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There's probably nothing that prohibits anyone with capable intelligence from learning anything, but there may be underlying differences in the sexes due to the way our brains are physically different, which is just as good of an explanation as to why men and women have different writing styles. I lean towards that explanation as opposed to social factors, simply because there is other research that points to biological sex determining behavior. For example, young children of opposite sexes have different toy preferences. There's evidence to suggest that some things are certainly acquired due to social factors: color preference for example.

I've heard other interesting theories for the disparity as well such as autism-spectrum disorders being more prevalent in males than females and that people who are have more mild forms of disorders along that spectrum tend to be more attracted to computers and machines than they are to occupations that involve dealing with people. This also explains the stereotype of engineers and computer scientists being socially awkward, which there is some truth to.

Curiosity ~ Openness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

http://pss.sagepub.com/content...
We used a new theory of the biological basis of the Big Five personality traits to generate hypotheses about the association of each trait with the volume of different brain regions. Controlling for age, sex, and whole-brain volume, results from structural magnetic resonance imaging of 116 healthy adults supported our hypotheses for four of the five traits: Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Extraversion covaried with volume of medial orbitofrontal cortex, a brain region involved in processing reward information. Neuroticism covaried with volume of brain regions associated with threat, punishment, and negative affect. Agreeableness covaried with volume in regions that process information about the intentions and mental states of other individuals. Conscientiousness covaried with volume in lateral prefrontal cortex, a region involved in planning and the voluntary control of behavior. These findings support our biologically based, explanatory model of the Big Five and demonstrate the potential of personality neuroscience (i.e., the systematic study of individual differences in personality using neuroscience methods) as a discipline.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
However, we did find that Openness/Intellect was associated—at p less than .01, uncorrected—with one region consistent with our hypotheses: an area of parietal cortex involved in working memory and the control of attention. A previous study found that a nearly identical region (Talairach coordinates: 46, 33, 45) showed the strongest correlation between neural activity (during a difficult working memory task) and intelligence (J.R. Gray et al., 2003). This finding is significant because Openness/Intellect is the only Big Five trait that has been consistently and positively associated with intelligence (DeYoung et al., 2005).

etc.

... 16.5 liters, or a bit over 4 gallons.

I got you beat. Last year I made my 80th donation, and was admitted into the ten gallon club. the Red Cross gave me a FREE T-SHIRT to prove it. Anyway, China has a big problem recruiting blood donors. There is a strong cultural taboo about losing blood. Even in America, where hospitals try to match patients with donors by ethnicity, there is a big shortage of Asian blood. My wife is Chinese, and she objected to me donating blood, insisting it would shorten my life, until I showed her that there was plenty of evidence that donating blood is good for you and may lengthen your life.

Ummm.... I work in a hospital and order blood fairly regularly for my patient population. There is no way to specify the "ethnicity" of blood. Blood is "typed" for major antigen (A,B,O) and "crossed" for minor antigen or factors (Rh, Duffy, Lewis, Kell, MNS, P, Hh, XK, Etc). Now, different "ethnicities" have different distributions of antigens which may make it more likely that someone of the same ethnicity matches, but no-one transfuses "ethnic-specific" blood.

And for the record the typical human has about 80 cc/kg of blood (e.g. the "mythical" 70 kg (154 lb) adult has about 5600mL (5.9qts ~1.5 gal) of blood).

For the record, proto-socialist ideas started popping up in France distinctly after the revolution.

"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or death" was the slogan of the French revolution. Fraternity was a concept that people had a legal responsibility to ensure that everyone gets their fair share. That sounds like the beginning of socialism to me.

Here is a quote from Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1754, way before the French revolution.
"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naÃve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."

So I guess it's safe to say that bounding ideas or concepts by the date is pretty foolish. Did gravity not exists before Newton defined it?

Did you read below that I will repeat it since you missed it, if you are saying they had it equally as good you need to find something that made up for a serf's lack of technology, like cell phones, clean drinking water, indoor plumbing, living quarters without livestock, cars, laundry facilities,... What area did the serfs have it better then migrant workers to make up for all those things I listed.

First, I'll reiterate my objection that those aren't things that migrant workers have, generally speaking. Second, I'll reiterate the response I offered earlier: leisure time and living space

80% of migrant workers have cell phones
42% drive a car to work, 8% walk, 35% ride with others, 8% take a bus, 7% use Raitero (shuttle).
95% had water for washing, 80% drinking water and cups, 93% had a toilet

Living space? serfs had live stock living in their "houses". I don't know if you know this but goats and sheep crap all the time. I don't know about you but I would rather live in a house cramped with people then with animals, feces, and urine.

Now for your claim of leisure time. From the study I cited the average hours worked per week was 43 hours. It's safe to say that is the average for a year round worker, serfs worked more then that. Now to the seasonal migrant. Seasonal migrant workers are not working 3/4 of the year, they would have to work 23 hours a day every day to work the same hours as someone who works 40 hours a week year round.

The disclaimer I've added to the end of my last three posts (as well as this one) has been rather prophetic, don't you think? Perhaps you're interested in breaking the 76-post-long-thread record I set with bingoUV? That would be even more impressive with this disclaimer in place the whole time. I totally think you should go for it.

You can stop responding any time you like, yet you still continue to respond.

I tend think it's a combination of issues. Some can be offset or fixed by teaching women differently (negotiation for more money), some possibly can be offset through a combination of law and working with their employers (maternity leave), but prejudice is the bug bear that's so hard to fix since it raises hackles (putting some on the defensive), is hard to teach & is misattributed as the cause when it's actually a different cause.

Women not asking for more money
http://www.womendontask.com/qu...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://hbr.org/2003/10/nice-gi...
-
Women deciding to have children
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
-
Prejudice
http://www.forbes.com/sites/wo...

That's research from 130 years ago, and solely about rote memorisation. I'm talking about things such as this, and more general research into neuronal development.

Google broken for you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

http://council.brandeis.edu/

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

Here is one, and here is another, although there are many conflicting studies on this issue - definitely needs more review.

Here is one, and here is another, although there are many conflicting studies on this issue - definitely needs more review.

I kinda already did?

