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Item the second; "this feedback" has already "kicked in"; the eenergy received from the sun is only enough to support a blackbody temperature of approximately minus eighteen degrees C, in the absence of atmosphere. CO2 alone is only enough to raise the global average temperature to about ten below; other gases raise it another few degrees but the feedback effect of water vapor raises the average temperature to positive 14 degrees C. Your vision of clouds as the negative feedback which will kick in at some unspecified point in the future to limit temperature rise to some magic number that will be low enough to save us from trouble violates observed reality; both anecdotal, most people having noticed that a cloudy night retains warmth better than a clear one when heat is radiated into space, and precisely quantified studies:

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3666.1
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6010/1523.short
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/325/5939/376
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19628865

They did study a relatively cosy community, which was predominantly white. They removed as many families and evidence of distantly-related friends as they could using the Manichaikul et al. 2010 kinship metric, which has been cited 34 times (a fairly good number of hits for a two-year interval.)

The upshot of this study, in my opinion, is that the things that make people compatible friends happen to be reflected (to a degree) in certain markers in the genome. It doesn't necessarily indicate anything about race or relatedness, and you can probably predict that two people of radically different ethnicities may like each other as friends because of similarity simply due to the subset of markers that are important. It's a bit misleading of the authors to imply that this is somehow a pan-genome phenomenon when obviously there are plenty of things in the genome that could change without any detectable impact.

Good point. Seawater is remarkably close to blood plasma chemistry, however... it's chemical composition is: 85.8% Oxygen, 10.8% Hydrogen, 1.9% Chlorine, 1.1% sodium, >.13% of a few others... and only .0028% Carbon. Still not us.

Chemistry and biochemistry are simply much more complex than throwing the right proportions of elements into a pot; and it often doesn't matter what concentrations of what are even in the pot. A great example, vanadium in Ascidia gemmata can reach 10 million times the concentration in it's environment http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1384612 (seawater).

> The genes that code for intelligence in corvid birds and chimpanzees are different.

Citation needed. Genes that code for intelligence in animals are largely unknown at the time of this writing. Let me know if you can prove otherwise. Peer-reviewed scientific papers only, please!

> The genes that code for wings in birds, bats, insects, and pterasaurs are completely different.

Which insects? Which birds? Which bats? Citation needed. Which genes? Have scientists sequenced complete pterosaurs genes? No. I'm not even aware of any partial gene sequence of pterosaurs. If you prove otherwise, let me know. Peer-reviewed scientific papers only, please!

> The genes that code for white fur and similar looking white filaments in plants are way off.

White fur in which animal? For several well-studied mammals, like cats, dogs, and rabbits, these genes are already known---melatocortonin receptor (MC?R genes) among others in the pathway.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23996627

White filaments in plants: Be specific, which plants?

You sound like you know a lot, but you don't.

You're talking about an individual student; I was talking about how the typical outcome expected for an entire school faces impacts the outcome for everyone. The motivated, involved parent is important. But they may not have the ability to elevate a student that far above the average outcome for the school they're attending. And those averages all depend heavily on the income of the parents.

Income, parent education, and parent involvement are not disconnected. Table 3 here tries to map how related they all are to each other. For any one parent, yes getting involved can be the most important thing to improve outcomes. But a child placed into a low income school will be surrounded with children of parents without much parent involvement or education. All of that drags down the whole school in a way that's tough to overcome.

There's some useful data from Michigan that shows the trend here. As usual there are people there who believe that "support from parents is the most important way to improve the schools". But when you look at test scores, the biggest correlation is with differences in family income and the corresponding education of the parents. The University of Michigan spelled it out quite clearly: More Money, Better Grades. That cites a Harvard study that breaks the phenomenon down into small parts.

Sounds like McDonalds was doing it right. I guess the woman that burned herself was unfit to experience coffee. Are you?

Abstract:

Hot beverages such as tea, hot chocolate, and coffee are frequently served at temperatures between 160 degrees F (71.1 degrees C) and 185 degrees F (85 degrees C). Brief exposures to liquids in this temperature range can cause significant scald burns. However, hot beverages must be served at a temperature that is high enough to provide a satisfactory sensation to the consumer.
This paper presents an analysis to quantify hot beverage temperatures that balance limiting the potential scald burn hazard and maintaining an acceptable perception of adequate product warmth...
Recent data from the literature defines the consumer preferred drinking temperature of coffee. A metric accommodates the thermal effects of both scald hazard and product taste to identify an optimal recommended serving temperature. The burn model shows the standard exponential dependence of injury level on temperature.
The preferred drinking temperature of coffee is specified in the literature as 140+/-15 degrees F (60+/-8.3 degrees C) for a population of 300 subjects.
A linear (with respect to temperature) figure of merit merged the two effects to identify an optimal drinking temperature of approximately 136 degrees F (57.8 degrees C). The analysis points to a reduction in the presently recommended serving temperature of coffee to achieve the combined result of reducing the scald burn hazard and improving customer satisfaction.

