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Indeed, your genetic makeup is as important as lifestyle, maybe even moreso.

I wouldn't go overboard; genetics is important, but lifestyle is as important or even more so. The three most common causes of premature death in the United States: tobacco, sedentary lifestyle/poor diet, and alcohol.

I've been thin all my life except when I was on Paxil and gained 40 pounds. When I got off the Paxil it just came off, not only did I never diet, it was an effort to keep some of the weight I'd gained on.

A friend of mine was a construction worker, so he got plenty of excersize and was by no means overweight. Yet he died three years ago at age 42 from a sudden heart attack. Niether my lack of obesity or his heart attack were from lifestyle.

If your grandparents all died of heart disease before age 60, you're not likely to live to be 70 no matter how healthy your lifestyle.

Let me amend that; if all your grandparents all died of heart disease before age 60, you're likely to have coronary artery disease and will need to be treated, or you're not likely to live to be 70. Medical sciences, especially in cardiology, has advanced significantly since your grandparents' time. (And even in the last 10 years.)

Please cite statistics that you get better health care on average than Canadians

I didn't say "better health care", I said "better treatments". That is, provided you can pay for good health care, you are better off in the US than in Canada. That includes less waiting and better outcomes.

http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20080716/cancer-survival-rates-vary-by-country

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2231416/

because statistics also show that over 16% of US citizens have zero health care at all.

Everybody in the US gets health care, by law. But if you don't have insurance, it will be a lot worse than if you do have insurance. Many of those who don't have insurance don't have it because of choices they made.

The US system clearly has serious problems, foremost the ties of private insurance to employers, and the fact that insurers can weasel out of insurance contracts through excessive rate hikes. But the solution is not to adopt a Canadian system. For the majority of Americans, the Canadian system would be no better than what they have now, and for many it would probably be worse.

You mean like the $30+ billion the US spends on medical research? Oh wait, that doesn't count because it's funded by taxpayers in the evil country you hate so much.

1. How accurate are these tests?

and 2. How ethical is doing something like that?

I think the answer on #1 is actually more complex than this summary makes it sound. The notion of pure ethnic groups is a fiction, but you can trace some kinds of population lineages using genetic markers. That's in fact some of how we've recreated early human population movements; by estimating when in time certain markers diverged between Asian and European populations, for example, we can estimate when those populations migrated out of the Middle East / Africa area where their ancestors likely originated. The HapMap project maps some more recent geographical correlations.

Look up 'rafflesia', it's a plant that exchanges DNA with the organism it's a parasite on.

You don't even have to get that exotic. Plants can exchange genes via graft unions. Most all fruit you eat is propagated by grafting, so it may be that every grafted plant has some gene transfer going on. Or to get even closer, here's a good example. Turns out the Syncytin genes critical for human reproduction probably came from a virus. Everyone who says transgenes don't occur in nature had their syncytiotrophoblast made by one.

Methanol is also in... wait for it... fruit. Generally quantities larger than you get from consuming aspartame-containing products. Aspartic acid is also likewise found in food in doses two orders of magnitude or more greater than you get with aspartame - in fact it's more commonly consumed than most other amino acids, even essential ones. Which should be expected, as it's an essential to plant metabolism. Not to mention that you're wrong about it being neurotoxic

What "thought" is applied with natural sweeteners? Plants aren't thinking about your health. "Thought" goes into artificial sweeteners.

Citation please. Type 2 diabetes is certainly correlated with an increase in sugar intake. And while sugar intake isn't the only risk factor for diabetes, it is a big one.

Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Risk of Metabolic Syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes

What might confuse you is that any carb can result in a high glycemic index. Rice and potatoes can have a similar effect. The difference is that food and drinks have so much sugar in them now, it's having a greater effect on people. Overconsumption of all carbs can be bad though.

Yes, this on the surface seems like an overreaching nanny state tax. Consider this though.

• 1 in 5 healthcare dollars go to diabetes
• 1 in 4 teens have diabetes or prediabetes
• 1 in 3 people will eventually contract diabetes

So what do you do about this? Let people eat up our healthcare system with obesity related illnesses (no pun intended), or try things out to fix the problem? The government has run educational programs before with little success. Taxing sugar almost seems like a reasonable alternative at this point.

