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"antioxidants "

actually that ones a myth too.
Right now all the health food shops love them and in that at least they're only a few decades behind actual medical science.
http://www.badscience.net/2007/12/epistemological-indulgences/

citation:
http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/1/166.abstract
found
"antioxidant supplements were found to have no preventive effect on cancer"
in fact....
"the use of antioxidant supplements significantly increased the risk of bladder cancer "

"Nobody ever actually SAID it was the alcohol that was healthy numbnuts. "
lots of people do.
it's a common myth.
that you should drink a glass of wine ever day, that it's good for your heart. etc etc.
with the exception of the social stuff it's pretty much bunk.
an apple a day is the far more likely option.

Alcohol is both a muscle relaxant and a mental relaxant. Moderate use relieves stress and frankly the side effects are far less severe than any of the prescription meds you can get for the same job. Relieving average daily stress levels by itself probably does more good than alcohol can do bad.

muscle relaxant? sure.
mental relaxant? simply interacting with other people socially is what's good for that.
Drinking alone does little or nothing to relieve mental stress.

You still haven't proven that they were. When scientists from reputable institutions publish research in reputable journals it gets peer reviewed. If that research is skewed then they get blasted and their reputations (which in science IS your entire career) gets blown to hell. They have to be as unbiased as technology allows them to be - no matter who paid for the research grant. That isn't to say that some scientists aren't bought off and that some don't get away with it - scientists are only human so if this was one study - I'd take it with a grain of salt. But all the numerous confirmatory studies that have been done have ALL come to the SAME conclusion, all these independent researchers including the ones who set out to prove it false because they were raised in alcoholic home (of COURSE some of them exist and nobody is completely bias free) have repeatedly found the same results.

Did you even read the citation from the other post?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17478320
should be able to get a full copy of the paper with a little googling.

No they have not ALL come to the SAME conclusion.
It's a myth.
An attractive myth.
There's countless studies which show homeopathy to work yet there's even more higher quality ones which show it's useless.
Guess which ones get more attention in the tabloids.
Guess which ones the homoeopaths talk about.

are you familiar with the concept of a systematic review or a meta-analysis?

I probably drink slightly more than you- I do more cold deserts with alcohol in them.
I take the view that any health risks are trivial enough.

Not all plants react the same way .

The thing is, when such a link appears it doesn't mean that the linked events are the direct cause. It just points out an interesting correlation between the two phenomenons which demands further study. To put it in other words, correlation is not causation.

And keeping that in mind, what the study states is that a very active sex life for teens and early 20s is linked to a higher risk of prostate cancer. It's an interesting correlation, but it's far from stating a causation. Yet, that link has been further studied and this has been found: there is a link between Trichomonas vaginalis Infection Prostate Cancer. For those who don't know, trichomonas vaginalis infection is one of the most common venereal disease, much to do with the fact that it is generally asymptomatic.

Canadian nuclear plants emit 40 times more tritium every day when functioning normally than the Vermont Yankee leak emitted in a year:
http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-much-tritium-leaked-from-vermont.html

A 1 GW(e) natural gas turbine will emit about 9 curies/year,* which is 20 times the rate of radiation from the VT Yankee leak at its highest.

Oh, and natural gas "fracking" produces toxic and radioactive wastewater. This article from last summer discusses EPA tests that found nasties from the fracturing fluid in domestic well water:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=chemicals-found-in-drinking-water-from-natural-gas-drilling
New York State is doing fracking in something called Marcellus shale. This article from last fall says that surface wastewater from these sites was found to contain Ra-226 in concentrations "thousands of times" the limit for drinking water:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=marcellus-shale-natural-gas-drilling-radioactive-wastewater
This page
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/tenorm/oilandgas.html
says, "more than 18 billion barrels of waste fluids from oil and gas production are generated annually in the United States".

-Carl

* Radioactivity of fossil gas. This abstract
http://rpd.oxfordjournals.org/content/97/3/259.abstract
gives 200 Bq/m^3. It doesn't say where they measured, but given context of the paper I'll assume it was at the consumer end of the line, at STP. I don't know if gas used at electrical plants is any fresher, but I'll assume it's no more stale. Pure methane has an energy content of 55.5 kJ/g and a density of 667 g/m^3, or about 5 Wh(e)/L from a 50%-efficient combined-cycle plant. So about 40Bq/Wh, or 1 nanoCurie per Wh, or 9 Curies/GW-yr.

The same thing happens with Pacific salmon when hatchery fish are used to supplement wild populations, as has been (is still?) done in the Pacific Northwest.

Or the genetic impacts on wild salmon (naturally selected for overall fitness) of interbreeding with escaped farmed salmon (human selected for fast growth rates). It's actually a fairly nasty problem for wild stocks, and is being extensively researched.

It is possible to produce the effect of a computing machine by writing down a set of rules of procedure and asking a man to carry them out. Such a combination of a man with written instructions will be called a ‘Paper Machine.’ A man provided with paper, pencil and rubber, and subject to strict discipline is in effect a universal machine.

"Does anyone have statistics on what percentage of the population are pedophiles? I'm willing to bet that it's a pretty low number."