Calculating the optimum temperature for serving hot beverages.

Burns, The Journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries, August 2008

Sounds like McDonalds was doing it right.

That is only because your reading comprehension is somewhere below a third-grade level. You're trying to claim that coffee should be served at the brewing temperature, but nowhere on that page does it actually specify a serving temperature, only a brewing temperature. Further, NCAUSA is not qualified to hold forth on serving temperatures as is related to public safety; they are an industry shilling organization, not a public safety organization. Perhaps if you were interested in tracking down a reputable citation instead of trying to prove what you already believed (I too once believed, briefly, that a woman who got seriously burned because of McDonalds' incompetence and greed was at fault) then you'd be able to come up with something more reliable, like Calculating the optimum temperature for serving hot beverages. (Brown, Diller). e.g. "The preferred drinking temperature of coffee is specified in the literature as 140+/-15 degrees F (60+/-8.3 degrees C)".

You're also neglecting to remember that McDonalds was using a styrofoam cup which was significantly thinner than average, which became excessively deformable at these temperatures; not really a cup at all, more of a sort of coffee envelope. This was the cause of the spill. If McDonalds were less greedy, they would use either a more substantial cup (like literally everyone else) or less excessive serving temperatures.

In short, you know nothing about this, and yet you are still trying to come up with reasons why McDonalds should be permitted to sell dangerously hot coffee for no reason other than their greed, because you are dead wrong about coffee serving temperature. Why are you so sure that you have something valuable to add to this conversation when you are in fact in a position of utter and complete ignorance?

Interesting fact about prohibition, after it ended alcohol consumption per capita was half what it was before prohibition, and it didn't return to pre-prohibition levels until the 1970s.

Did Prohibition Really Work? Alcohol Prohibition as a Public Health Innovation

Mankins worked on some of this earlier when he was at NASA; I seem to recall he was even paid to write up a study. I expect it would be easy enough to find out at least ballpark figure. Or you could ask him, or visit the website. A start:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/716070main_Mankins_2011_PhI_SPS_Alpha.pdf

The NASA grant was NNX11AR34G; I don't know offhand how one would find out how much that cost taxpayers.

A related bit, from http://useconomy.about.com/od/usfederalbudget/p/nasa_budget_cost.htm

"A 2002 study by Professor H.R. Hertzfeld of George Washington University showed there is a large return to the companies work with NASA on its research contracts. These companies are able to commercialize the products developed and market them. The 15 companies studied received $1.5 billion in benefits from a NASA R&D investment of $64 million."

The link for the 2002 study is http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14983842
I didn't look to see how one would get the full report. Further, this relates just to life sciences tech transfer.

From the same site,

"A report by the Space Foundation estimated that NASA contributed $180 billion to the economy in 2005. More than 60% of this came from commercial goods and services created by companies related from space techonology. This means that each dollar of NASA spending creates $10 of benefit in the economy. NASA spending created the satellite communications which allows not only radio and television, but also telemedicine, GPS navigation, weather forecasts, and defense."

The link given goes here, to a press release (and not to the mentioned one from the Space Foundation),

http://useconomy.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=useconomy&cdn=newsissues&tm=544&f=10&su=p284.13.342.ip_p504.6.342.ip_&tt=11&bt=6&bts=6&zu=http%3A//www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/sep/HQ_07193_Griffin_lecture.html

For the pdf of Griffin's speech,

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/189537main_mg_space_economy_20070917.pdf

or for text-only, http://useconomy.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=useconomy&cdn=newsissues&tm=544&f=10&su=p284.13.342.ip_p504.6.342.ip_&tt=11&bt=6&bts=6&zu=http%3A//www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/sep/HQ_07193_Griffin_lecture.html

One may object that Griffin as then-head of NASA was tooting his own horn but there's no automatic reason to doubt the figures or conclusions - there are plenty of people who spend time looking for errors and outright lies, especially from NASA.

I'm sorry but Taubes is a crank (I've been in a massive week long debate in another thread (that's seriously less then half of it, there's 1.5 other threads going...).

I get that some people might not want to read through all the science and dodge through Taubes's various rationalizations so I thought I'd toss out this gem that illustrates Taubes intellectual honesty from a previous Taubes interview (emphasis added)

TAUBES: And soy. But that’s Yeah, it’s tough. So you’re pretty much stuck with (gasp!) animal products. And it becomes this ethical issue, this religious issue, this environmental issue when it’s fundamentally The argument I You know, let’s get the health right. Like if somebody knows that they’re going to doom their kids to a life of obesity and diabetes cuz they’re going to make them vegetarians or vegans, then that’s fine as long as they understand that they’re not doing their kids any favors and that (that’s) the choice they made.

There in a snapshot is the credibility of Gary Taubes, evidence doesn't fit your theory? Just reverse the evidence.