The sad part is that there is still this common misconception that low self-esteem and depression are easily overcome. The sufferer just simply can't "Start feeling better". Without professional help, there is really no way out, thus limiting his/her options for life and careers.

The really depressing part is that there is no treatment for moderate depression that works significantly better than placebo. SSRIs only actually work on people with severe major depression. The most empirically supported type of talk therapy, CBT, is effective only in anxiety disorders.

There's really no effective treatment for depression, because depression isn't really an illness. It's a rational response to an abusive world. The real sickos are the ones who are ok with the way things are.

Not exactly something you can do on short notice on a weekday in Reykjavík. Most stores will be closed by the time I get off work, and there's not a lot of options for places to get "real filters" anyway. Heck, I couldn't find a place in town that sold a digital pH meter; they had to special order it. And just to find a place that would do that took being bounced between three stores. Even making a proper pinhole camera would be kind of a pain. Can't be flimsy like just holding two sheets of paper near each other -- this being Iceland, it's probably going to be windy in the evening. Don't have any tissue boxes. I mean, I could probably scrounge together something, but...

Also, I think flatly saying "no" seems to be an overstatement. I see lots of people saying "(blank) doesn't work" but never with evidence to back it up. For example, a CD. CDs are polycarbonate. Polycarbonate is opaque to UV and far IR. It's one of the reasons that it's used in skylights, for example. So what's the problem, given that UV is the main risk of eye damage? Visible is readily gauged by how bright it looks, so that's a no-brainer to assess. And if you're blocking visible light with the metalized filter (aka, a CD), you should also be blocking IR, because metals tend to reflect IR very well (which is why spacecraft use metal foil insulation). And saying all this, given that *unfiltered* views of the sun rarely result in permanent damage....

Really, I just expect better from Slashdot than to basically say, in so many words, "it's not possible to block light".

Interestingly enough: this article on sugar addiction states that most scientists are not yet convinced that sugar addiction exists. However, this published research paper, which could have been the source for your link, makes a pretty eye opening case, at the least worthy of more research.

Having stated my skepticism on sugar addiction, I personally have cut my consumption of excess sugar, don't eat much prepared or fast food, and probably am 90% on the way to the "sugar free diet" that some articles profess has all sorts of good health effects. I'd agree that not consuming an extra 3500+ calories a week really does result in not gaining that extra pound. I can concur on one item listed in one article - I no longer eat nearly as much pasta and other starches. However, that may due be as much to the aging process and its associated metabolic slowdown as anything else. Unfortunately, my personal experiences are related directly to rational scientific cause and effect or are inconclusive and do not support any type of argument for "sugar addiction". Also, I don't use sugar substitutes (something about artificial chemicals tasting sweet doesn't ring true to me, just like GM food with customized genes that do not naturally occur in at least the same order or class, but that's a different topic).

Lastly, I've also seen what happens when Type II diabetics finally take their condition seriously and change their diet: the effect of a low to moderate sugar diet is not small. Refined sugar, in moderation is fine for most people. Unfortunately, "moderation" as most perceive it is really consumption on an excessive scale to their bodies. Just one of those 48 ounce cokes is massively excessive. The soda companies had the proportions right originally when they came in 8-10 oz containers, and were expensive enough to be a luxury item enjoyed on rare occasions. They were also made with sucrose, not high fructose corn syrup, the latter which is pretty much like main-lining sugar into your bloodstream.

Tobacco smoke is far more dangerous than marijuana smoke (yes, really -- marijuana smoke does contain carcinogens, but even heavy marijuana smokers do not show an increased risk of cancer).

I would rather have a legal, regulated chemical plant producing methamphetamine for people to buy over the counter than the system we have today.

Maybe so, but wait till you legalize marijuana and Philip Morris and friends get their hands on it.

1) Go compare what's in tobacco and what's in cigarettes: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3990-crack-nicotine-in-cigarettes-varies-widely.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16728749
2) Industrially farmed tobacco typically is grown from phosphate fertilizers. That results in higher amounts of polonium in the tobacco. Yes there's plenty of other toxic stuff in cigarette smoke that can increase your odds of getting cancer but polonium certainly doesn't help. Anyone going to bet that industrially farmed marijuana won't concentrate polonium?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/opinion
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-kept-quiet-on--polonium-role-in-cigarettes-907194.html/01proctor.html

Not saying marijuana shouldn't be legalized, but that you shouldn't be too optimistic about the results.

