentration as HFCS, so if HFCS is bad for you, "natural" honey is probably not a solution to this problem.

For further details, here's a link to a recent (2013) metastudy that summarizes what is known. From the abstract:

[A] broad scientific consensus has emerged that there are no metabolic or endocrine response differences between HFCS and sucrose related to obesity or any other adverse health outcome. This equivalence is not surprising given that both of these sugars contain approximately equal amounts of fructose and glucose, contain the same number of calories, possess the same level of sweetness, and are absorbed identically through the gastrointestinal tract. Research comparing pure fructose with pure glucose, although interesting from a scientific point of view, has limited application to human nutrition given that neither is consumed to an appreciable degree in isolation in the human diet. Whether there is a link between fructose, HFCS, or sucrose and increased risk of heart disease, metabolic syndrome, or fatty infiltration of the liver or muscle remains in dispute with different studies using different methodologies arriving at different conclusions.

In general, our dietary issues are probably a result of excess sugar consumption in general. Switching from HFCS to cane sugar is probably not a significant improvement unless you simultaneously decrease overall sugar consumption.

Any anti-fungal compounds found on your local whores probably came from a tube procured from the corner drugstore, but the potential efficacy of pizza and cocaine substrates may indeed warrant further investigation. I'll start printing up the requisite applications.

Why not electrostaticly spin the fibers? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

One solution might be to re-purpose other tech from the bio-tech industry.

Specifically, hollow silicon nanoneedle arrays.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Grown with the correct length, diameter, and taper, they would function as mechanical analogues to spider spinnarettes. Wet one side, then "brush" the other to get the thread started-- then just gently tug on the resulting fibers.

They would be very fragile things though. Would take very specialized equipment to handle, install, and prime them for service. They would also be far more fragile then ones made from insect chitin, so the drawing speed and pitch angle of the pull would have to be very carefully controlled to avoid breaking off the needles.

Maybe pores in a sheet would work better?

I wrote a few stories about this. http://www.nasw.org/users/nbau...

The best search engine I've ever seen is PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... They structure information better than anybody else. But it requires a librarian to look at every document and code it according to a fairly elaborate coding scheme, the MESH headings, which basically requires a degree in library science and a good medical education to do well.

Ah, but it is spread through casual contact. Someone cough near you? Droplets are evil little creatures. Handshake with someone who coughed on their hands?

If you've not had the flu ever in your life, then you can feel safe. Ebola spreads at least as easily as the flu, likely much easier.

What I really worry about is the non-human vectors. Imagine one dog (1) in the park, finding the vomit of an infected human (2), and this becoming a new, very hard to track infection source. "Our family isn't feeling so good - can you watch Fido while we go to the doctor?" Repeat.

(1) - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
(2) - http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli...

Planes have some things that mitigate viral spread and some things that promote it. On the mitigation side there is the air filtration and the fact that passengers don't mingle all that much. On the promoter side is that the air is dry - lots of viruses and bacteria like low humidity, there are lots of hard plastics where particles can collect and be easily picked up and the fact that you are stuck next to your seatmate for a possibly prolonged period of time. And of course, for most passengers, they have the opportunity to come in contact with a large number of random people in the airport terminal.

In a brief search, I found some evidence that commercial aircraft travel is associated with a high rate of viral URI infections (approx 20% of passengers which is well above background).

I'd suggest you have a bit too much confidence in peer review.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Here are a few high-profile citations from the last year. Super-resolution microscopy on fixed cells is a big deal. That's not an argument against its worth. A technology need not satisfy all your wishes to be extraordinarily worthwhile. Current practices on a commercial system do not necessarily limit what is possible in a research setting. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Here are a few high-profile citations from the last year. Super-resolution microscopy on fixed cells is a big deal. That's not an argument against its worth. A technology need not satisfy all your wishes to be extraordinarily worthwhile. Current practices on a commercial system do not necessarily limit what is possible in a research setting. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Here are a few high-profile citations from the last year. Super-resolution microscopy on fixed cells is a big deal. That's not an argument against its worth. A technology need not satisfy all your wishes to be extraordinarily worthwhile. Current practices on a commercial system do not necessarily limit what is possible in a research setting. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Here are a few high-profile citations from the last year. Super-resolution microscopy on fixed cells is a big deal. That's not an argument against its worth. A technology need not satisfy all your wishes to be extraordinarily worthwhile. Current practices on a commercial system do not necessarily limit what is possible in a research setting. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Here are a few high-profile citations from the last year. Super-resolution microscopy on fixed cells is a big deal. That's not an argument against its worth. A technology need not satisfy all your wishes to be extraordinarily worthwhile. Current practices on a commercial system do not necessarily limit what is possible in a research setting. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Here are a few high-profile citations from the last year. Super-resolution microscopy on fixed cells is a big deal. That's not an argument against its worth. A technology need not satisfy all your wishes to be extraordinarily worthwhile. Current practices on a commercial system do not necessarily limit what is possible in a research setting. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Here's the project conference poster. "Total equipment cost for the development path is less than $1 billion". Nothing on the poster, though, indicates why this should work. It's yet another torus-based design, of which there have been many. The best performance to date is from the Joint European Torus: "In 1997, JET produced a peak of 16.1MW of fusion power (65% of input power), with fusion power of over 10MW sustained for over 0.5 sec."