Oh yeah, and I meant to check how Taubes explains vegetarians:

TAUBES: And soy. But that’s Yeah, it’s tough. So you’re pretty much stuck with (gasp!) animal products. And it becomes this ethical issue, this religious issue, this environmental issue when it’s fundamentally The argument I You know, let’s get the health right. Like if somebody knows that they’re going to doom their kids to a life of obesity and diabetes cuz they’re going to make them vegetarians or vegans, then that’s fine as long as they understand that they’re not doing their kids any favors and that (that’s) the choice they made.

That's a very good narrative, too bad he's just making things up?

The same group did a study last year that used unmodified mice (well, largely unmodified- they had been put on a diet that promoted obesity, but they were not transgenic).

Based on the alterations in energy metabolism and gene expression we observed in normal C57BL6 and Balb/c mice, we sought to examine whether a REV-ERB alpha/beta agonist would be efficacious in a rodent model of obesity. We initiated the study with 20-week old C57BL6 mice (average weight = 41g) that had been maintained on a high fat diet for 14 weeks (20% carbohydrate 60% fat). The mice continued on the HF diet and we initiated twice per day dosing (i.p.) of SR9009. While the stress of handling and twice-daily injections caused weight loss in vehicle-treated controls, weight loss of SR9009-treated animals was 60% greater (Fig. 5a). During the treatment period, there was no significant difference in the food intake of SR9009 and vehicle treated animals, although handling itself reduced food intake explaining the weight loss observed in the controls. SR9009 treated mice exhibited a more severe reduction in adiposity (Fig. 5b). In addition to the decrease in fat mass we also observed a 12% decrease in plasma triglycerides (TGs) and a 47% decrease in plasma total cholesterol (Chol) (Fig. 5c). Plasma non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA) were also reduced (23%) along with plasma glucose (19%) in the SR9009 treated animals (Fig. 5c). There was also a trend toward a decrease in plasma insulin levels (35%).

Increased wear and tear? For real? Citations?

Knock yourself out. Only not literally, because that would hurt.

SR9009 is available for research purposes, $150 for 25 mg. From the structure, I would say it's likely to be only slightly soluble in water; also, the only solubility data given is in DMSO. It requires storage by refrigeration or freezing, and comes packaged under inert gas, so I would say its environmental persistence would be rather low. I don't know if a molecule like this would be stable enough for oral administration, actually. In their mouse study, injections were made.

There are man-made chemicals, that are everywhere, that when you (or other animals) are exposed to them, they will get fat. Even if you do not increase calorie intake, you will get fat.

For example, that HFCS that came in that nice squeeze bottle - it is the bottle that is making you fat.

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

Obesogens are foreign chemical compounds that disrupt normal development and balance of lipid metabolism, which in some cases, can lead to obesity.[...]Obesogens have been detected in the body both as a result of intentional administration of obesogenic chemicals in the form of pharmaceutical drugs such as diethylstilbestrol, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and thiazolidinedione and as a result of unintentional exposure to environmental obesogens such as tributyltin, bisphenol A, diethylhexylphthalate, and perfluorooctanoate.[5][6] Emerging evidence from laboratories around the world suggests that other chemicals will be confirmed as falling under this proposed classification in the near future, and that there may be some serious biological effects due to exposure to these chemicals that still remain undiscovered.[5][6] Till now, 20 chemicals have been found responsible for making one fat

So where do you find these chemicals? Plastics. Plastics, not sugar, is making you fat.

The kicker is these chemicals produce the effect at very low levels because they are used as signaling mechanism (hormones). At high levels, they do not cause these problems! At high levels, the body notices that something is fucked up and ignores the signal (ie. the chemical)

And things like Biphenol A, all that crap that says "BPA free"? Well, they just have Biphenol S there now instead, which is probably even worse.

So, if you want no obesogens, stick with glass or stainless steel containers. No plastics. No clingwrap. Even then, you are surrounded as obesogens are in the food chain and in our daily lives.

http://dreamfilm.ca/just-what-are-obesogens/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2713042/

Who taught you?

a) is there any evidence?

Sure there is - insulin resistant mothers eating high carbohydrate diets create an interuterine environment that makes their offspring more insulin resistant (differential insulin resistance, of course). So the epigenetic effects are actually well documented.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23000698

That's not epigenetic, it's the womb environment. And they seem to be saying that the effect is linked to maternal obesity and the insulin resistance is along for the ride.

Though I think there are actual epigenetic factors that do contribute to obesity, but even if epigenetics is part of the answer that's a very long way from explaining why the Kuna have no obesity since the obesity has to start somewhere and 25 tsp a week is a good place to start.

a) is there any evidence?