As for the 'Ted Talks' I kind of ignored them for a number of reasons:
1. No reason to believe that they're peer reviewed.
2. Audio would be incredibly rude where I was at the time.
3. I'm a visual learner - listening to youtube lectures is painful for me.
4. My conclusion from the earlier 3 was that the latter 3 would be more the same. On reaching home, I confirmed this.

Anyways, some more articles on antibiotic growth promotion:
It improves growth, but not enough to justify the cost in chickens grown in clean & sanitary environments
The Mode of Growth Promotion by Antibiotics
The European ban on growth-promoting antibiotics and emerging consequences for human and animal health. link
Alternatives to Antibiotic Use for Growth Promotion in Animal Husbandry link
Effect of Abolishment of the Use of Antimicrobial Agents for Growth Promotion on Occurrence of Antimicrobial Resistance in Fecal Enterococci from Food Animals in Denmark link
Antibiotic Usage in Animals link

Conclusion: The cattle industry isn't feeding billions of dollars of antibiotics to their animals for fun.

Are you really that stupid? What the GP said is absolutely true. Antibiotics are OTC in much of Latin America, including Mexico. They are almost always misused, and so antibiotic resistance is a huge problem there.

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

Please educate yourself, because as of right now you are a complete idiot.

As can be seen from the graph below, schizophrenia definitely has a very significant genetic component. Those who have a third degree relative with schizophrenia are twice as likely to develop schizophrenia as those in the general population. Those with a second degree relative have a several-fold higher incidence of schizophrenia than the general population, and first degree relatives have an incidence of schizophrenia an order of magnitude higher than the general populace.

The causes of schizophrenia are not fully known. However, it appears that schizophrenia usually results from a complex interaction between genetic and environmental factors. Schizophrenia has a strong hereditary component. Individuals with a first-degree relative (parent or sibling) who has schizophrenia have a 10 percent chance of developing the disorder, as opposed to the 1 percent chance of the general population. But schizophrenia is only influenced by genetics, not determined by it. While schizophrenia runs in families, about 60% of schizophrenics have no family members with the disorder. Furthermore, individuals who are genetically predisposed to schizophrenia don’t always develop the disease, which shows that biology is not destiny.

Unlike other genetic conditions such as Huntington's or cystic fibrosis, it is believed that no one single gene causes the disease by itself but rather that several genes are associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia. While schizophrenia occurs in one percent of the general population, having a history of family psychosis greatly increases the risk. Schizophrenia occurs at roughly ten percent of people who have a first-degree relative with the disorder, i.e., a parent or sibling. However, the highest risk occurs when an identical twin is diagnosed with schizophrenia. The unaffected twin has a roughly 50 percent chance of developing the disorder. The genetic component appears to extend beyond family environment. For example, children with a parent living with schizophrenia who were put up for early adoption still develop schizophrenia at a higher rate than the rest of the of the population.

Further down the page, the US government weighs in:

Scientists have long known that schizophrenia runs in families. The illness occurs in 1 percent of the general population, but it occurs in 10 percent of people who have a first-degree relative with the disorder, such as a parent, brother, or sister. People who have second-degree relatives (aunts, uncles, grandparents, or cousins) with the disease also develop schizophrenia more often than the general population. The risk is highest for an identical twin of a person with schizophrenia. He or she has a 40 to 65 percent chance of developing the disorder. We inherit our genes from both parents. Scientists believe several genes are associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia, but that no gene causes the disease by itself.16 In fact, recent research has found that people with schizophrenia tend to have higher rates of rare genetic mutations. These genetic differences involve hundreds of different genes and probably disrupt brain development.

Some of those links include actual cites from scientific studies, by the way. I'm not going to bother locating physical copies of those journals and don't have a pubmed subscription, but you're welcome to look them up if you'd like.

Roboticist Srikanth Saripalli makes this interesting point: "If the government has to decide what to fund and what not to fund, they are going to get their ideas and decisions mostly from science fiction rather than what's being published in technical papers."

Because at NIH indeed you are placed on a grant review board because of your techical knowledge of the matter. On top of that, the applications are all supported by citations in technical (and peer-reviewed) papers.

As best I understand funding at DOE and NSF works much the same way; your odds of getting funded are astronomically better if you have good primary literature to support the experiment you propose. Now, if your funding plans revolve around convincing your favorite congress-critter to write in a line (or a full bill) to get you some money, that might work too but it generally isn't the most reliable way to establish a career path.

I'm going to have to pass on any diet that includes raw chicken.

Sorry, I guess I described it wrong. Foods were added back to the diet slowly, from only raw fruits and vegetables and nuts to cooked foods like some brown rice, squash, to eventually adding cooked meats, starting with chicken and eventually beef. This was always organically-raised, pasture-fed chicken and grass-fed and finished beef. Cooking was done very carefully, ensuring meats are cooked to a safe temperature. Of course, eating raw chicken is VERY dangerous for ANYONE!!!

I'm also very skeptical of the claim that drinking juice has any benefits that aren't present in just eating whatever the juice came from. Bottled juices are convenient because of the shelf life. If you're sticking a fresh item into a juicer you could have gotten all the same benefits by just sticking it directly in your mouth. Your stomach liquifies everything anyway.

If you're getting juice from a bottle, it's been pasteurized (cooked), which means it doesn't have the same nutrients. The fresher the food is, the more nutrients it contains. Cooking to the high temperatures required for canning (bottle) destroys a lot of essential nutrients. And I'm afraid you're wrong that just eating it outright results in the same ability to absorb nutrients from food. Birds feed their babies pre-digested food because it is easier to digest. Juicing breaks down the cells and makes the food easier to absorb, and it provides a denser amount of nutrients meaning you can take in more raw juiced food than you can eat whole.

If you've got a GI disorder that prevents you from digesting or eliminating then you'll need to be on clear fluids and IV but for non-GI disorders the rest of your body doesn't care whether the food was solid or liquid when it entered your mouth. Either way it was broken down into its fundamental constituents before it passed into your bloodstream.

The human body doesn't have a "on/off" switch in the GI tract that allows it to work perfectly or not at all. It's a very complicated ecosystem requiring symbiotic relationships with various types of bacteria and phages. It's a delicate balance. malabsorption syndrome runs the gambit from a single nutrient can't be absorbed to what you've described where almost all nutrients pass through without the body being able to process them. For instance, pernicious anemia is often caused lack of the ability to absorb vitamin B12. You may be able to absorb everything else, but this single malabsorption issue can cause lots of problems, and is often misdiagnosed. There are many others commonly recognized.