It's not a low number at all, although the occurrence of "paedophilia" of course depends on how you define "paedophilia". I've posted these figures before, but since you asked the question, I'll take the risk of sounding repetitive:

From Hall, et al -

Consistent with previous data (Barbaree & Marshall, 1989; Briere & Runtz, 1989; Fedora et al., 1992; Freund & Watson, 1991), 20 % of the current subjects self-reported pedophilic interest and 26.25 % exhibited penile arousal to pedophilic stimuli that equaled or exceeded arousal to adult stimuli.

[..]

Eighty subjects completed the study. [..] Twenty-six subjects [approximately 33%] exhibited sexual arousal to the child slides that equaled or exceeded their arousal to the adult slides.

[..] ....a sizable minority of men in normal populations who have not molested children may exhibit pedophilic fantasies and arousal. In recent studies, 12 to 32% of community college samples of men reported sexual attraction to children (B &R, 1989, H,G & C. 1990) or exhibited penile response to pedophilic stimuli (B&M, 1989, F et al, 1992, F&L, 1989, F & W, 1989). Thus, arousal to pedophilic stimuli does not necessarily correspond with pedophilic behavior (Hall, 1990; Schouten & Simon, 1992), although there are arguments to the contrary (Quinsey & Laws, 1990).

From the British Journal of Social Work -

A self-administer questionnaire was given to a sample of 92 female and 91 male public sector child care workers. Results showed a significantly higher percentage of males (15 per cent) than females (4 per cent) expressed a sexual interest in children.

From Is Pedophilia a Mental Disorder? -

In a sample of nearly 200 university males, 21% reported some sexual attraction to small children, 9% described sexual fantasies involving children, 5% admitted to having masturbated to sexual fantasies of children, and 7% indicated they might have sex with a child if not caught (Briere & Runtz, 1989). Briere and Runtz remarked that "given the probable social undesirability of such admissions, we may hypothesize that the actual rates were even higher" (p. 71). In another sample with 100 male and 180 female undergraduate students, 22% of males and 3% of females reported sexual attraction to a child (Smiljanich & Briere, 1996).

Laboratory researchers have validated physiologically the self-report studies of nonclinical, nonpedophile identified volunteers. In a sample of 80 "normal" volunteers, over 25% self-reported some pedophilic interest or in the plethysmographic phase exhibited penile arousal to a child that equaled or exceeded arousal to an adult (Hall, Hirschman, & Oliver, 1995). In another study, "normal" men's erections to pictures of pubescent and younger girls averaged 70 and 50%, respectively, of their responses to adult females (Quinsey, Steinman, Bergersen, & Holmes, 1975). In a control group of 66 males recruited from hospital staff and the community, 17% showed a penile response that was pedophilic (Fedora et al., 1992). Freund and Watson (1991), studying community male volunteers in a plethysmography classification study, found that19%were misclassified as having an erotic preference for minors. Freund and Costell (1970) studied 48 young Czech soldiers who were shown slides of children between 4 and 10, both male and female, as well as adolescents and adults, male and female. Penile responsivity to female children, ages 4-10, was intermediate to adolescent and adult females and males in o

I appreciate your response, even if you do come off as an arrogant blowhard. ;)

Your link suggests that resistance to disinfectants and antibiotics may go hand-in-hand. However it still seems like a stretch to suggest livestock would develop and retain antibiotic resistance without the use of antibiotics, due solely to disinfectant use by their handlers.

Looking at some other articles, you might be confusing growth-promoters with therapeutic antibiotics?

http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/52/2/159.pdf

When growth promoter antibiotics were banned, there was increased sickness in animals. They then used (different) therapeutic antibiotics on the sick animals, which led to increased resistance to those antibiotics. No big surprise there, is there?

Do you have any links supporting your assertion that antibiotic resistance stuck around or increased in an antibiotic-free environment in the EU?

One thing the article fails to mention is that Norway also reduced the use of antibiotics in animal feed.

I would not be surprised if that has also had something to do with Norway having low rates of drug resistant infections.

http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/43/2/243

this little graph from the article is the most telling I think.
(The graph on the right is about 1/3 less drugs then on the left)

http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/43/2/243/FIG1

One thing the article fails to mention is that Norway also reduced the use of antibiotics in animal feed.

I would not be surprised if that has also had something to do with Norway having low rates of drug resistant infections.

http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/43/2/243

this little graph from the article is the most telling I think.
(The graph on the right is about 1/3 less drugs then on the left)

http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/43/2/243/FIG1

If you compare humans, there is no correlation between brain size and intelligence.

That's a common myth. A quick Google for "Human brain size vs intelligence" gives the following two results as number 3 and 4 (and the first two that seem relevant):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_and_intelligence#Brain_size
http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.php?DocID=166

Both indicate a correlation.

Quoting from Wikipedia (which is least definite):

Within human population, studies have been conducted to determine whether there is a relationship between brain size and a number of cognitive measures. Studies have reported correlations that range from 0 to 0.6.[2] ...