All torus designs run into plasma instability problems. So far, nobody has a working solution. Nobody even has a good theoretical solution. No combination of fixed magnets has yet worked. There's some modest interest in active feedback for stabilization, and some modest success has been reported. The instabilities are on the order of milliseconds, so active feedback is quite feasible.

Even ITER probably won't work. The thinking behind ITER was originally "maybe it will become more stable if we make it bigger." Now, a little "maybe the feedback control people can make it work" has been added. It's not looking good, which is why there really isn't that much enthusiasm for ITER.

> One can of Diet Coke saves 139 kcal compared to a regular Coke. Not a ton, but still worth saving.

That's not taking into account the after-effects of drinking saccarine or aspartame. Over time, you save nothing by going diet soda, you gain weight instead!

2010 Yale Study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/

2011 Purdue Study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21424985

IMHO: Much better would be drinking regular water or iced tea instead of regular coke.

> One can of Diet Coke saves 139 kcal compared to a regular Coke. Not a ton, but still worth saving.

That's not taking into account the after-effects of drinking saccarine or aspartame. Over time, you save nothing by going diet soda, you gain weight instead!

2010 Yale Study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/

2011 Purdue Study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21424985

IMHO: Much better would be drinking regular water or iced tea instead of regular coke.

You should probably read the studies. The researchers found no statistical difference in color preference at the time of testing, which suggests that color preference is socially acquired as children age. That and the differences in preferences across multiple cultures also suggests any color preferences are arbitrary in and of themselves. However, they did notice the difference in toy preference. If dressing children in specific colors had an impact, why didn't the infants show a difference in color preference? Why would that effect only be noticed in terms of toy preference?

Also, the reason they believe that it's not a social factor is because they found similar results in monkeys. Infant male monkeys had a stronger preference for wheeled toys as well. Given that monkeys are unlikely to naturally have toys for their offspring or socially constructed gender roles, it seems to point to biological underpinnings that evolved at some point before humans became divergent as a species, although it would be necessary to conduct a similar study with other groups of primates in order to ascertain whether or not it's something that evolved independently in both species.

Humans are sexually dimorphic. It's been known for some time that male and female children develop at different rates (e.g. boys tend to develop fine motor skills more slowly, but develop gross motor skills more quickly) and once puberty hits have rather stark physical differences in terms of muscular development and strength. Is it really that difficult to accept that there are differences in the ways that the brain develops between the two sexes and that this manifests in subtle differences such as toy preference?

"Male chimpanzees at the Gombe National Park were twice seen to attack 'stranger' females and seize their infants. One infant was then killed and partially eaten: the other was 'rescued' and carried by three different males. Once several males were found eating a freshly killed 'stranger' infant. A similar event was observed in Uganda by Dr. Suzuki and Dr. Nishida reports an incident from the Mahali Mountains, Tanzania. A different kind of killing occurred at Gombe when a female and her daughter killed and ate three infants of other females of the same community during a 2-year period. There is evidence suggesting that other infants may have died in this way. The paper draws attention to puzzling aspects of infant killing and cannibalism in chimpanzees."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/...

> You don't get to call someone a liar without rudimentary research on your own part.

You don't get to make extraoridinary claims without offering extraordinary proof and "go google it" is not an acceptable answer.
But I take your citation as a step up above the intellectual dishonesty of the OP.
To that end I will cite this mitigating factors that were not addressed in the original study:

infant recognition of faces is impaired by inversion
The citation you provided makes no mention of control for the orientation of the presented face, thus given what we know about the difficulty that infants have processing faces that are not oriented upright relative to their own, the conclusions of the study you cited are in question.