The assertion that everything you eat is "Either way it was broken down into its fundamental constituents" simply shows a fundamental misunderstanding of nutrition. Sure, that happens before it enters your bloodstream, but the process getting to that point is very complex, and if nutrients you need are simply passing through, or are being used up by the wrong mix of bacteria and phages in your gut, it can cause all kinds of health issues.

Juicing raw foods can help, as can the process of the raw food cleanse that can help purge overgrowth of bacteria that can cause issues. Here is some information on the benefits of juicing your food vs. simply eating it raw. And if you're really interested in finding out why a bottled juice is not going to provide the same benefits as fresh foods juiced and consumed immediately, this article lays it out pretty well.

I was about to post something similar. The spin is quite strange given the reading of the abstract.

FWIW, I believe the original study that identified the 3 SNPs in educational attainment is here, but as mentioned it's a very weak statistical correlation as it only contributes to about 1 additional month of schooling on average. Also the assumption that the genes vary in terms of SNPs is also a big assumption which may be false too.

Basically, they seem to be mostly saying it's unlikely that a small mutation (because that's what a SNP is mostly) that was selected/amplified by evolution can determine our intelligence. That's really baby steps in this question.

Perhaps some sort of DNA methylation which is correlated with in-utero nutrition levels interacts with the underlying DNA expression somehow that is a better proxy for what we think of as intelligence (which is only weakly correlated with academic achievement). If so, we probably aren't going to find it by this technique at all. Kinda makes this total non-news in my book.

Yeah, government never comes up with any interesting research results, like the internet (DARPA), GPS (DoD), touchscreens (CIA/NSF), or Siri (DARPA).

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

Since I seem to be dismissing that paper for trying to use thermodynamics to define the probability of a living system I wanted to quickly add that I am explicitly not dismission it. I'm dismissing the summary that conflating the definition of life with a lower bound on it's thermodynamic probability. Often times thermodynamic bounds are very useful in ruling out how something did not happen and to identify the high probability way something could have happened.

Take for example, the observation that most complex living systems are beautiful as well. Why are they beautiful to us. I think it is because they visually have organization. And the single most obvious facet of organization are symmetries at large scale. For example, atomically speaking your eyes are very far apart. Yet your body has this beautiful bilateral symmetry.

THe obvious question is whether symmetries in living systems occur because living systems select for symmetry because there is an evolutionary advantage to it or because of thermodynamics.

to see this take something simpler. The packing of seeds in a sunflower is optimal in some sense (fibonaci) yet one might believe there's a chance it's just a thermodynamic accident not a careful selection.

In fact drill down a little more and consider the fact that nearly all proteins in your body form homo dimers that are symmetric.

an interesting paper
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

comes to the stunning conclusion that this symmetry is not from evolutionary selection! it's overwhelmingly improbable that function can arise from random collisions between proteins, and the only likely way two proteins can collide and form a low energy conformation that last long enough to perform a function is for collisions that form a symmetrical arrangement. Almost all other collisions wont last long enough for the dimer to perform a function (such as catalyzing production of a useful metabolite). Since Natural selection cannot operate on anything that doesn't do something to increase fitness this means that assymetric collisions are completely invisible to the organism. Therefore thermodynmics can rightfully claim that nearly all protein symmetry arrises simply from thermodynamic probability not from natural selection having a prefernce for symmetry. This is not to say that symmetry has no selectable characteristics. It's just that at the molecular level, those selectable characteristics are not required to explain the emergence of symmetry as we observe it. The frequency that we observe symmetric versus asymmetric homo dimers of proteins is exactly the frequency we would expect at random due to thermodynamics.

Thus the interesting thing about this new work in thermodynamics is it sets a lower bound on the conditions needed for life to emerge. It does not however define the probability of life emerging.

Drugs go through four phases of clinical trials, as required by the FDA.

That being said, the whole clinical trial process to get a drug approved by the FDA is pretty messed up. From how pharmaceutical companies are involved, how patients are (are not) qualified to participate, how adverse events aren't necessarily properly documented, the list goes on.

This is already accounted for in food labelling. The calories on the label all get metabolized, and the calories that don't get metabolized aren't listed on the label.

So no, it is definitely a retrospective change you made to your own sentence. While I don't mind educating someone, even for free, you can't convince me you meant this from the start.

Indeed, I was incorrect on that point. I knew that the caloric values on nutrition labels (in the US) were not determined by gross bomb calorimetry, and instead by the summing the products of masses of macronutrients and their respective specific heats, as specified by the Code of Federal Regulations and described here under the "Calculations used to determine energy content" heading. However, I did not know that any significant quantity of these macronutrients would pass through a normal healthy human digestive system and escape conversion to ATP (with the exception of dietary fiber). If it's not asking too much, could you please link me to additionaly reading on which macronutrients are expelled unmetabolized in non-neglible amounts?

You didn't deserve the benefit of doubt, because of other sentences you posted exposed that you did really mean "eat" , and you did NOT mean "eat, digest, and metabolize".
...
Which is good, because useless statements disguised as simple actionable statements are dangerous.

Despite your insistence that I've been having this conversation in bad faith, I still maintain that the context of my first post in this thread should make it clear that that's not the case.

danaris was talking about "vast amounts of sugar" in the modern diet as being the reason (or a reason, at least) why people are hugely fat, and I was merely trying to state that replacing these vast amounts of sugar with vast amounts (calorically-equivalent amounts) of fats wouldn't make any appreciable difference. Even in light of this new (to me, at least) information about nutrition labels not accurately reflecting metabolized energy content, and using the numbers from your pizza example (not because I expect that they're accurate but merely because I have no other numbers in front of me), we're looking at something on the order of a 5% discrepancy. When people talk about some fad diet being amazing, I don't think they mean "5% more effective than a traditional calorie-counting diet". The perceived efficacy of low-carb diets is much greater than 5%, and therefore is not explained by this discrepancy.

danaris also stated that "Some kinds of energy are easier for our bodies to extract from food than others" and that "Some kinds of food make our bodies feel more full than others". I countered that the second statement, while true, has no bearing on the fact that a calorie is still a calorie. The first statement I took to be a reference to the discrepancy between bomb calorimetry and the method outlined by the Code of Federal Regulations. This discrepancy is indeed significant (probably larger than the discrepancy you highlighted), but has no relevance to the discussion either since nutrition labels don't go by bomb calorimetry.