No there are studies that shows that exposure to violence in young age is bad here are a small collection of recent abstracts :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22481072
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22308762
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21827218
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21708803
But if correct education is provided exposure to televised violence is neutral :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20876180
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21161351

No there are studies that shows that exposure to violence in young age is bad here are a small collection of recent abstracts :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22481072
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22308762
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21827218
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21708803
But if correct education is provided exposure to televised violence is neutral :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20876180
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21161351

No there are studies that shows that exposure to violence in young age is bad here are a small collection of recent abstracts :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22481072
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22308762
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21827218
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21708803
But if correct education is provided exposure to televised violence is neutral :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20876180
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21161351

No there are studies that shows that exposure to violence in young age is bad here are a small collection of recent abstracts :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22481072
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22308762
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21827218
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21708803
But if correct education is provided exposure to televised violence is neutral :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20876180
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21161351

No there are studies that shows that exposure to violence in young age is bad here are a small collection of recent abstracts :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22481072
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22308762
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21827218
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21708803
But if correct education is provided exposure to televised violence is neutral :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20876180
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21161351

No there are studies that shows that exposure to violence in young age is bad here are a small collection of recent abstracts :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22481072
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22308762
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21827218
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21708803
But if correct education is provided exposure to televised violence is neutral :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20876180
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21161351

What evidence is there that porn is bad for children?

I have to say, there's probably not a lot of hard evidence, if any. (I haven't actually bothered to search for it; mostly because I have no desire to see what would come up if I put the relevant keywords into a search engine. Maybe there is.) I think you're not likely to ever find any, because any sort of study would be highly unethical. There are some studies you just can't do.

What research has been done on adults tends to conclude that sustained viewing pornography tends to result in reduced desire to form monogamous relationships. We can only hypothesize about what that would do to immature brains. Again, there are some studies you just can't do.

Like some other dude said, you should try it out on your own kid and see what happens. Let us know.

What research? The last thing I read said that a 20 minute workout burns more calories than just the 20 minutes. The general idea is that doing 20 minutes in the morning and 20 in the evening is far more effective in burning calories than 40 minutes all at once.

Quote from a random research article, from 2011

In young male subjects, vigorous exercise for 45 min resulted in a significant elevation in postexercise energy expenditure that persisted for 14 h. The 190 kcal expended after exercise above resting levels represented an additional 37% to the net energy expended during the 45-min cycling bout. The magnitude and duration of increased energy expenditure after a 45-min bout of vigorous exercise may have implications for weight loss and management.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21311363

Now, where's your citation you should have put up 5 posts ago?

Its basic psychology, if given larger containers, people consume more.

Cornell University did a study in a Philadelphia movie theater with stale popcorn. Given the larger containers, people still ate more of it, even though it was like eating styrofoam.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16053812

True that a prevalent trait is not necessarily beneficial outside of the conditions that led natural selection to favor it. You muddied the salient fact about sickle cell, as it is very helpful to survival to have one copy (which is of course far more prevalent) in an area of endemic malaria. Sickle cell is decidedly not helpful outside of malaria-prone areas, however, climate change is expanding the distribution of malaria-hosting mosquitos farther into temperate regions, so there will be more fun for all of us.

I agree, it's too late. For example, two out of five different local organic farmers' corn I purchased at the Madison (Wisconsin) Farmers' Market last year came up positive for B. thuringiensis toxin genes. This is not an isolated case; the peer-reviewed literature is replete with examples of transgenic introgression into 'natural' populations. If you want to read more about this, you can start with this nearly-decade old paper that's been cited hundreds of times: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14526376

No I like their tactics and we should all help MyCleanPC, since MyCleanPC needs better rankings so that MyCleanPC users can find more information about MyCleanPC and interact with others that want to use MyCleanPC. "MyCleanPC", they will say, "is so kool I want more stuff just like MyCleanPC!". Three cheers for MyCleanPC, MyCleanPC, MyCleanPC!!!