[2] http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/129/2/386

The newest relevant scientific review article seems to be "Whole Brain Size and General Mental Ability: A Review",
J. Philippe Rushton and C. Davison Ankney, International Journal of Neuroscience vol 119 issue 5 pages 692-732 (2009), available from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668913/

Abstract:

We review the literature on the relation between whole brain size and general mental ability (GMA) both within and between species. Among humans, in 28 samples using brain imaging techniques, the mean brain size/GMA correlation is 0.40 (N = 1,389; p < 1010); in 59 samples using external head size measures it is 0.20 (N = 63,405; p < 1010). In 6 samples using the method of correlated vectors to distill g, the general factor of mental ability, the mean r is 0.63. We also describe the brain size/GMA correlations with age, socioeconomic position, sex, and ancestral population groups, which also provide information about brain–behavior relationships. Finally, we examine brain size and mental ability from an evolutionary and behavior genetic perspective.

Eivind.

Except general aviation is extremely dangerous, statistically speaking- something like 1%* of GA planes crash per year.

That's a huge trade off of convenience for safety.

*(2k crashes out of 186k planes in 1996 from http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/155/5/398)

http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/djp415v1

I agree with your concerns about children's liberty being restricted in the name of "protecting" them. I also agree with your belief that there are some serious issues which are often ignored by the majority; the hysteria over paedophilia allows significant risks to children to remain undetected or trivialised.

"the effect of 0.00001% of the population having a predilection for children is frankly irrelevant compared to dangers such as traffic accidents, non-sexual abuse, violence and murder"

Actually, the percentage of people who are attracted to children is much higher than that, even if the men who like sexually mature 15 year old girls are not included in the statistics. Despite the widespread occurrence of paedophilia within the general population, most paedophiles refrain from abusing children for several reasons:

• Most paedophiles have a conscience.
• Most paedophiles don't want to be arrested and ostracised by their community (although frankly, many of us feel marginalised even though we haven't offended).
• Most paedophiles have suffered bad childhoods and don't wish to create problems for other children.

I'm not just making assumptions based on the fact that I live responsibly with a paedophilic orientation. I know many other paedophiles who are also responsible people.

I have posted this information previously, but it remains relevant:

From Hall, et al -

"Consistent with previous data (Barbaree & Marshall, 1989; Briere & Runtz, 1989; Fedora et al., 1992; Freund & Watson, 1991), 20 % of the current subjects self-reported pedophilic interest and 26.25 % exhibited penile arousal to pedophilic stimuli that equaled or exceeded arousal to adult stimuli.

[..]

Eighty subjects completed the study. [..] Twenty-six subjects [approximately 33%] exhibited sexual arousal to the child slides that equaled or exceeded their arousal to the adult slides.

[..] ....a sizable minority of men in normal populations who have not molested children may exhibit pedophilic fantasies and arousal. In recent studies, 12 to 32% of community college samples of men reported sexual attraction to children (B &R, 1989, H,G & C. 1990) or exhibited penile response to pedophilic stimuli (B&M, 1989, F et al, 1992, F&L, 1989, F & W, 1989). Thus, arousal to pedophilic stimuli does not necessarily correspond with pedophilic behavior (Hall, 1990; Schouten & Simon, 1992), although there are arguments to the contrary (Quinsey & Laws, 1990)."

From the British Journal of Social Work -

"A self-administer questionnaire was given to a sample of 92 female and 91 male public sector child care workers. Results showed a significantly higher percentage of males (15 per cent) than females (4 per cent) expressed a sexual interest in children."

From Is Pedophilia a Mental Disorder? -

"In a sample of nearly 200 university males, 21% reported some sexual attraction to small children, 9% described sexual fantasies involving children, 5% admitted to having masturbated to sexual fantasies of children, and 7% indicated they might have sex with a child if not caught (Briere & Runtz, 1989). Briere and Runtz remarked that "given the probable social undesirability of such admissions, we may hypothesize that the actual rates were even higher" (p. 71). In another sample with 100 male and 180 female undergraduate students, 22% of males and 3% of females reported sexual attraction to a child (Smiljanich & Briere, 1996).

Laboratory researchers have validated physiologically the self-report studies of nonclinical, nonpedophile identified volun

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2009JAMC1880.1&ct=1

http://jae.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/ejp002

... and many, many more. This stuff really isn't difficult to find unless you're covering your ears with your hands and singing 'I can't hear you. LA LA LA LA. I can't hear you.'

Yes, this sounds like the scientific method at its best - try to shut up and demean anyone who disagrees with you, ensure that they aren't published or cited, and hence are shut out of the grant money gravy train. Meanwhile, hide your data from public view, and privately chat about how you manipulated it.

Why the fuck would anyone publish their work in a journal with an editor that is busy exercising editorial control completely at odds with what most people in the field believe?

Why the fuck would anyone want to be published in the same forum as a wack-job?

There are fringe journals which published weird shit in every field. Some of them are even nearly completely fake (google for Vioxx and the journal created by the drug companies to distort the publication record on it). No one wants to be associated with them unless they share the biases of the editors.

The quotations are entirely reasonable and reflect a worry that Climate Research is a biased journal which gives undue consideration and billing to anti-global-warming nutters. The scientists in question are completely right that publishing in it would be elevating the trash shoe-horned in by the editor in question to a greater prominence than it deserves. Solution: boycott the journal.