In any case, thanks for the insight, as I myself am in the middle of trying a low carb diet and would be very interested in better quantifying my energy intake.

It's not to clean your hands. It's to keep the doorknob germ free.

Sorry, that does not compute. What's the point of keeping the doorknob germ free, if everyone that needs to open the door has to touch a dirty rag and compromise their hand (that's swallowing the spider to catch the fly)...

Hand sanitizers mostly work against bacteria and not so much against virusses.

That' a common misconception. The latest generation of alcohol based hand sanitizers (when used correctly) work well as a virucidal agent. However, hand sanitizers often don't work well against certain spore forming bacteria and some common problematic bacteria like Clostridium difficile. The main problem with hand sanitizers is that people often don't use them correctly (e.g., they don't use enough and/or let it dry before rubbing their hands), and/or they tend to dry out your skin (dissuading people from using it as much as they should in some environments). Of course soap and water generally work better, but many people often don't wash their hands correctly either.

It's not to clean your hands. It's to keep the doorknob germ free.

Sorry, that does not compute. What's the point of keeping the doorknob germ free, if everyone that needs to open the door has to touch a dirty rag and compromise their hand (that's swallowing the spider to catch the fly)...

Hand sanitizers mostly work against bacteria and not so much against virusses.

That' a common misconception. The latest generation of alcohol based hand sanitizers (when used correctly) work well as a virucidal agent. However, hand sanitizers often don't work well against certain spore forming bacteria and some common problematic bacteria like Clostridium difficile. The main problem with hand sanitizers is that people often don't use them correctly (e.g., they don't use enough and/or let it dry before rubbing their hands), and/or they tend to dry out your skin (dissuading people from using it as much as they should in some environments). Of course soap and water generally work better, but many people often don't wash their hands correctly either.

Yup, and now we have higher pneumonia rates as a result. Better for the herd?

The only source I could find that agrees with you is this one which is a small, retrospective study in an isolated area of the world. An interesting theory but I would hesitate to get all wound up about it just yet.

Even if this were to be a general case, you would have to consider this against the background of serious side effects from antibiotics (1:1000), development of resistance, costs and likely some other issues.

Only the Sith deal in absolutes.

Having to look at the speedo just to keep your car going at a certain speed is a distraction. I'd much more likely be looking out the windshield while I drive, instead of on the instrument cluster

OK, we can solve that with a HUD. How does that relate to cruise control?

I use cruise control down to 20mph in the school zones and consider the "wisdom" not to use it at low speeds or in city traffic to be at odds with reality.

Unless you then rest your foot on the brake pedal that's extremely stupid of you, because your car starts decelerating as soon as you lift off of the accelerator pedal, but it doesn't start decelerating as soon as you lift your foot off of the floor next to the pedals. So you've now got to find the cruise control cancel, possibly in an unforeseen emergency.

There's nothing sedating about regular cruise control.

False. Learn to internet, bro.

It lets me focus on the road ahead and on the other cars instead of pretending to be a fucking speed servo.

If being a speed servo is a challenging job for you, I suggest that driving is right out.

All the symptoms mentioned by the parent poster are recognized for acute inhalation exposure to Mercury, but I'm running into paywalls trying to find out just how rapid their onset can be.

At a concentration level similar to the ones you're likely to see in the few moments after breaking a lightbulb, symptoms of acute mercury inhalation exposure require "a few hours" of exposure to develop. The patients in this review each absorbed a dose similar to the complete mercury contents of a typical CFL; it seems unlikely that an accident of the type described would result in more than a few percent of this amount of absorption, as the instinctive response to the bulb breaking - closing your eyes and exhaling - will prevent most of the contaminants entering your system. Also, unless the lamp was turned on at the time it broke, it is unlikely that more than a small percentage of the mercury was in vapour form.

All the symptoms mentioned by the parent poster are recognized for acute inhalation exposure to Mercury, but I'm running into paywalls trying to find out just how rapid their onset can be.

At a concentration level similar to the ones you're likely to see in the few moments after breaking a lightbulb, symptoms of acute mercury inhalation exposure require "a few hours" of exposure to develop. The patients in this review each absorbed a dose similar to the complete mercury contents of a typical CFL; it seems unlikely that an accident of the type described would result in more than a few percent of this amount of absorption, as the instinctive response to the bulb breaking - closing your eyes and exhaling - will prevent most of the contaminants entering your system. Also, unless the lamp was turned on at the time it broke, it is unlikely that more than a small percentage of the mercury was in vapour form.

And here's Murphy's douchebag, right on schedule.

Science right in your face.

DDT bans did exactly what they said they would.

(Also DDT is still in use for malaria control, not that we have that in the US where it's banned).

I have no delusions that I convinced you of anything. But it's nice to have someone to smack down for being a perfect example when they must have known I had this sort of evidence handy..

• A system at 77 degrees kelvin would need a massive, elaborate heat-exchange system to maintain that temperature throughout everything. If this were a design aspect, it would need even more elaborate systems to prevent failure due to heat/fire. Energy consumption for cooling is one of the most inefficient mechanisms, so this would also bump up their magical-power-generator demands a few notches. But hey, what's impossible times ten instead of merely impossible energy storage and heat exchange.
• More importantly, every time the robot had steady/sustained contact with other mechanical devices / systems, they'd have extreme-cold failure modes. The throttle and brake grips on the motorcycle. His 'not-really-boots' on anything they touched (foot pedals). Firearms (especially the automatic actions) get sluggish and failure-prone around 20-below F, which is about 150 degrees kelvin hotter than you're suggesting. Anything that didn't have specialized extreme-cold lubricants, or (worse) did have residual-water, would start to seize up. Rubber would become brittle. Explosive activity would cause cracking: guns might crack more with each gunshot (at areas in contact with the T-1000) until they rather explosively failed.