I for one welcome our new search engine robot overlords!

There's no point in mass fear, the illnesses and deaths are largely spread out over both time and distance and as such pass by mostly without mention. But the deaths are still real.. The people that were alive between 1948 and 1970 (the period of exposure) are/were the primary ones affected. I've known a couple of people that turned out to be from the midwest (one of the harder hit regions from Nevada testing) who had leukemia (they're dead now). Back in the day we didn't know any better. There's a reason we eventually did away with atmospheric testing and have sought to avoid additional contamination.
The incident in Japan has left much of the nation much like the U.S. is, with "background" levels elevated. (The U.S. "background" levels are about double what is seen in someplace like Australia. Except for the area hit in WWII, Japan was mostly low too.) Although a small percentage of the population is affected, the U.S. certainly has/will see some additional cancer cases from Chernobyl, the Japanese accident in 1981 (accident very well covered up, a sodium reactor leaked for months with hundred of workers exposed beyond normal limits, and was measurable in the U.S.) and later from the events of last year. Beware of "science" saying that low level radiation is good. It seems that the people doing those studies have also "shown" that mice do better with low level doses of all sorts of other nasties too. Who would have known how wonderful toxins are? (call it science concocted for defense attorneys) Absorbed like calcium, baby-boomers to this day have strontium-90 in their teeth and bones.

Certainly the risk varied considerable, and like fallout from accidents, the hotspots depended on combinations of timing, the wind, rainfall, and what one ate. For Iodine-131 there have been detailed estimates. If you were a female born in the 50's in someplace like Nebraska, and drank a fair amount of goats milk from animals that were pasture fed, the risk was (and for survivors still is) very significant. Risk was less for those drinking less, it wasn't quite as high with cows, and it was lower from animals fed hay indoors. (A lesson from that is to have a couple of months feed hay in reserve to reduce the exposure via milk during the time it takes for I-131 to go through enough half-lives)

It's only for I-131, and then only for the Nevada tests (other sources not included), but have some fun with the risk calculator if you were around back in the day.

https://ntsi131.nci.nih.gov/

The rest can laugh it off I suppose. The Japanese fishermen that can back to Japan with serious radiation exposure from the South Pacific tests did inspire the Godzilla and friends monster movies after all, so something good came of it.

Oh, yeah? Just one link, 30 sec of googling:

Using a 30-tank experimental system, we manipulated CO2 levels to simulate doubling and three- to fourfold increases [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projection categories IV and VI] relative to present-day levels under cool and warm scenarios. Results indicated that high CO2 is a bleaching agent for corals and CCA under high irradiance, acting synergistically with warming to lower thermal bleaching thresholds.

It's been found through studies of cases like yours that 'vanilla' couples sex, where the partners are otherwise healthy apart from one being HIV+ have well under a percent (.3% IIRC) rate per act of transmitting HIV.
For anal, this rises to 30%.

Your numbers are WAY off. The figures are closer to 0.1% and 1% respectively. See this study for details:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1881672/?tool=pmcentrez

Other studies have been done for Gay couples and various groups, and the numbers come off similar. They may be off by a a small factor depending on exactly how the study was done, but that 30% figure you quote is nonsense.

Here, check this one out. No way to input preferred meals, but it's far more flexible than the thing in this article.

http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/

Ummmmm.... that is the one I was already referring to (and is both linked from the article (first link in the summary) and is itself the last link in the summary)

Were you intending to give a different link here?

Here, check this one out. No way to input preferred meals, but it's far more flexible than the thing in this article.

http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/

If yes you might want to read this : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/

That's not the best evidence. The most appropriate literature for this exposure is that pertaining to nuclear industry workers. This is how the guidelines of 20mSv per year were derived. See this study for instance: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17388693 there's no need to reinvent the wheel here, there is ample evidence that nuclear workers have higher risks of cancer and a population exposed to fallout from a reactor could reasonably be expected to have similar or worse outcomes (due to increased ingestion of isotopes)

Now just ramp that up a little bit. Don't forget http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3685264, so they are giving you a burst of radiation right before you going to get an extended burst of radiation. Now add in your typical sun bathing holiday and the return trip is even more dangerous. Just to add in that touch more fluorescent lights http://www.arpansa.gov.au/radiationprotection/factsheets/is_cfl.cfm and of course you have a ton of mobile phones in the vicinity as well as airport radar http://www.powerwatch.org.uk/rf/radar.asp.