Contrary to your belief scientists do not privilege all data as exactly the same. They have hunches, good reasons and suspicions about why some data is crap and should be ignored. Milikan's famous oil-drop experiment to determine the charge on an electron is backed by several hundred (IIRC) attempts which he deemed "failures" (see this). There are MANY other examples.

Also, if you think science doesn't operate by the same politicking as any other human field then you've NEVER had ANYTHING to do with science. For a good outsider perspective you might try reading some of the sociological studies (e.g. David Hull's _Science as a Process_).

The models and the data which are claimed to support them are published for everyone to see and are open for refutation, examination and improvement. Science as an aggregate stumbles towards the truth even when individual parts are not perfect. It achieves this by clear, open statements of data and hypothesis which allows a clear basis for challenge or confirmation.

In other words, fuck all to see here unless you know nothing about how science works or are desperate to believe that global warming is not due to your fat ass.

Evidence of bias in estimates of influenza vaccine effectiveness in seniors(abstract) Lisa A. Jackson 1 *, Michael L. Jackson 1, Jennifer C. Nelson 2, Kathleen M. Neuzil 3, and Noel S. Weiss 4 ,International Journal of Epidemiology, full text in PDF. Does the Vaccine Matter? is a good lay article on the matter.

Evidence of bias in estimates of influenza vaccine effectiveness in seniors(abstract) Lisa A. Jackson 1 *, Michael L. Jackson 1, Jennifer C. Nelson 2, Kathleen M. Neuzil 3, and Noel S. Weiss 4 ,International Journal of Epidemiology, full text in PDF. Does the Vaccine Matter? is a good lay article on the matter.

H1N1 is a particular strain of influenza A that has made its way around the world and vaccination against this strain is being done separate from the seasonal flu shot. Concern over this strain is related to its virulence and early reports of death amongst young, immunocompetent individuals - people normally not adversely affected by influenza.

The common cold and the flu are not the same thing - there is a believed to be a high mortality from influenza ( http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/163/2/181 ) as compared to the cold (corona virus (with exception of SARSCoV, rhinovirus - deaths generally related to asthmatic patients). 40,000+ deaths per year is a significant mortality rate. Morbidity from influenza would be much more. It makes it difficult to believe that it should be overlooked.

Anyone with an interest in evolution and what modern studies of evolution are all about really should read this:

Darwinian Evolution in the light of Genomics, EV Koonin, Nucleic Acids Research 2009 37(4):1011-1034; doi:10.1093/nar/gkp089

Does it directly answer your question? No, it does not. However it will give you the framework necessary for understanding answers when they come along. And it is a good overview of where we are in the studies of evolution, what has been refuted in older theories, and what directions future studies will be taking.

Better?

On the other hand, I've seen biologist written perl code that terminated on div-by-zero, and closed, re-opened then seeked into the input file rather than implement a linear processing of data. I've also met plenty of biology grad students who basically said their technique for analysis was to invite a statistics co-author. If you're going to claim Mendel as a mathematical biologist, we might as well call Babbage a computer scientist, and he built the diffrence engine 30 years before Mendel's pea experiment.

I also know of computational biologists who debug laptop BIOSes, and have a firm grasp of math. I believe them to be a minority, but perhaps there's selection effects I'm unaware of. Anyways, at this point I have to believe that math and statistics is vital to understanding the wealth of genomic data we face, and I expect most successful researchers meet or exceed my own humble understanding of statistics.

The method they used to stop KRKO emission has been very questionable (to be politically correct), however there is some sound evidence of the fact that radio frequency can be harmful to health. It is well known that ham radio activities increase the risk for leukemia. So having a trasmitting antenna in the backyard seems to be no good.
 

Nope just checked. The Germans did it years ago. http://europace.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/10/2/164 Are Reuters the best placed to judge medical firsts?

Initial research indicated that nicotine is not carcinogenic, but more recent studies are suggesting that may not be so.

http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/79/1/1

I know big-tobacco is evil but the anti-tobacco crowd is also getting MADD...

Next thing I know they will come out with a research that proves that looking at a pack of cigs causes cancer...

Initial research indicated that nicotine is not carcinogenic, but more recent studies are suggesting that may not be so.
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/79/1/1

I've always wondered how much injustice is perpetrated by drug screening on large populations, since false positives do occur and statistically must occur twice in a row at least some of the time, which is the threshold considered conclusive proof of abuse by most employers and the courts.

this very problem came up in England a while ago, but for SIDS deaths. If I recall correctly, some statistician testified at a murder trial as to the infinitesimal chance that a mother would have two infants die from SIDS separately. In fact, granted the size of the population, it is not unlikely for two SIDS deaths to happen to some mother somewhere in the country. Perhaps someone else can remember the details. here's an article but it's not free: http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/axm015v1

The raw images from the device alone can take up this much space. 8 lanes, 300 imaging regions (tiles) per lane. Each imaged 4 times (one for each base/channel). A typical run is 37 cycles (base pairs), paired end runs (now typical) double this so:

8*300*4*37*2 =710400

On a GA1 those files are 2mb each, giving you around a terabyte and a half of of primary data to process. Image analysis takes place processing those files in to "intensity files". Those are further processed in to corrected intensities, then basecalls. Each of these steps produces a similar number of files. Some details of the process here: http://sgenomics.org/mediawiki/upload/8/80/Pipeline.pdf

Those numbers are for a GA1, the current version of the instrument has less imaging regions (100). However cycle length has increased (typically now 75+ bp).
As a side note all the tools used are "shared source" and not available under an open source license. There is a project called Swift which is an open source tool to do this: http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/btp383

The odds of one with the syndrome passing it to a direct descendant are also pretty low ~ 1% chance.