Incidentally, liquid-metal self-modifying systems, like the monster in 'The Thing', are just far enough beyond science fiction to be called fantasy. Laws of information storage density pretty much make molecules capable of cataloging a myriad of design specs large and complex enough that they'll be brittle, and the resulting creature would likely be designed to be able to hemorrhage off damaged cells (and shrink) during emergencies and reacquire material slowly later. Under steady gunfire or in a fire, these things would either cruft up fast or steadily get smaller faster than they could assemble replacement molecules

(relevant cite: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bo... "Although single origins are sufficient to direct the replication of bacte-rial and viral genomes, multiple origins are needed to replicate the much larger genomes of eukaryotic cells within a reasonable period of time. For example, the entire genome of E. coli (4 Ã-- 106 base pairs) is replicated from a single origin in approximately 30 minutes. If mammalian genomes (3 Ã-- 109 base pairs) were replicated from a single origin at the same rate, DNA replication would require about 3 weeks (30,000 minutes). The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that the rate of DNA replication in mammalian cells is actually about tenfold lower than in E. coli, possibly as a result of the packaging of eukaryotic DNA in chromatin. Nonetheless, the genomes of mammalian cells are typically replicated within a few hours, necessitating the use of thousands of replication origins.").

So, new material can't just be instantly assimilated, so the monsters in both should get smaller... and smaller... and smaller, if fought steadily. So... let's make the biophysics for this problem plausible: A few hits on T-1000 by gunfire and rocket launchers, he splatters everywhere, and a T-900 marches at you. Then a T-800, etc. At T-25 size, he jumps into an air duct and runs away. Two weeks later, he resurfaces full-size. Meanwhile, that splatter residue has a few working molecules that have slithered out of a crack between floor and wall to a nearby desk in the Precinct, been ingested as part of Officer Stadanko's jelly donut, and he's not answering phone calls. Yep: the Thing, but with a three-week infection period like Ebola. Much harder to hunt. So, if mechanical or biological generation WAS possible, and constrained to sane physics to where steady, sustained significant damage had an effect, you'd think either of those monsters would have had some guidance that nondetection and stealth were more important than speed. They didn't need to rush.

Reference for where the state "bann[ed] any such consideration or planning for the future"? Not to a biased media source with no sources, please.

You're absolutely right. Things are always--necessarily--better when they are centrally decided and mandated. Fireproofing is an excellent example. Thank goodness for codes that required asbestos, Tris, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers. Too bad those contrarians just want to stand in the way of progress.

Eh. There's a hell of a lot of variety of beer nowdays. You're probably thinking of a doppelbock there.
There's a legend about monks brewing it to help get them through fasts.

But I'd certainly not recommend using that approach to pacifying babies to moms â

Usually if you keep a baby fed and changed and comfortable they are pretty calm. Teething can be rough..
Unless they have some other problem like thrush or something.

Looks like I might be wrong about the hops tho...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Anyway, apparently alcohol in milk falls off at the same rate as in blood, so probably the easiest way to do it is enjoy the beer immediately after a feeding.

You tried vegetarianism? Sounds like you tried pastatarianism. You were a junk food veggie, it's pretty clear. Because you're not blaming the " 'healthy' veggies", you're blaming the bread, pasta and sugar.

Umm, no. You are taking two different parts of what I wrote and put them together to make me look as if I was eating only bread and spaghetti. I noted that I was eating "I tried a low fat vegetarian diet for a time in the very late 80's, specifically, I ate eggs for protein, otherwise, all "healthy" veggies and starches.

Tell me where I was talking about pigging on spaghetti and bread. We do okay with eating some starces you know.

As for phytoestrogen, there is NO science backing up your claims of man tits.

Here's some soy products for you to digest

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

or

http://tinyurl.com/lwrbsjw Sorry for the tinyurl, it's from the National Institute of health, and is a really long url otherwise.

Matter of fact, the only studies done so far show phytoestrogens have protecting qualities for regarding cancer.

From Wiki: Evidence is accruing that phytoestrogens may have protective action against diverse health disorders, such as prostate, breast, bowel, and other cancers, cardiovascular disease, brain function disorders and osteoporosis,

And sometimes not http://tinyurl.com/ooef5yn

another NIH study.

I wouldn't call much of what you said an "educated guess.

I wouldn't call much of your response as other than insulting, trying to make me look inconsistent by combining unrelated parts of my writing to attempt to suit your own purposes, then claiming that there is no research to support what I am talking about. Which there clearly is, and more underway. You just trolling for vegans, or not paying attention?

You are a vegan, aren't you?

Were is the science that backs your theory?

The whole situation is a little complex, but we might start out with what we evolved to deal with. This seems to work with wild animals. It is obvious in the case of frank carnivores, and frank herbivores. Horses seldom seek out a juicy steak, and Cheetas don't often beg for loaves of bread.

With omnivores like humans, it is a little more complex. We're designed to eat a lot of different things.

So what has happened? Why do people have so much trouble maintaining a healthy weight?

Ever since I can remember, we have been bombarded by th e concept that there is a scale of healthy eating, and that elimination of as much fat as possible is desirable, and the ne plus ultra of healthy living is veganism, followed by vegatarianism, then low fat/high carb, then the unwashed masses of high protein, and the soulles spawn of Satan - the Atkinists.

So here's one citation from the NIH:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... Less central obesity in men consuming a high milk fat diet. It's a narrow study, but interesting.

Here's one from Harvard. An opinion piece, but well done:

http://www.foodandnutritionres...

Here's a nice link with references.

http://authoritynutrition.com/...

I tried a low fat vegetarian diet for a time in the very late 80's, specifically, I ate eggs for protein, otherwise, all "healthy" veggies and starches.

Aside from being hungry all the time, losing only 2 pounds, and having my GI tract all bitched up for months, it was awesome. After 6 months, I gave up and ate a nice juicy medium rare steak. In around a week, I was back to feeling normal,

Interestingly enough, my parents ate probably 4 times the fat I did. And had absolutely no weight problem at all.

Where did we go wrong? Just an educated guess on my part:

Bread and pasta. That stuff is awesome and versatile. It's also a great way to fill a person up with not much more than empty calories.

Sugar. Likewise great tasting stuff. But seriously, just how fucked up is it that we as a nation are debating how Mexican Pepsi is healthier than US Pepsi? It's sugar asswipes.

Now the latest and weirdest one. Soybeans. Seen how many American men have tits now? Even ones who aren't obese?