I am sick of the repeated lie, don't worry ours is safe, on it's own heh heh. Compound affect, a modern US airport would have to be one of the most dangerous places to be. There more than anywhere else they should be taking steps to reduce exposure not add to it.

So let's start seeing some real numbers on total exposure. Drive to Airport exposed to airport radar, stand under bright florescent for a couple of hours, everybody using mobile phones lots of people in very close range, go through xray, exposed to extra radiation during flight, land at another airport with radar, couple of more hours under florescent lights, then go to beach and get sunburn. Skin cancer rates rising, use sunblock? Now we need a 24 hour a day 7 day week radiation block and they haven't finished yet. They'll keep adding in more 'safe on it's own devices' until future current youth will pay a huge price when they finally become short lived adults.

I really hope they do this for Amoxicillin. I hate having to waste $20 on a Doctor's visit when I know damn well that i've got an ear infection from a cold, and all the doctor is going to do is prescribe Amoxicillin anyways. Thankfully, my Mom usually has some around since she gets it prescribed regularly for ongoing issues. Ear infections to me like migraine headaches are to women.

OTS = Off The Shelf

You are an idiot. Amoxicillin is exactly as effective as placebo for ear infection. If your mom keeps a partial prescription around she isn't taking a full course of antibiotics and is an idiot, too.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/ It might not be *enough* evidence to draw a conclusion, but that certainly put a damper on "no" evidence.

Well, a number of autoimmune disorders are strongly correlated with government-approved (and sometimes government-mandated) vaccines. Even the government admits this. There's no proof of causation, yet, but there is more than sufficient reason for concern and further study, preferably by disinterested parties (not governments *or* drug companies, who, jointly, fund the vast majority of research currently being done).

Given her apparent level of physical health from her picture in the article you would be safe to assume that (though the article does actually confirm it's type I). However, in general you really aren't on such solid ground to expect incidents of diabetes in children to most certainly be type I any longer for reasons generally assumed to be related to said corn syrup.

To everyone thinking "duh, that's how evolution works!!11!onebbq":

I think the irony of "mistake/mutation" becoming a competitive advantage being, selected for, and leading to the progeny today (us) is not lost on geneticists. It's probably the last thing that would be lost on them, considering their field.

I think the real issue is in TFA's title/summary. What's important that it's one mutation mechanism specifically that seems to dominate gains in intelligence: copying, or additions (and potentially over-expression relative to ancestral baseline) of a specific gene/protein. The potential over-expression being parenthetical, because many genes can lay dormant and subsequently expressed proteins may be inactive without phosphorylation.
But what's important to note (which TFA really failed to emphasize) is that intelligence seems to be linked to excesses of sets of genes, which is only a subset of all potential mutation mechanisms ( subtraction, substitution, ... just look here: http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/mutationsanddisorders/possiblemutations )

I think the real take-away from this is that there is more evidence for varying levels of intelligence being a function of varying levels of a set of genes, rather than intelligence being a function of having that set of genes at all or not.

In other words, all animals that have this baseline set of genes would (if their environment selected for intelligence over spending resources on physical fitness for survival) eventually have the capability to be intelligent.
This would be in contrast to say, the assumption that human intelligence is very special and due to a magical insertion/deletion mechanism creating a new gene entirely.

The subtitle also has a stylistic difference from the article text--it has no comma or other punctuation. Every sentence of comparable length in the rest of the article (around 15 of them) has a comma, colon, dash, etc., with only one exception, supporting my "someone else wrote the title and subtitle" theory, perhaps someone more interested in page views than providing information.

This is why I love Slashdot - we'd rather spend ages analysing a secondary popular science article to death than talking about the interesting findings of the primary research! The author and/or editor deserve a break for trying to engage the attention of a general audience about a piece of significant work, and succeed in presenting the key points in relatively non-technical language. Both 'mistake' and 'error' are in any case used quite frequently by biologists when discussing mutations - a quick pubmed search will find many examples in the scientific literature (e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14616055 - this does not imply that the DNA polymerase is intelligent!).