Well, gee, you're only completely wrong...

In fact the heritability is quite high:

http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/12/suppl_2/R125

In fact I've seen numerous cases of schizophrenia passed down through several generations of offspring.

RTFS more carefully next time before you chastize someone for not paying attention. It makes you look bad.

Check up on the law before chastizing someone for chastizing someone for not paying attention. In particular: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/ukpga_19880048_en_2#pt1-ch2-pb1-l1g16 16(2) and http://rpc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/112/22/657. The NPG appears to be alleging that the user/wikipedia are authorizing UK users' infringement. And: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/ukpga_19880048_en_2#pt1-ch2-pb2-l1g24 24(2); there's an accusation of unlawful downloading, too.

Well, we knew most of this same information in the 60's/70's. Not exactly news now, we knew that sperm "aged" and degraded.

More work happened in the 90's. http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/8/8/1251

Meanwhile, this article pretty well describes the reason that most slashdotters have (or will soon have) pattern baldness: http://www.steadyhealth.com/articles/Consequences_of_over_masturbation_a589_f0.html

Here's the actual scientific paper, rather than the blog.

Not quite. In addition to several STDs, neonatal circumcision significantly lowers the (already low) risk of penile cancer and (the somewhat more common) balanitis. Then there are many recent studies indicating that it's protective against HIV, Chancroid and Syphilis, Herpes, and HPV (although I should point out that the previous two studies overlap and arrive at somewhat different conclusions, as the protective effect against Herpes was only borderline significant in the first).

And not only does it protect the male, but it reduces the risk of male-to-female transmission too.

Granted, there are other studies that arrive at opposite conclusions, though I haven't seen any on HIV in particular in quite some time. But it would be grossly inaccurate to claim that this link has been "long since disproven". At best, the jury is still out.

"Of course, that won't happen because IT professionals never make mistakes."

It's not just IT professionals. It's bioinformatics in general. Most of the code at the heart of these pipelines was developed by grad students to generate publications. The code is not production quality. The code is always poorly commented. Scientific validation is very ad-hoc - there are no generally accepted methods for validating algorithms that operate on genomic data. There's a culture in bioinformatics (and to some extent, scientific computing in general) of ignoring software quality when the code generates the results that were "expected".

Unfortunately, once something is published, biologists tend to trust it. This generally works for wet-lab protocols, where the reviewers are familiar with the experimental design and analysis. But, bioinformatics papers are often reviewed by the same people, who are completely unqualified to review software papers (most computer scientists are, too, but that's another post for another day).

But, don't believe me, see for yourself. These programs are forming the foundation for the next generation of personalized genomics applications:

http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/bioinformatics/nextgenerationsequencing.html

Download the software developed for any those papers. Browse the code. Be afraid.

-Chris

On the other hand one can observe the rate of brain tumors among train drivers. (In countries with fully electrified railways systems, of course).

You can, but the studies involve very few cases and are therefore very cautious in drawing conclusions: "For brain tumor (astrocytoma), the observed relative risk was close to one"; "95% CI: 1.2, 21.2". It looks like there is a small effect in this case, although it should be noted that the exposure to magnetism of the subjects in the second study there was over 100 times higher than exposure in the 200-metres-from-HT-power-line scenario the OP was talking about, which is I believe in the order of 100 times higher itself than mobile phone masts (a topic you hint at in your post).

Yes, there is some evidence that magnetic fields can have health effects, I'll admit it. But the evidence is overstated and the risks exagerated repeatedly by people like the original poster who seem to be spreading anti-electricity FUD for all I can see (probably not intentionally; few people have done the research and read the reports here).

Well, you're certainly right about that, but maybe you should have explained what you meant? I just read the first four results and two observed no elevated risk, but these two report an increased risk for certain kinds. I only read the results and do not know how to interpret them properly, what do you think?

Prolonged exposure (living or going to school) at 200 meters raised the chance of getting leukemia by 70%. 200 meters to 500 meters raised it by 20%. [...] And for those asking for citations, search Google for "power lines leukemia" .

I did. Half of the results I got were of the "study finds no link between power lines, leukemia" type. The rest seemed to be written by internet nuts with no clue what they were talking about. Assuming then you meant to search without the quotes, I repeated the search. This time I found more that substantiate what you said, but realising that half of them didn't know what they were talking about I repeated it on google scholar (as should anyone interested in what actual scientific research on a subject says).