Our friend the phytoestrogen, brought to you by soybeans and peas. And we are consuming a whole lot more of that stuff than we should. And I'm not certain that the rise of testosterone supplements isn't a backwards way of trying to treat men with bitched up hormone levels.

Radiation IS good for you.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Ok. Perhaps you will find this report a little more "targeted".

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

Ok, you want to play dueling citations? I'll bite.

First off, only TWO of your cites even contain the word "Cancer" in the title; and of those two, one (Marijuana Use and Cancer Incidence) states clearly in it's abstract that there IS NO RELATIONSHIP between Marijuana use and Cancer.

And while trying to find a non-paywalls version of the other study you cited that seemed reasonably on-point ((paraphrasing the title, because mobile slashdot ate my first attempt) "Marijuana and Cancer: Harmful or Helpful?"), I never did find that study thI could read without paying; but, along the way, I ran into this WONDERFUL study on an NIH site that I DARE you to reasonably and factually Rebut:

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

From the Cancer portion of that 42-page study/report:

Cannabinoids and Cancer
Possibly the greatest harm-reducing potential afforded by cannabinoids comes from their use by cancer patients. Cannabinoids possess numerous pharmacological properties that are often beneficial to cancer patients. Many people are aware of the anti-emetic and appetite stimulating effects of cannabinoids [64]. A systemic study designed to quantify the efficacy of cannabinoids as an anti-emetic agent examined data from 30 randomized controlled studies that were published between 1975 and 1997 and included 1366 patients who were administered non-smoked cannabis [65]. For patients requiring a medium level of control, cannabinoids were the preferred treatment (between 38% and 90%). This preference was lost for patients requiring a low or a high level of control. Sedation and euphoria were noted as beneficial side effects, whereas dizziness, dysphoria, hallucinations, and arterial hypotension were identified as harmful side effects.

The cancer cell killing [66] and pain relieving properties of cannabinoids are less well known to the general public. Cannabinoids may prove to be useful chemotherapeutic agents [67]. Numerous cancer types are killed in cell cultures and in animals by cannabinoids. For example, cannabinoids kill the cancer cells of various lymphoblastic malignancies such as leukemia and lymphoma [68], skin cancer [69], glioma [70], breast and prostate cancer [71], pheochromocytoma [72], thyroid cancer [73], and colorectal cancer[74]. Since 2002 THC has been used in a clinical trial in Spain for the treatment of glioma [75]. However, not all cancers are the same, and cannabinoid-induced biochemical modifications, while effective in killing the cells of some cancers, as indicated above, can have the opposite effect on the cells of other types of cancer. For example, recent work has shown that the synthetic cannabinoid, methanandamide, can promote the growth of lung cancer cells by a receptor independent pathway that involves the up-regulation of COX2 [76]. Although much has been learned about the therapeutic value of cannabinoid agonists and antagonists in different situations, scientific understanding of how to appropriately modulate the endocannabinoid pathways remains preliminary, with much remaining to be learned.

The rest of the report is equally enlightening (and enlightened), and I double-dog dare you to read it objectively and not come to the conclusion that you've been misled by all the fervent anti-Marijuana propaganda.

But, I feel I may be giving you too much credit. Feel free to prove that my opinion of you is incorrect, and that you can let facts "in", at least once in awhile, even when it means you have to reconsider something you have simply "decided" is true.

It could be for complications. Influenza causes inflammation, which itself creates a happy medium for bacteria in the lungs. It is standard practice to give antibiotics in severe cases of influenza. This does not help against the virus but helps lowering the risk of reinfections. See there.

Yea and it's not the middle ages either and there are no strains of plague that are anti-biotic resistant. The only Bacteria that are scary are anti-biotic resistant ones, all the rest can be cured with a dose of anti-biotic. That's why people with the real knowledge don't research bio-weapons from bacteria, they use viruses that have no effective treatment option.

OTOH, it's far easier to cultivate bacteria than viruses. For example, Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes bubonic plague can be grown in a modified agar gel with no need for host cells of any kind. And it's pretty easy to breed in resistance to anti-biotics by exposing the bacteria over many generations to all the anti-biotics in use at doses where a small part of the colony survives.

Whether that can be done over a short enough time that interests an organization like ISIS, is unknown to me. But it wouldn't take much effort IMHO to make a bubonic plague variant that is at least highly resistant to anti-biotics. Making it also highly infectious and lethal is another problem. That might require substantially more testing and breeding of the bacteria in host animals like rats or mice or something closer to us, like monkeys or people themselves.

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

A polish that detects GHB and Rohypnol is almost useless. Why? Because they are almost never used to carry out date rapes! Seriously, no major study has ever shown date rapes commonly being accomplished by using these substances. In fact, the vast majority of reported cases of their alleged "use" (i.e. 99+%) turn out to be the result of alcohol overconsumption alone.

Think about it. You have a cheap, powerful drug that causes blackouts, unconsciousness, and lack of inhibitions. And it's socially acceptable, even encouraged, to take it in social situations, despite the fact that gov't studies show that half of all sexual assaults implicate its use.

Yet your typical will no doubt will no doubt be throwing her money at the company that markets this polish, at least whatever is left over after the eight $10 appletinis she consumed last night.

According to this data chart, about 30% of physicians are female. According to this article, its about 23.1%. But then it goes on to note that nurses are 94.5% female. And this study indicates that physician assistants ("PA"s, in layman's terms kinda halfway between a nurse and a doctor) are now 60+% of the field.

So mid-20 to 30 percent for doctors,
60 percent for PAs,
and a whopping 94.5% for nurses,
and you're crying foul that "the man" is holding women down? Must be news to those 230,000 female M.D.s!

By your hideous gender equality standards, we should be kicking out female nurse applicants until we get a nice 50/50 gender balance going. In other words, cutting the field by 90%! Hope you don't get sick...

The upshot: Even if a causal relationship corresponds to the study's findings, causes of state-level rates of test achievement are fundamentally different things than causes of student-level rates of test achievement.

It's too bad that this very interesting research - cancer in hydra! - is being overshadowed by sweeping statements about cancer. There are a number of species which experience little to no cancer, from naked mole rats to some whale species. There are a number of different ways that different species reduce or prevent cancer, from additional cell-death signalling via hyaluronan in naked mole rats to additional cell-death signalling via p53 pathways in blind mole rats to replicative senescence in many large mammals, to who-knows-what in eastern grey squirrels and elephants and whales.