Sure there is - insulin resistant mothers eating high carbohydrate diets create an interuterine environment that makes their offspring more insulin resistant (differential insulin resistance, of course). So the epigenetic effects are actually well documented.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23000698

There really is nothing TO discuss because if they haven't come up with some magical potion that keeps 100% of the ice crystals from forming AND a way to unfreeze without damage all they are gonna end up with when they thaw it is mush anyway. The way it was explained to me its not the flash freezing that is the biggest problem, after all you dunk a head in liquid nitrogen and it'll flash freeze alright, the problem is in the thawing as THAT is where all the damage occurs.

Actually, it's typically done these days using organ vitrification, which prevents ice crystals from forming. For most crypoprotectants used in the process of vitrification, you are limited to one cell type one which it has best effect. The CI folks mostly try their best to preserve the brain without freezing damage, at the expense of some of the other cell types. This has been successfully used on laboratory animal organ transplants for mammalian livers, kidneys, and hearts; the first reference is a patent on the method of prepping the organ, which the second is a PubMed article case study dealing with a rabbit kidney vitrification and subsequent live transplant.

https://www.google.com/patents/US5723282
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/

There has also been some interesting work in the last 5 years using in Japan using a 0.01 mT magnetic field. This prevents ice crystals from forming. The technique was originally developed by ABI, a Japanese company using a technique they call the "Calls Alive System", for storing sushi at cryogenic temperatures without permitting formation of ice crystals by triggerning through the glass phase change without normal expansion you would typically have with ice. The technique is currently being used for long term storage of live teeth, and has shown some merit for other larger organs:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20478291
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011224010000854

There really is nothing TO discuss because if they haven't come up with some magical potion that keeps 100% of the ice crystals from forming AND a way to unfreeze without damage all they are gonna end up with when they thaw it is mush anyway. The way it was explained to me its not the flash freezing that is the biggest problem, after all you dunk a head in liquid nitrogen and it'll flash freeze alright, the problem is in the thawing as THAT is where all the damage occurs.

Actually, it's typically done these days using organ vitrification, which prevents ice crystals from forming. For most crypoprotectants used in the process of vitrification, you are limited to one cell type one which it has best effect. The CI folks mostly try their best to preserve the brain without freezing damage, at the expense of some of the other cell types. This has been successfully used on laboratory animal organ transplants for mammalian livers, kidneys, and hearts; the first reference is a patent on the method of prepping the organ, which the second is a PubMed article case study dealing with a rabbit kidney vitrification and subsequent live transplant.

https://www.google.com/patents/US5723282
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/

There has also been some interesting work in the last 5 years using in Japan using a 0.01 mT magnetic field. This prevents ice crystals from forming. The technique was originally developed by ABI, a Japanese company using a technique they call the "Calls Alive System", for storing sushi at cryogenic temperatures without permitting formation of ice crystals by triggerning through the glass phase change without normal expansion you would typically have with ice. The technique is currently being used for long term storage of live teeth, and has shown some merit for other larger organs:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20478291
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011224010000854

This was from back in 2001 I don't know how much the research has progressed in 12 years though.

I noticed you didn't quite say that insulin causes hunger and extra eating, which is good because it doesn't.

I noticed you didn't quite say that insulin causes hunger and extra eating, which is good because it doesn't.

I noticed you didn't quite say that insulin causes hunger and extra eating, which is good because it doesn't.

The induction phase of the Atkins diet is mostly a ketogenic diet. For the treatment of epilepsy, there are now a handful of variations on the original ketogenic diet used since the 1920s, one of these is known as the "Modified Atkins".

However, there are stricter metabolic goals when on a ketogenic diet and special things to watch out for (too much protein can knock one out of ketosis, for example), so it is best to approach a ketogenic diet as a specialty topic in its own right rather than as something that a different low-carb diet may or may not achieve as a side effect.

There is a lot of recent research on the neuroprotective properties of a ketogenic diet, not just for Alzheimer's, but also for Parkinsons and stroke. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2367001/ for example.

Yeah, I think here you have the double whammy that it's "common knowledge" and that it seems to fit with a basic knowledge of biology (i.e., simple sugar causes a very quick rise in blood sugar and blood sugar provides energy), so it's very easy to believe. I just happened to see an article on such a study at some point.

Honestly, I've been tricked so many times by "common knowledge" at this point that I actually often stop and google before making anything like health claims. Another example of this is when I looked up the "fact" that vitamin C prevents the cold. Turns out there's no evidence of that (at least not under vaguely normal circumstances), but I always took this as medically validated fact.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8747098

However, anecdotal observations of this kind need to be tested scientifically before conclusions can be drawn, and criteria for interpreting diet behavior studies must be rigorous. ... Although sugar is widely believed by the public to cause hyperactive behavior, this has not been scientifically substantiated. Twelve double-blind, placebo-controlled studies of sugar challenges failed to provide any evidence that sugar ingestion leads to untoward behavior in children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or in normal children.

You are making an equally dangerous one.

Age related mental decline has been directly associated with increased stresses on ogliodendrocites, which comes about as the number of axonal connections needing care increase.