Results: "no relationship was found between leukemia and electric power line configurations", "Residence near high-voltage lines did not increase risk", [test subjects who lived] within 300 metres [of a power line showed a] relative risk [with] 95% confidence interval [of one kind of leukemia of] 0.8-3.5 [, or for another] 0.7-3.8 [, or if exposure was prolonged] 1.0-4.6 [or] 0.9-4.7" (i.e., for those who don't understand how to interpret that last one, no statistically significant effects -- note that this is the study that's usually cited _in favour_ of arguments about power lines causing leukemia). "the risk was not significantly associated with either residential magnetic-field levels ", "The study provides [...] no support for an association between leukemia and [magnetic field exposure]", "the results suggest that typical magnetic fields of high-voltage power lines are not an important cause of leukemia in adults", "These results provide little support for a relation between power-frequency EMF exposure and risk of childhood leukemia", "For residential exposure >= 0.2 uT, the relative risk for leukemia was estimated at .. 95% confidence interval 0.8-2.2" (i.e. not statistically significant). That's the first page of results finished with; I don't see any evidence fdor your assertion of a 70% increase in risk, and I would be cautious at claiming even that there's a link. Google scholar selects widely cited papers first, and papers with the most provocative results are likely to be the most widely cited. Given the number of studies that have been conducted on this subject, we'd expect at least some to come up with postive results based on random variation. That none of the ones I've looked at have even had statistically significant results suggests there's nothing to this, and it really is just random variation we're seeing.

Prolonged exposure (living or going to school) at 200 meters raised the chance of getting leukemia by 70%. 200 meters to 500 meters raised it by 20%. [...] And for those asking for citations, search Google for "power lines leukemia" .

I did. Half of the results I got were of the "study finds no link between power lines, leukemia" type. The rest seemed to be written by internet nuts with no clue what they were talking about. Assuming then you meant to search without the quotes, I repeated the search. This time I found more that substantiate what you said, but realising that half of them didn't know what they were talking about I repeated it on google scholar (as should anyone interested in what actual scientific research on a subject says).

Results: "no relationship was found between leukemia and electric power line configurations", "Residence near high-voltage lines did not increase risk", [test subjects who lived] within 300 metres [of a power line showed a] relative risk [with] 95% confidence interval [of one kind of leukemia of] 0.8-3.5 [, or for another] 0.7-3.8 [, or if exposure was prolonged] 1.0-4.6 [or] 0.9-4.7" (i.e., for those who don't understand how to interpret that last one, no statistically significant effects -- note that this is the study that's usually cited _in favour_ of arguments about power lines causing leukemia). "the risk was not significantly associated with either residential magnetic-field levels ", "The study provides [...] no support for an association between leukemia and [magnetic field exposure]", "the results suggest that typical magnetic fields of high-voltage power lines are not an important cause of leukemia in adults", "These results provide little support for a relation between power-frequency EMF exposure and risk of childhood leukemia", "For residential exposure >= 0.2 uT, the relative risk for leukemia was estimated at .. 95% confidence interval 0.8-2.2" (i.e. not statistically significant). That's the first page of results finished with; I don't see any evidence fdor your assertion of a 70% increase in risk, and I would be cautious at claiming even that there's a link. Google scholar selects widely cited papers first, and papers with the most provocative results are likely to be the most widely cited. Given the number of studies that have been conducted on this subject, we'd expect at least some to come up with postive results based on random variation. That none of the ones I've looked at have even had statistically significant results suggests there's nothing to this, and it really is just random variation we're seeing.

Prolonged exposure (living or going to school) at 200 meters raised the chance of getting leukemia by 70%. 200 meters to 500 meters raised it by 20%. [...] And for those asking for citations, search Google for "power lines leukemia" .

I did. Half of the results I got were of the "study finds no link between power lines, leukemia" type. The rest seemed to be written by internet nuts with no clue what they were talking about. Assuming then you meant to search without the quotes, I repeated the search. This time I found more that substantiate what you said, but realising that half of them didn't know what they were talking about I repeated it on google scholar (as should anyone interested in what actual scientific research on a subject says).

Results: "no relationship was found between leukemia and electric power line configurations", "Residence near high-voltage lines did not increase risk", [test subjects who lived] within 300 metres [of a power line showed a] relative risk [with] 95% confidence interval [of one kind of leukemia of] 0.8-3.5 [, or for another] 0.7-3.8 [, or if exposure was prolonged] 1.0-4.6 [or] 0.9-4.7" (i.e., for those who don't understand how to interpret that last one, no statistically significant effects -- note that this is the study that's usually cited _in favour_ of arguments about power lines causing leukemia). "the risk was not significantly associated with either residential magnetic-field levels ", "The study provides [...] no support for an association between leukemia and [magnetic field exposure]", "the results suggest that typical magnetic fields of high-voltage power lines are not an important cause of leukemia in adults", "These results provide little support for a relation between power-frequency EMF exposure and risk of childhood leukemia", "For residential exposure >= 0.2 uT, the relative risk for leukemia was estimated at .. 95% confidence interval 0.8-2.2" (i.e. not statistically significant). That's the first page of results finished with; I don't see any evidence fdor your assertion of a 70% increase in risk, and I would be cautious at claiming even that there's a link. Google scholar selects widely cited papers first, and papers with the most provocative results are likely to be the most widely cited. Given the number of studies that have been conducted on this subject, we'd expect at least some to come up with postive results based on random variation. That none of the ones I've looked at have even had statistically significant results suggests there's nothing to this, and it really is just random variation we're seeing.