The cancer-fighting idea in each case is something that should be near and dear to systems administrators: Redundancy. The more cell-death pathways there are, the harder it is for a series of mutations to result in immortal cancer cells. Redundant Arrays of Immortality Suppression, if you will.

This doesn't mean that we'll ever get rid of cancer in humans, mind you, because evolving a new cancer-prevention signalling pathway takes a couple of million years. But the fact that hydra get cancer doesn't have anything to do with whether we'll ever get rid of cancer in humans, either.

"The color of your skin doesn't make you give people dirty looks and act aggressive. (Socio-economic status is more at play than race alone.)"

But race is not just about the colour of skin. The environmental differences that produced the light and dark skin tones also produced other differences as well, such as testosterone levels which is an indicator for aggressiveness. Or are you going to claim that whilst every other trait difference is due to natural selection due to exposure to different environments and that the two populations were exposed to environments different enough to cause different skin colour and lip size and other physical characteristics that it is inconceivable that other traits might also be affected such as aggressiveness, testosterone levels or IQ?

Clearly it is conceivable and wholly consistent with the theory of natural selection. In fact it would be an extraordinary coincidence and would require a separate theory, to explain why aggressiveness, testosterone levels and IQ did not become different between the two populations in response to their differing environments given that other differences did develop.

see:
Civilisation could only rise once testosterone levels fell, according to "Science",
http://science-beta.slashdot.o... [slashdot.org]

and:
"Serum testosterone levels in healthy young black and white men.

This report gives the results of assays of circulating steroid hormone levels in white and black college students in Los Angeles, CA. Mean testosterone levels in blacks were 19% higher than in whites, and free testosterone levels were 21% higher. Both these differences were statistically significant. Adjustment by analysis of covariance for time of sampling, age, weight, alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and use of prescription drugs somewhat reduced the differences. After these adjustments were made, blacks had a 15% higher testosterone level and a 13% higher free testosterone level."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... [nih.gov]

"No, you do not 'know' anything about 'blacks'" .. er, yes I do. Grew up around them. Live amongst them. Know them very well.

"This remark betrays a deeply held racism"
What do you mean by the word "racism"? I do believe that there are differences between the races that are more than skin deep. As I have posted before:

"It appears that there is some evidence, apart from the overwhelming evidence of the crapness of black countries and black areas within white countries, and the really clever game of wit and brain that blacks invented called "knock out game", or the one where they set themselves on fire for fun, that blacks have higher testosterone and that high testosterone is not conducive to "civilisation" or to "being civilised".

Civilisation could only rise once testosterone levels fell, according to "Science",
http://science-beta.slashdot.o... [slashdot.org]

"Serum testosterone levels in healthy young black and white men.

This report gives the results of assays of circulating steroid hormone levels in white and black college students in Los Angeles, CA. Mean testosterone levels in blacks were 19% higher than in whites, and free testosterone levels were 21% higher. Both these differences were statistically significant. Adjustment by analysis of covariance for time of sampling, age, weight, alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and use of prescription drugs somewhat reduced the differences. After these adjustments were made, blacks had a 15% higher testosterone level and a 13% higher free testosterone level."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... [nih.gov]"

So if admitting that there are differences between the races that are more than just skin colour makes me a racist, then I am a racist. But I think that by racist you mean to say that I wish to mistreat black people, that I think they should be mistreated. That is untrue.

Now why would we expect that natural selection would have impacted only the skin colour and not any other facet such as testosterone, aggressiveness or IQ? Why is it that the libtards on the one hand want us to believe that everything comes about due to natural selection (i.e. evolution) but that on the other hand there cannot possibly be any differences between Blacks and Whites despite them having been exposed to different environments and despite the evidence of how the two groups exist and establish themselves and build their societies and despite the fact that it caused a physical divergence?

"whatever that term might actually mean? Africans? Ghanians? Nigerians? African-Americans?"

Well these are all commonly known as black people and they are all Africans.

The same as the people from Germany, from Sweden, and from UK and from US and from Australia are commonly known as white people and are all European.

"You hold prejudices about people who are not white."
Please define prejudice. Here is one definition:
"preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience." On that basis I would say that I do not hold prejudices about people who are not white.

WTF?

Climate change deniers?

FFS. SIGH
re: You mean like no warming in 17.5 years?
There has been plenty of warming in the last 17.5 years. The warming of the surface air temperature has been marginal, (but not statistically significantly "no warming" as you appear to be claiming.) The best you can correctly and scientifically say, is that there might be a reduction in the rate of warming of the surface air temperature.

The oceans have warmed. As can be seen from the direct measurements, if you're into science, but if you're not, it's clear and obvious from sea level rise which is primarily thermal expansion.

Ice sheets have lost mass.

re: They make models that show doom, and don't match up with reality.
No they don't. They make models that investigate the climate.

Some aspects match with reality well. Some aspects require finer modelling. (And there are probably some physical processes that are not fully understood either, especially with respect to cloud formation).

Sure, all (I think) models have a double-Intertropical Convergence Zone. That doesn't mean that they aren't useful. Quite the opposite. The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny...". And so work on the DICZ progresses. Science advances. We learn more stuff.

Claiming "Models don't match reality! All this science must therefore be rubbish!" is the call of the Luddites. Einstein didn't overthrow Newton, he built upon his work, and Newton did upon the giants upon whose shoulders he stood. This is how science works.

re: Then they redo the models to match the previous few years and again show doom.
I'll keep this response more concise: Bullshit.

re: Sorry you don't understand this and believe their lies while calling those who tell the truth liars.
Really? That's your claim? The scientists are lying to you?
FFS, mate, think about that for a while and get back to me on how likely it could be.

You often wake up to go to the bathroom, only to find once you're there that you really didn't need to go that badly.

Usually, I don't have to pee. I just wake up, annoyed, and go back to sleep. When I do have to pee, I've got enough to re-flush the toilet (flush it, then, while it's filling and there's water running into the bowl to raise the level to normal, piss like mad and the toilet flushes again).

Also, you sometimes have nightmares where you're running away from something, or doing anything that's physically exhausting, and then you wake up and breathe heavily for a while to catch your breath?