Using the existing data from these kinds of studies, you can derive a maximum theoretical upper bound on the complexity to longevity coefficient.

The prognosis is not good. You can probably boost the numbers somewhat by introducing genetic modifications to improve cellular health of these vital support cells, and to improve the number of divisions from progenitor cells they can be reasonably derived from, but that intoduces yet more complex problems.

The human brain is simply not constructed in a fashion that is infinitely durable. Even if you solve the hygiene issues with the ogliodendrocytes, you will still run into issues with axonal branching reaching critical capacity, and the individual neurons being unable to cope with new information.

So, either you fix this by making people suffer dementia, and forget things in order to avoid this "post death" era overload, or you end up with vegetables who have siezures. Again, if you go through the trouble of solving the dendrocyte problem.

This is a problem that cannot be solved, while retaining physical humanity.

Sure, you could possibly find a way to liberate a brain from its bony prison, and gently loosen the neural fibers in a nutrient bath, to allow nueronal and axonal migration to continue, but then the patient isn't really human anymore, are they? Congratulations, your immortal person is a giant, energy hungry brain in a tank.

Even then, there are mechanical stress limits from the raw weight related mass of the liberated organ to contend with. Eventually, being displaced in a fluid won't be enough, and the young modulous of the axons inside the bloated mass of tissue will be exceeded, just from the collections own rest weight, resulting in systemic brain damage. You'll have to go into orbit.

And then, you run out of resources, because neural tissue is absurdly energy hungry, (your existing brain consumes a full third of all calories consumed!) And space doesn't exactly have raw material in infinite abundance.

Immortality simply can't work.

Esselstyn has many peer reviewed publications:
http://www.heartattackproof.com/publications.htm

Yes, I saw all those publications. I looked them up on Pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed which everyone who understands the medical literature knows about. The latest one, which I discussed above, is from 1999, which is pretty old. In that paper, Esselstyn used diet and cholesterol-lowering drugs, as I said above. Cholesterol-lowering drugs like Lipitor (atorvastatin) will lower a patient's cholesterol dramatically, and extend life in certain patients, with or without a low-cholesterol diet. If he wanted to demonstrate the effectiveness of his diet, he should have had one group on the diet, and one group on a normal diet. That study doesn't prove anything.

I have read the work of James Randi, Marcia Angell, John Ioannidis, and Ignaz Semmelweis. I've talked to some of them. I doubt that you've read the actual original articles that you're quoting. You're quoting out of context, you're using their work to prove your own beliefs that they don't agree with, and you're getting their ideas all wrong.

.. of a lower incidence of prostrate cancer in anyone drinking more of anything, including coffee? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23702886

It took me less than a minute to find this. If you go to that page, be sure to look at the other pubs listed on the right-hand side.

Irlen Syndrome is a scam. Suspiciously overpriced colored overlays, and lo-and-behold everyone who they test ends up having it. If you have children who are dyslexic, save your money and spend it on tuition instead.

Evidently in these cases dyslexia is caused by certain colors being transmitted to the wrong areas of the brain.

Evidently implies evidence. Of which there is none.

See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21930551

Actually, no, insulin resistance/sensitivity counts for a lot. Sort of a "square/rectangle" thing - not everyone with elevated insulin levels is going to get obese, but anyone who is obese is so because of elevated insulin levels.

Lustig posits that insulin sensitivity is driven by fructose consumption and its effect on the liver, which seems plausible, but I'm sure a great deal of it has to do with genetics as well. There are bean pole skinny guys out there with high cholesterol and diabetes who don't have any fat accumulation problem, but still get all the other "benefits" of high insulin.

About 28.5% of obese people are metabolically healthy (ie have normal insulin sensitivity). 70% is a long way from everyone, how'd that 28.5% get fat?

Discover magazine had something similar, where they studied nematodes and found that some sort of signal propagated through the gut that would tell all of the cells to shut the whole thing down.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2612587/

More interestingly, they were looking at ways to block or delay that signal. So then even if part of a multi-cellular organism died, the rest of it wouldn't know about it and keep going in a zombielike state.

But yeah, the cellular shutdown mechanism had something to do with the mitochondria, and it did release visible light in the brain cells as it was propagating through that area of the nematodes they were studying. So the bright light at the end of the tunnel is probably just the mitochondria of nearby cells in your optical cortex exploding.

Oh look. The science agrees with you. Whoodathunk?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=12064344&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSuml

Fetuses don't work against gravity to move their bodies.

Irrelevant.

There's a pressure gradient to be felt across their bodies, but it's small as a consequence of their bodies being small.

Irrelevant.

Do you think the whales will magically be unaffected by a micro gravity environment even though land based mammals clearly are? That the effect of microgravity is confined to needing to find new means of propulsion and pressure differientials in the surrounding media? It has nothing to do with those things .