Prolonged exposure (living or going to school) at 200 meters raised the chance of getting leukemia by 70%. 200 meters to 500 meters raised it by 20%. [...] And for those asking for citations, search Google for "power lines leukemia" .

I did. Half of the results I got were of the "study finds no link between power lines, leukemia" type. The rest seemed to be written by internet nuts with no clue what they were talking about. Assuming then you meant to search without the quotes, I repeated the search. This time I found more that substantiate what you said, but realising that half of them didn't know what they were talking about I repeated it on google scholar (as should anyone interested in what actual scientific research on a subject says).

Results: "no relationship was found between leukemia and electric power line configurations", "Residence near high-voltage lines did not increase risk", [test subjects who lived] within 300 metres [of a power line showed a] relative risk [with] 95% confidence interval [of one kind of leukemia of] 0.8-3.5 [, or for another] 0.7-3.8 [, or if exposure was prolonged] 1.0-4.6 [or] 0.9-4.7" (i.e., for those who don't understand how to interpret that last one, no statistically significant effects -- note that this is the study that's usually cited _in favour_ of arguments about power lines causing leukemia). "the risk was not significantly associated with either residential magnetic-field levels ", "The study provides [...] no support for an association between leukemia and [magnetic field exposure]", "the results suggest that typical magnetic fields of high-voltage power lines are not an important cause of leukemia in adults", "These results provide little support for a relation between power-frequency EMF exposure and risk of childhood leukemia", "For residential exposure >= 0.2 uT, the relative risk for leukemia was estimated at .. 95% confidence interval 0.8-2.2" (i.e. not statistically significant). That's the first page of results finished with; I don't see any evidence fdor your assertion of a 70% increase in risk, and I would be cautious at claiming even that there's a link. Google scholar selects widely cited papers first, and papers with the most provocative results are likely to be the most widely cited. Given the number of studies that have been conducted on this subject, we'd expect at least some to come up with postive results based on random variation. That none of the ones I've looked at have even had statistically significant results suggests there's nothing to this, and it really is just random variation we're seeing.

Sounds like decision-making will become less questionable by the openness OSS introduces at several levels: source, formats and price (not necessarily zero, but leaving little room for overspending to factor in kickbacks), to name a few.
In a perfect world, politicians would now start campaigning and competing to advocate and introduce whatever affordable and sufficiently functional software keeps existing hardware usable even longer, minimizes public spending and allows for the biggest tax cut.;-)

It would have been terrible for future generations' access to public records if further decades of material had to be stored in proprietary, DRM-encumbered crypto bottles on closed-source systems which can't be kept alive without the consent of their corporate overlords, and if these could get schools to indoctrinate kids to obey them.

Now all they have to make clear (to prevent monopolies from being built by other means) is that there should be no such thing as software patents...

Having or not having FOXP2 is not the point. The point is that neanderthals had exactly the same allele, the same sequence of FOXP2 that we humans have. And that small changes to this sequence render humans speechless.

Maybe they got it from us?

Krause et al. (2007) recently examined patterns of genetic variation at FOXP2 in two Neandertals. This gene is of particular interest because it is involved in speech and language and was previously shown to harbor the signature of recent positive selection. The authors found the same two amino-acid substitutions in Neandertals as in modern humans. Assuming that these sites were the targets of selection and no interbreeding between the two groups, they concluded that selection at FOXP2 occurred before the populations split, over 300Kya. Here, we show that the data are unlikely under this scenario but may instead be consistent with low rates of gene flow between modern humans and Neandertals. We also collect additional data and introduce a modeling framework to estimate levels of modern human contamination of the Neandertal samples. We find that, depending on the assumptions, additional control experiments may be needed to rule out contamination at FOXP2.

You can complain all you like, just don't expect anyone to listen until you have robust scientific evidence like the second hand smoker's do.

Like the WHO study that showed a decrease in cancer risk in children exposed to 2nd hand smoke?

That study is a real lesson on how to spin your data. They found a significant protective effect of 2nd hand smoke on children. The entire confidence interval for the odds ratio is less than 1. But they conclude: "Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure to ETS and lung cancer risk." They're clearly ignoring the negative assocation because it conflicts with their political stance.

On the other hand they found an effect of spousal exposure to 2nd hand smoke. The odds ratio they found is greater than 1, but the confidence interval goes all the way down to 0.94. That means that they cannot state with any confidence that there is any difference in the odds of you getting cancer whether your spouse smokes or not. This is not a significant result, and I don't know where they get off calling this "weak evidence". Statistically insignificant results are not evidence at all.

What's best is that they blame their inability to find a clear and direct relationship between 2nd hand smoke and cancer on small sample sizes. This was the biggest study of its kind, spanning 7 countries.

Please not that I do not smoke (tobacco). I simply hate to see the scientific process twisted by political considerations. This is the same kind of bullshit research that keeps marijuana illegal. Lets not keep falling for the same shit over and over again.

"Arguably, banning the drawing of such things, and dissemination of such cartoons discourages sickos from watching the cartoons and being encouraged."

There is no evidence for the argument that viewing child porn cartoons increases the risk of a person molesting a child. There is evidence to the contrary, however. Hall, et al. (1995) found that "arousal to pedophilic stimuli does not necessarily correspond with pedophilic behavior", Freel (2003) found that "if someone is fully inhibited from sexually abusing children, no amount of emotional congruence, sexual arousal, or blockage will lead them to abuse children", while Sheldon & Howitt (2008) found that "fantasy deficit may be involved in contact offending against children."