Speaking of 'mistakes', this research discovered an interesting error in the human genome reference sequence. It turns out that the duplication event was previously obscured by 'mis-assembly' of the closely related copied sequences (the SRGAP2 gene was copied so recently in evolutionary terms that the copies hadn't diverged enough to be easily distinguishable). The researchers did some of their own sequencing using DNA from a 'hydatidiform mole' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydatidiform_mole ), a non-viable pregnancy that only contains genetic material from the father - the lack of confounding allelic variation makes it easier to get clear cut results.

Something that occurred to me reading the article was that when I saw the term "cell division" I immediately pictured a developing embryo, but that would be a somatic mutation rather than a germinal mutation. It's important to remember that all these evolutionary mutations didn't happen in the animals, they happened in the animals' gametes, the sperm and eggs. A mutation that occurs in the cell division of a developing embryo wouldn't have any affect on the individual's gametes, the mutation had to occur in the sperm or egg first.

Not entirely true.....Imagine that the zygote (or even later as the morula) is at the 1, 2 or 4 cell stage when a mutation occurs.....subsequently 1/2, 1/4th or 1/8th (respectively and etc) of the animals cells will now contain the "error". This could A) directly affect said animal if this cell happens to migrate to the brain area and cause a change in the "traditional" development pathway, or B) could migrate to the germ-line cells affecting the progeny or C) the cell further divides and goes both directions making parent and child mutants. The probability being (roughly) directly proportional to the "earliness" of the "mistake".

To quote from your reference

Most tissues are derived from a cell or a few progenitor cells. If a mutation occurs in one of the progenitor cells, all of its daughter cells will also express the mutation. For this reason, somatic mutations generally appear as a sector on the mutated individual.

However, what your fine reference fails to adequately explain for is that the germ-line cells and somatic cells originate from the same point (the zygote)....only further along do they differentiate into those distinct cell lines....and those progenitor cells are just as likely to undergo an "error" in replication as any other cell. To the point, this occurs frequently in humans, it's just that most of these "errors" are true errors that result in a non-viable fetus and are spontaneously aborted. As an aside, humans, despite what one may believe, are horribly bad at reproducing...65-70% of all pregnancies do not go to term. I personally remember being taught that > 80% do not result in a live birth, excluding those aborted for elective or need reasons; however, I'll stick with a published reference.

I know, I know, they don't teach history in school anymore. It's all about indoctrination, propaganda, and conformity instead of critical thinking.

Here's a bit of history of indoctrination and propaganda you ought to consider before branding the previous poster as ignorant.

I don't think I labeled anyone as ignorant.

There's plenty of propaganda going around in the past and today, you can find lots of examples of it all over the place. But your examples are quite insignificant compared to the anti-smoking propaganda dispensed today, and none of them are examples of indoctrination.

I know, I know, they don't teach history in school anymore. It's all about indoctrination, propaganda, and conformity instead of critical thinking.

Here's a bit of history of indoctrination and propaganda you ought to consider before branding the previous poster as ignorant.

I can't speak for the gp, but "statistically indistinguishable" usually implies "when controlling for placebo."

A quick search of pubmed turns up several studies showing that prayer doesn't work beyond placebo. Example: Are there demonstrable effects of distant intercessory prayer? A meta-analytic review.

The biggest issue with chemical based fert is that it does not replenish organic sponge in the soil, which is required by soil bacteria. "Organic sponge" is essentially finely shredded cellulose that holds moisture, acts as a trap to retain water soluble minerals and nutrients, and as a feedstock for soil bacteria.

Ammonia based fertilizer contains very little carbon. So little in fact that the normal metabolic activities of soil bacteria cause net depletion of the organic sponge over time when it is used aggressively, like it is with industrial farming.

here's an article from ACES on the subject

Ground up poop juice also contains chemically etched cellulose fibers, especially if cowpoop is used. This actively adds organic sponge to offset natural depletion.

This has several noteworthy effects in soil:

1) it provides a substrate in the soil for beneficial soil bacteria to live on.