You have absolutely no data showing that in-utero animal development is affected by gravity.

Absolutely no data?. Feel free to continue to deny science. What's next, will you allude to a conspiracy of science trying to keep down the plucky efforts of the cultists who are trying to establish themselves on Mars - on somone else's dime?

Yet you feel qualified to extrapolate from that zero data to a conclusion that humans can't (or probably can't) reproduce on Mars.

On the basis of available data, yes. Rather than getting all huffy and self righteous, maybe you should provide data to indicate why, against the flow of evidence, we would expect either adults or developing humans to be unaffected by the low gravity on Mars as opposed to the microgravity in LEO. See here, here and here. Don't just quote your religious texts, don't just get angry because there are people who don't believe. We are not condemned due to not being members of the Mars cult.

You say I'm in denial, but you're obviously presenting baseless speculations as if they were established facts.

I say you're in denial, because your tactics so far resemble those of climate denialists:

(a) Shout loudly about how there is no evidence or research, when there is

(b) Bring up irrelevant samples of information (in your case, factoids about buoyancy) and act as if they cancel out fundamental forces

(c) Claim the supposed lack of data supports your side that there a zero long term effects from micro/partial gravity on humans when the lack of data (if there were a lack of data) would allow us to draw no conclusions.

Here's a fact for you: no large animal species has ever been observed during pregnancy in any gravity environment except Earth's.

Once again: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15607544. The reason no large mammals have been transported into LEO or similiar is that we have technology that allows that to happen. Let alone beyond LEO. Yet Mars One justs collected $3.8 MILLION dollars, they do not have a spacecraft, any roadmap to build a spacecraft, or a habitat.

In fact, they do not intend to go to Mars.

What they intend to do, and have in fact done already, is to make money from the gullible.

It's a scam.

There's a fact for you.

Fetuses don't work against gravity to move their bodies.

Irrelevant.

There's a pressure gradient to be felt across their bodies, but it's small as a consequence of their bodies being small.

Irrelevant.

Do you think the whales will magically be unaffected by a micro gravity environment even though land based mammals clearly are? That the effect of microgravity is confined to needing to find new means of propulsion and pressure differientials in the surrounding media? It has nothing to do with those things .

You have absolutely no data showing that in-utero animal development is affected by gravity.

Absolutely no data?. Feel free to continue to deny science. What's next, will you allude to a conspiracy of science trying to keep down the plucky efforts of the cultists who are trying to establish themselves on Mars - on somone else's dime?

Yet you feel qualified to extrapolate from that zero data to a conclusion that humans can't (or probably can't) reproduce on Mars.

On the basis of available data, yes. Rather than getting all huffy and self righteous, maybe you should provide data to indicate why, against the flow of evidence, we would expect either adults or developing humans to be unaffected by the low gravity on Mars as opposed to the microgravity in LEO. See here, here and here. Don't just quote your religious texts, don't just get angry because there are people who don't believe. We are not condemned due to not being members of the Mars cult.

You say I'm in denial, but you're obviously presenting baseless speculations as if they were established facts.

I say you're in denial, because your tactics so far resemble those of climate denialists:

(a) Shout loudly about how there is no evidence or research, when there is

(b) Bring up irrelevant samples of information (in your case, factoids about buoyancy) and act as if they cancel out fundamental forces

(c) Claim the supposed lack of data supports your side that there a zero long term effects from micro/partial gravity on humans when the lack of data (if there were a lack of data) would allow us to draw no conclusions.

Here's a fact for you: no large animal species has ever been observed during pregnancy in any gravity environment except Earth's.

Once again: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15607544. The reason no large mammals have been transported into LEO or similiar is that we have technology that allows that to happen. Let alone beyond LEO. Yet Mars One justs collected $3.8 MILLION dollars, they do not have a spacecraft, any roadmap to build a spacecraft, or a habitat.

In fact, they do not intend to go to Mars.

What they intend to do, and have in fact done already, is to make money from the gullible.

It's a scam.

There's a fact for you.

I doubt it's been studied.

Is that your final answer?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17194277

there is no such thing as man made "climate change" (they had to change the name since the warming wasn't happening).

No, "climate change" has been around since at least 1970 as shown in an October 1970 paper by George Benton titled "Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change"

FYI wiki is not a source, it's some random person's posting on the internet, just like this is.

There is a reference in the Wikipedia article, but I did not use that reference because I did not read that paper (behind a pay-wall) and I did not want to pretend like I did.

I myself used to live under tarp behind the Target store.

I am sincerely glad that you got through that and I am glad you are helping others (you should give yourself more credit for this - it is a great thing to help others).

Each of our case studies shows that doing the AA system changes lives in a radical, amazing way.

Anecdotal evidence is not enough for modern medicine.

30% of those people didn't even go into the meeting to find out about AA ... The reasonable conclusion is "telling someone to find out about AA doesn't work. Actually doing the AA program does work."