Er, not quite. Algorithms are the base theory of computer languages. Algorithms are more like English sentence structure. More like English grammar. So the Knuth of English grammar might be Quirk et all's "A Grammar Of Contemporary English". All 1132 pages of gerunds, infinitives, the order of adjectives, etc. Your English teacher's idea of heaven is within its covers.

The author's description from long ago. Now in PDF form.
http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/issue_pdf/backmatter_pdf/XXVII/1.pdf

Linguistic schools like it.
http://grammar-history.kiev.ua/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&Itemid=55&gid=16&orderby=dmdate_published

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Contemporary-English-Randolph-Quirk/dp/058252444X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230219776&sr=1-1

Cheers,
Jim

Where is this "scientific fact" that you speak of? The only "emotionally unstable" teens that I've read about...

If you search Google or Google Scholar for "teen brain development" you will find some relevant information. Like this or this or if you've got access, stuff like this.

A lot of scientific attention has focused on charting the ongoing physical maturation of the frontal lobes through adolescence and even into early adulthood. The frontal lobes are involved in executive functioning, which includes things like self-regulation and impulse control. The frontal lobes are also involved in self-monitoring, which interestingly ties back to the grandparent poster's statement:

I'm sure you didn't think you were emotionally unstable, teens generally don't, doesn't mean you weren't.

I don't think many people spend significant time sitting right next to a TV transmission tower. WHo know,
          maybe some of or cancer deaths may be related to EM spectrum energy. That would be a tough study to do with
          people.

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/164/6/538

Go to google scholar, type in "gun in home death" and you will get a smattering of research from various disciplines indicating that this is the case. The crook being shot is not the point. Protecting your family is the point, and by bringing a gun into the home, you are more likely to hurt/kill a family member, defeating the point of a gun in the first place. This study should cover a lot of "buts..." that people have. Granted, if there *is* actually a crook in your home about to kill/rape or whatever, go ahead and shoot them. I'm all for self defense. The odds of that happening to most people are really slim, therefore self defense is not a valid reason to keep a gun around.

Mods: Troll? Come on.

You contradict yourself....

"Viewers of adult porn don't usually go out and become rapists do they?", then "your implication that blocking child porn would increase child abuse doesn't seem credible, in fact it is more likely to reduce it. The current situation probably tends to lead pedophiles to believe that their mindset is relatively normal which is far more dangerous to children."

In reality, most paedophiles don't molest children for the same reasons that most men don't rape women. Even those who think that sex with children is inherently harmless avoid sexual contact because of the effects of a socio-legal response for both themselves and children. From Freel (2003):

"[..] an expressed sexual interest in children does not infer actual perpretation. Indeed, the empirical evidence suggests that a much smaller number of men actually abuse children. There are significantly more men who express a sexual interest in children than there are actual perpetrators. This suggests the presence of inhibitors that stop men acting on their sexual interest."

I suspect that blocking internet access to child pornography would increase rates of child sexual abuse, but not necessarily in the way many would imagine. Digital storage and distribution means that any scannable or digital material can survive forever and be distributed on a much wider scale than would be possible without the internet. This means that there will be less interest in new material being produced, which is obviously a good thing if the material in question is child pornography.

There will clearly be some paedophiles who would abuse children regardless, but they are in a tiny minority of what is a large but hidden demographic of paedophiles.

"The current situation probably tends to lead pedophiles to believe that their mindset is relatively normal which is far more dangerous to children."

What "current situation" are you referring to? I am a paedophile, I know that paedophilia is normal, but I don't molest children. Believing that a fantasy is normal doesn't mean that one considers acting on the fantasy to be acceptable. Freel's research also shows that:

"If someone is fully inhibited from sexually abusing children, no amount of emotional congruence, sexual arousal, or blockage will lead them to abuse children."

From Hall, et al (1995):

Consistent with previous data (Barbaree & Marshall, 1989; Briere & Runtz, 1989; Fedora et al., 1992; Freund & Watson, 1991), 20 % of the current subjects self-reported pedophilic interest and 26.25 % exhibited penile arousal to pedophilic stimuli that equaled or exceeded arousal to adult stimuli.

[..]

Eighty subjects completed the study. [..] Twenty-six subjects [approximately 33%] exhibited sexual arousal to the child slides that equaled or exceeded their arousal to the adult slides.

[..]

a sizable minority of men in normal populations who have not molested children may exhibit pedophilic fantasies and arousal. In recent studies, 12 to 32% of community college samples of men reported sexual attraction to children (B &R, 1989, H,G & C. 1990) or exhibited penile response to pedophilic stimuli (B&M, 1989, F et al, 1992, F&L, 1989, F & W, 1989). Thus, arousal to pedophilic stimuli does not necessarily correspond with pedophilic behavior (Hall, 1990; Schouten & Simon, 1992), although there are arguments to the contrary (Quinsey & Laws, 1990).

"citation needed"

If you're referring to the argument that most child porn viewers don't molest children, see a collection of quotes here