2) it helps the soil to retain water more efficiently, reducing the need for irrigation.

3) it soaks in and holds soluble nutrients, reducing the amount of these substances (nitrate, phosphate, mineral salts such as carbonates and the like) that get washed away in runoff.

When you examine the amount of nitrogen added to sponge depleted soil using "conventional" practices against the total amount added using organic practices, you will find that the organic practice applies considerably less, but uses it more efficiently. This is due to the organic sponge.

In addition to the efficiency reductions associated with heavy industrial soil nitration, there are serious effects from the runoff that increases as the soil carbon decreases. (This creates a feedback loop where more and more industrial fertilizer is required to keep growing plants, most of which simply washes away.)

here's a paper for you.

Many of the problems associated with artificial fertilizers could be resolved by blending the fertilizer with a sprayable organic fiber solution. (Make it goopy, and chellated in hydrated cellulose gel for instance.) This however will increase the unit price per litre, create controversy over "adding fillers", and a whole host of talking head nonsense concerning the simple fix.

More recent results from the same group that did the 8x8 array: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3081743/

There are a couple of groups working on commercial bionic eyes, one implant with 1,500 electrodes (that's actually high enough resolution to be useful for recognizing objects) did allow some previously blind people to read text, in a human study between 2005-2010:

Link to the original paper with PDF download: HTML, PDF

Published in the journal Proc Royal Soc B: http://royalsociety.org/news/retinal-implant/

In the media: forbes.com February 2012

There are a couple of groups working on commercial bionic eyes, one implant with 1,500 electrodes (that's actually high enough resolution to be useful for recognizing objects) did allow some previously blind people to read text, in a human study between 2005-2010:

Link to the original paper with PDF download: HTML, PDF

Published in the journal Proc Royal Soc B: http://royalsociety.org/news/retinal-implant/

In the media: forbes.com February 2012

This appears in the human population at a much higher rate than that, according to one study that found a significant number 13% of Alzheimer's patients were misdiagnosed Creuzfeld Jacob Disease patients. Note that this was a small study, and behind a paywall so the original material isn't easily available. I'll be looking for the original.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=2545230&dopt=abstractplus

Add to this that the disease takes a decade to produce symptoms in people, and it becomes apparent that our testing of cows isn't likely to find anything.

Worth mentioning that humans evolved to eat animals with standard fat percentages, not margarine or mealworm-sheep. There is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD, and there are healthy populations that traditionally go 6-9 months with no fats except animals fats.

FWIW, the main advance with this announcement is not the omega-3/FAT-1 transgenic aspect, it is the new cloning technique BGI calls handmade cloning which apparently allows lower-tech facilities and higher transgenic clone yield. BGI has already done this transgenic modification with pigs and now they have done it with sheep. With this new cloning technique, however, it might be possible to do this at an industrial scale.

However, If you are interested instead about this specific "fat-1" transgenic idea, it was done with mice way back in 2004.

Although that is possibly true that saturated fats aren't corrolated with increased risk of CHD or CVD, omega-3 fatty acids are required for controlling blood clotting and building cell membranes in the brain and are assumed to be a necessary nutrient. The "healthy populations" you seem to be alluding to likley maintain their consumption of omega-3 fatty acids from seafood and nuts and oils for 6-9 months of the year.

If you go look at my original post, I was actually just pointing out that a man's age contributes to birth defects just as a woman's does. I was willing to be drawn into this aside, though, because it's a fascinating topic.

In my reading, modern scholarship indicates that ancient people mostly died in their thirties, though some - mainly the very wealthy - did live what we would consider "full" lives. I am more inclined to believe the forensics than ancient record keeping; it is the latter that tends to present evidence of "old ancient people."

It's a controversial area, which does not even touch upon the idea of an evolutionary - that is a biological - impact on the species.

Here are some links I came up with (representing an array of reasonable views):
Tables of ancient life expectancies, with sources.
Review of studies finding "old ancient people."
An archaeologist's blog post discussing this issue.
Roy. Soc. Med. paper finding "old ancient people".
The wiki entry, with lots of information and sources.
A PNAS paper which actually discusses population ratios - very interesting.

DRM cures hiccups, not depression

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2299306