Patient compliance is a problem with many treatments and if it significantly decreases the impact of one treatment verses another, then that has to be included (improperly excluding data points introduces bias into the analysis).

Side Note: There are research groups working on using nanoparticles (that can be ingested) to deliver vaccines to the colon, instead of direct intracolorectal (up the ass) delivery, because of worries of patient compliance (I read this one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22797811).

The OP is probably referring to the fact that conception and gestation are likely impossible on Mars due to it's low gravity.

That's not a fact. That's unfounded speculation.

Not exactly: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15607544. The premise of the study is logical: to stave off the effects of low gravity, martians need to rigorously exercise. Constantly. Fetuses cannot do that. The need to exercise will increase dramatically during developmental phases. That is, in utero and childhood.

Of course, there have been no experiments that confirm these observations but we are choosing between 2 contrasting speculations:

(a) that despite our observations of the effects on post development adults, developing humans will be unaffected by low gravity or

(b) based on our observations of the effects on adults, developing humans will also be affected, severely and detrimentally, more so if the cannot be made to exercise.

Out of those speculations, we should pick the one that is logical.

Fetuse in flotation, which is pretty much the same as zero G except for the resistance provided by the aqueous medium. There is no reason to expect that the minute differences would affect fetuses.

There's also no logic in either of your false choices. First, because there are no observations of effects of fractional gravity on adults and because there could be effects is not the same as there would be severe and detrimental effects.

The OP is probably referring to the fact that conception and gestation are likely impossible on Mars due to it's low gravity.

That's not a fact. That's unfounded speculation.

Not exactly: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15607544. The premise of the study is logical: to stave off the effects of low gravity, martians need to rigorously exercise. Constantly. Fetuses cannot do that. The need to exercise will increase dramatically during developmental phases. That is, in utero and childhood.

Of course, there have been no experiments that confirm these observations but we are choosing between 2 contrasting speculations:

(a) that despite our observations of the effects on post development adults, developing humans will be unaffected by low gravity or

(b) based on our observations of the effects on adults, developing humans will also be affected, severely and detrimentally, more so if the cannot be made to exercise.

Out of those speculations, we should pick the one that is logical.

FYI wiki is not a source, it's some random person's posting on the internet, just like this is.

Unless you are figuratively blind, or more interested in trying to attack someone than actually care about the subject, this doesn't matter, as it contained a link directly to the source: Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programmes for alcohol dependence..

And you can't disregard people who drop out of the program or don't follow it. If a program can be judged only by the people who stick to a program, that simplest, 100% efficient one would be a program with one step: "Don't drink again." In the real world, the effectiveness is going to come down to ones that actually get people to follow the path, as that is their point, to convince people to continue to get on the right track.

If you can't beat the control group then it's junk science

It's junk science to pretend that a randomly chosen group is a meaningful control group when studying something like this. The key issue is explained here and here.

limitations are widely acknowledged in obtaining acceptable data due to the difficulty in applying experimental controls to clinical analyses of AA, such as adequate placebo control

It's a notorious problem with studying the efficacy of psychological treatments. In many cases the whole issue is ignored so someone can claim to study it in a meaningful way and get more grant money.

Aha, some numbers.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2801202/

DDT is mostly made in India. and China.

India produces around 4500 metric tonnes a year. China makes similar amounts, but uses most of it "in the production of Dicofol, an acaricide"

An estimated 5,000 metric tons of DDT (active ingredient) was used for disease vector control in 2005. The primary use is for malaria control, but approximately 1,000 metric tons/year (20% of global consumption) is used for control of visceral leishmaniasis restricted to India.

Your worries about the price due to the lack of a US market seem to be unconfirmed.

So now Africa will have 600,000 more people a year to feed, house, and clothe, and they can't even do that now. Yay?

It's a step in the right direction.

Malaria is a major problem preventing the people of the third world from improving themselves. When there are so many things in your daily life that can kill you that are beyond your control, you tend to not pay much heed to the system surrounding you (the part you CAN control). Dictatorships are allowed to strangle populations and steal supplies, and nobody cares enough to act because they're dying (or close to dying). People only tend to take the world aroud them into accout when they have their own problems settled, and that's why it's essential that diseases like Malaria be removed from that long list of hardships.

Additionally, Malaria infects far more people than it kills every year, and those millions that survive are still affected. The cost to farmers sick during the growing season can be phenomenal. Then you also have to account for the cost of that treatment every time a person gets sick. Then there are longer-term hits to society like the lingering disabilities from cases of Cerebral Malaria, which can affect over 500k people a year.

Once we can tackle the elephant in the room, we can worry about feeding the people, and fixing the system that has let them down. Also, if those economic effects are accurate for farmers, this could make the DIFFERENCE between people starving and eating.

DDT is unavailable in the US, which killed the economy of scale for producing it. Only very small amounts are now produced. Producing very small amounts of anything is very expensive, which is what torpedoed wider distribution of it in poorer areas of the earth.