Only people who experience fear have nightmares. I don't. I only experience fear via debilitating nyctophobia--psychotic episodes triggered by specific conditions, notably, by darkness--and a large component of that is knowing the things are not real: I can't touch them, I can't fight them, they aren't real.

In dreams, I can kick the shit out of that stuff.

The monsters in my dreams are solid. They are real. They are there and I can touch them. Until I wake up, they are a part of my world. They do not frighten me, because they cannot hurt me.

I had nightmares when I was a kid. That didn't last, as I am made of steel: you can't break steel; when you strike it, it becomes stronger. I became stronger, and I wake up from those dreams feeling absolutely awesome; they are the best dreams.

The delayed sleep phase is due to your body having to make up some extra sleep, due to the poor quality.

No, a delayed phase isn't for exhaustion. A delayed phase is when your body doesn't WANT sleep until late, and doesn't WANT to wake up until late. You get 8 hours, but not 10pm-6am; you go to bed at 10pm, and you stare at the ceiling until 2am. Then you want to wake up at 10am. Even if you get to sleep at 10pm, your body just tries to sleep 12 hours and wake up at 10am anyway.

Even if I'm exhausted, I'll start to wake up as it becomes late. The period where most people start to shut down is where I become most active.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is bullshit. For those who aren't aware, it literally means "talk to the patient and figure out what they're doing wrong and tell them how to change it."

Being well-versed in statistics and having the most basic grasp of pharmapsychology, I must disagree. For primary insomnia (my case), CBT is superior to any known method. CBT is also effective for insomnia secondary to breast cancer; studies are ongoing for insomnia secondary to dementia, for example alzheimers or bipolar disorder. BPD should be especially interesting: better sleep should, in theory, stabilize BPD.

Claiming what you're looking at is bullshit because it doesn't fit your world-view is pseudoscience. It's like claiming going down to the river, rubbing mud on your wounds, and praying to the river god helps your wounds heal more quickly and gains you blessing of the water deity for the hunt. In psychological treatment, this is even more true: you're dealing with behavioral issues, and just convincing someone they're tired or not suffering from job-related stress is an effective way to make these things true.

I mean, just how many psychological conditions aren't known to be associated with sleep disturbances? Are there any?

Very few. Fucking up your brain is a good way to cause sleep disturbances. For example: drink 15 cups of strong java before bedtime; you will have sleep disturbances from an induced arousal state. Manic disorder (the hot side of bipolar disorder) is effectively that. Depression actually makes most people sleep more.

Do you think?

I don't believe that story at all.

Unfortunately, it is true, though maybe not as prevelent in West Africa than in other regions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misconceptions_about_HIV/AIDS

Flanagan, Jane (2001-11-11). "South African men rape babies as 'cure' for Aids". Telegraph (London). Retrieved 2009-03-25.

Meel, B.L. (2003). "1. The myth of child rape as a cure for HIV/AIDS in Transkei: a case report". Med. Sci. Law 43 (1): 85–88.

Groce, N.E.; Trasi, R. (2004). "Rape of individuals with disability: AIDS and the folk belief of virgin cleansing". Lancet 363 (9422): 1663–1664.

I don't believe that story at all.

Unfortunately, it is true, though maybe not as prevelent in West Africa than in other regions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misconceptions_about_HIV/AIDS

Flanagan, Jane (2001-11-11). "South African men rape babies as 'cure' for Aids". Telegraph (London). Retrieved 2009-03-25.

Meel, B.L. (2003). "1. The myth of child rape as a cure for HIV/AIDS in Transkei: a case report". Med. Sci. Law 43 (1): 85–88.

Groce, N.E.; Trasi, R. (2004). "Rape of individuals with disability: AIDS and the folk belief of virgin cleansing". Lancet 363 (9422): 1663–1664.

"Or we could just blame it on race, because that's easy, and stupid people like easy explanations, no matter how wrong they are."

Okay. It appears that there is some evidence, apart from the overwhelming evidence of the crapness of black countries and black areas within white countries, and the really clever game of wit and brain that blacks invented called "knock out game", or the one where they set themselves on fire for fun, that blacks have higher testosterone and that high testosterone is not conducive to "civilisation" or to "being civilised".

Civilisation could only rise once testosterone levels fell, according to "Science",
http://science-beta.slashdot.o...

"Serum testosterone levels in healthy young black and white men.

This report gives the results of assays of circulating steroid hormone levels in white and black college students in Los Angeles, CA. Mean testosterone levels in blacks were 19% higher than in whites, and free testosterone levels were 21% higher. Both these differences were statistically significant. Adjustment by analysis of covariance for time of sampling, age, weight, alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and use of prescription drugs somewhat reduced the differences. After these adjustments were made, blacks had a 15% higher testosterone level and a 13% higher free testosterone level."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

The difficulty with any study of low-level radiation doses on exposed organisms is that ecosystems are messy and complicated, and the actual low-level biological mechanics for low-dose exposures are entirely conjectural, so observed effects have a very, very low signal to noise ratio.

Setting up controlled studies with a large enough scale to make statistically significant judgements greatly exceeds available resources for researchers in the field, leaving statistical analysis of effectively uncontrolled real-world populations as the only option.

So, the conclusions are only as reliable as the observations and the statistical analysis. This becomes educated guesswork, and for the most part educated guesswork based on the theoretical model that is being tested.

It's all very well and good to throw out statistics like:

Many other cell types and tissues have been shown to be affected by Chernobyl contaminants. Møller, Bonisoli-Alquati, et al. (2013) demonstrated that the frequency of visible tumors on birds was significantly higher in radioactive areas, presumably reflecting elevated mutation rates in somatic tissues. Visible tumor rates in birds from Chernobyl were in excess of 15/1000 birds while tumors have never been observed in Danish populations despite extensive surveys (0/35000 birds observed) (Møller, Bonisoli-Alquati, et al. 2013). ...unfortunately, the former USSR as a whole exhibits levels of persistent organic pollutants several times greater than observations in even industrialized areas of Western Europe. POPs are rather easier to study, and are definitively linked to tumor formation.

Attempting to control for various effects in real-world populations is a black art, often practiced and seldom practiced effectively. Often, before you can even start to evaluate the reliability of an article, you'll need to jump several citation links back just to see what assumptions a study is based upon. ...and that is why we still lack conclusive evidence about any long-term negative effects of low-dose radiation exposure.