RU sure?

Cost-comparison of DDT and alternative insecticides for malaria control

n anti-malaria operations the use of DDT for indoor residual spraying has declined substantially over the past 30years, but this insecticide is still considered valuable for malaria control, mainly because of its low cost relative to alternative insecticides. Despite the development of resistance to DDT in some populations of malaria vector Anopheles mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae), DDT remains generally effective when used for house-spraying against most species of Anopheles, due to excitorepellency as well as insecticidal effects. A 1990 cost comparison by the World Health Organization (WHO) found DDT to be considerably less expensive than other insecticides, which cost 2 to 23 times more on the basis of cost per house per 6 months of control. To determine whether such a cost advantage still prevails for DDT, this paper compares recent price quotes from manufacturers and WHO suppliers for DDT and appropriate formulations of nine other insecticides (two carbamates, two organophosphates and five pyrethroids) commonly used for residual house-spraying in malaria control programmes. Based on these 'global' price quotes, detailed calculations show that DDT is still the least expensive insecticide on a cost per house basis, although the price appears to be rising as DDT production declines. At the same time, the prices of pyrethroids are declining, making some only slightly more expensive than DDT at low application dosages. Other costs, including operations (labour), transportation and human safety may also increase the price advantages of DDT and some pyrethroids vs. organophosphates and carbamates, although possible environmental impacts from DDT remain a concern. However, a global cost comparison may not realistically reflect local costs or effective application dosages at the country level. Recent data on insecticide prices paid by the health ministries of individual countries showed that prices of particular insecticides can vary substantially in the open market. Therefore, the most cost-effective insecticide in any given country or region must be determined on a case-by-case basis. Regional coordination of procurement of public health insecticides could improve access to affordable products.

There have been instances of vaccine-related 'controversy' bullshit in Africa(Good work, part of Nigera, it's not like polio is a problem or anything...); but none related to autism, to my knowledge.

In general, though, there's nothing like a population for which some ghastly disease is still a firsthand reality to keep vaccine concerns (even ones founded on actual side effects of the vaccine) at bay. For something with the morbidity and mortality rates of malaria, even a vaccine with atypically nasty risks would probably be damn popular.

The really difficult problem is when dealing with diseases that are almost nonexistent (and thus not scary)

Sexual dimorphism is not caused by "societal norms", it is caused by genetics and specifically testosterone.

It is started by testosterone, but societal norms reinforce what would otherwise be a much smaller difference.

Also, remember that muscle mass only helps for short-duration exercise. When it comes to extended things, like 50 mile treks through jungle or ultra-marathons, women are just as competitive if not better than men.

It would be cool if this was true, but if it was true there would be more experimental evidence of the performance gap dropping as the distance increased among runners in general (not just matched populations). You can see the problem with the design in the abstract:

recent best running speeds (m.s-1) of 28 female ultramarathon runners over racing distances from 5 to 90 km were compared with those of male runners matched for 56 km race time, age and training.
[...]
The negative slope and the X-axis intercept of this equation at 66 km supports the hypothesis that women ultramarathon runners have greater fatigue resistance than do equally trained men whose performances are superior up to the marathon distance.

But the men and women weren't equally fit, they just had the same 56k time and training (though I'm dubious how they could match the training). I suspect the women were in much better shape to be able to match the men at 56k, and it was the longer distances where this advantage expressed itself.

The most generous interpretation you can take is that males have a relatively better performance at shorter distances and women longer. So if you get a guy and girl who are matched at X than the guy will be faster running X/2 and the girl X*2, but it doesn't say actually that men in general are faster at running X/2 or women at X*2. And if you assume that men have better baseline performance than the women would be better trained, which would become a factor in the longer distances.

Odd this came up because just this weekend I ran a 30k with my girlfriend. She'd actually done a 42k training run the day before and handled the 30k very well, probably a lot better than I'd do right now. She'd probably beat me at an 80k and would at least push me over a 42k, however I can still dominate her at anything under 21k.

But go back a couple years to when I was in shape and my times would have been far faster than hers at the ultra distances as well.

We actually talked about the performance gap in distance running and while body fat % might be a factor she suggested bone structure, particularly the hips, played a big role in running economy and elite women runners tended to have narrower hips.

Sexual dimorphism is not caused by "societal norms", it is caused by genetics and specifically testosterone.

It is started by testosterone, but societal norms reinforce what would otherwise be a much smaller difference.

Also, remember that muscle mass only helps for short-duration exercise. When it comes to extended things, like 50 mile treks through jungle or ultra-marathons, women are just as competitive if not better than men.

"Much smaller" being a larger difference than you want it to be. Oh and good point, people fill the theaters to the point of overflowing when it comes to movies about competitive 50 mile hikes and marathons on the big screen as the hero and villain give each other nasty looks as they inch closer to the goal line.