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There's also a solid statistical correlation between smoking and heart disease. One source for such data is the multi-generation Framingham Study. For example, see this from 2006 or this from 2005. You don't like the Framingham Study? Try ARIC (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities). See this and then read abstracts from some of the many articles that cite it. Here's a nice one from 2006.

Now, it's also clear that using nicotine replacement therapy as a way to quit smoking is good for your life expectancy. what's not so well studied is what happens to people who've never smoked and who start to use nicotine. In other words, in the published literature, the dangers of nicotine may be masked by the benefits of smoking cessation. This remains to be seen.

The evidence against nicotine is that it causes arterial damage. The statistical correlations from Framingham & ARIC are between smoking and coronary heart disease (not to mention cancer,but I'm focusing on CHD). The guy I worked for was all about studying arterial damage to predict odds of heart attack and stroke. You see, the damaged artery tends to become sclerotic and develop plaques. Vulnerable plaques can break off, enter the blood stream, and then get stuck in a small blood vessel, blocking it and starving some region of tissue for blood. If that tissue is in the heart, you have a miocardial infarction. If it's in the brain, you have one form of stroke. Nicotine also raises blood pressure, increasing the risk of the other form of stroke (the two kinds of stroke are blockage and bleed).

In other words, there is good reason to believe that nicotine has some harmful effects. The real question is in which cases its benefits outweigh its harm.

As compared to whom? The history challenged individuals who think corporations know best?

Like Shell Oil?

Or Texaco?

Or Enron?

Or These 14 rapacious monsters (Caterpillar, Chevron, CocaCola, Dow, Dyncorp, Ford, KBR-Halliburton, Lockheed, Monsanto, Nestle, Phillip Morris, Pfizer, SLDE, Walmart all of whom have disgusting track records of either exploitation, environmental destruction, corruption, or some combination thereof?

Government is the only remaining bullwark between the thugs who run industry and the people they use up as labour resource and then destroy as a product. It is the only safeguard the environment has: if governments do not constrain industry, then industry will always look at the quarterly report and continue to crap all over the planet. And given how collusive government is with industry, it is NOT a pretty or welcoming picture - as government has, for the past several thousand years, proven itself to be little more than the means of protecting and projecting the interests of the ruling classes. The struggle is real, not imagined. And it is only through a re-imagined and re-energised public sector will our species have any hope of surviving the coming crises in Energy, Environment, and Population reduction.

It is the poster who is historically challenged and politically ignorant.

RS

While it's certainly very nice that the big journals like Nature take steps towards offering Open Access to (some of) their material, it has already been a growing trend in certain research areas for the past, say, five years or so. I do research in the field of Bioinformatics/Molecular Biology and except for high-profile stuff that could go into Science or Nature, I simply will not publish anything in a journal that is not Open Access.

The journal being Open Access is of tremendous importance to the researcher as it makes it _much_ more likely, that your paper will actually be found and read by other scientists. I know this from my own literature searches: hits found the PubMed database links to the journal webpage, and if no Open Access version is available, it really have to look like a promising paper, before I spend my time ordering through the University Library.

Also, it should be noted that an ever increasing number of Open Access journal exists in the areas of Life Science in general - for example all the BMC journals, the PLoS journals and even journals from "old school" publishers such as Oxford University Press (e.g. Nucleic Acids Research) have gone Open Access. Also an increasing number of traditional journal now offer an Open Access option, where your pay to make your specific paper availably under Open Access.

Well, I constantly see people mock those who spend three or four times the money for computer parts in order to get a minuscule increase in games' performance which, however small, can be accurately measured.

In that light, spending ten times the money in order to get some improvement which you cannot even prove that is there or that is attributed to the change you made and getting laughed at, is not prejudice; it's the logical conclusion.

I also find it amusing that most, if not all, of the editors for the various hi-end magazines are in their 40s. Hearing ability suffers with age, meaning either they are in a very lucky minority with above average ears or they just imagine hearing things. Either way, it makes little difference to the rest of us, just as it makes little difference if we get half a frame more in our favorite game-of-the-moment...

...there is a serious problem with treating these issues as solvable through prohibitions. People want drugs... forcing them to go through back channels ... [creates] a fantastic money-making machine for the criminal element to exploit, and makes criminals out of a whole bunch of people...

A better solution is to treat these things like we currently treat alcoholism...do everything in your power to help out those that can't deal with their drug of choice...but leave everyone else alone.

...[Smokers] can't smoke in enclosed places anymore, so it doesn't negatively impact others, but otherwise they are left alone.

As far as pot, the stuff doesn't even physically addict you...

Yeah, how dare we infringe upon the right of the minority to force their ideals upon the majority, right? This is one of the most blatant inversions of the principle of protection from mob rule that I've ever seen..

There is a risk of serious data loss in the event that a TPM security chip or hard drive is corrupted or if a user leaves the organization. For example, organizations may need access to a former employee's encrypted data or TPM-secured keys for disaster recovery purposes. The archive and recovery of keys protected by the Trusted Platform Module security chip is vital for all businesses and especially those needing to retain access to encrypted data for a predetermined time. Security and data integrity must be maintained while ensuring proper archive procedures and recovery by someone other than the original user. Additionally, transferring data to a replacement PC requires an enterprise-level process for transferring the appropriate TPM-secured application keys.

circumcised males have fewer health problems, and so that is generally an advantage for the male
That's disputed.

Reduces aids (this story is from the BBC, but the reference is from "Lancet."

Reduces chlamidia (Oxford Journal.)

From the AMA on UTI (summary... 12-fold increase of risk of UTI if uncircumcised):

Urinary Tract Infection: There is little doubt that the uncircumcised infant is at higher risk for urinary tract infection (UTI), although the magnitude of this risk is debatable. A meta-analysis of 9 studies published between 1984 and 1992 revealed a 12-fold increased risk of UTI in uncircumcised males.4 Most of the studies analyzed were case-control designs that analyzed the rate of UTI in the first year of life.

From the AMA on Penile cancer (summary... only uncircumcised men get penile cancer):

Penile cancer is a rare disease in the United States (0.9 to 1 per 100,000). Among uncircumcised men the incidence is estimated to be 2.2/100,000.21 Six case series published between 1932 and 1986 found that all penile cancers occurred in uncircumcised individuals.11,22 Results of one case control study provide an exception to this general rule, although circumcision status was determined by self-report.23 Nevertheless, this study also found that the absence of neonatal circumcision increased the risk for penile cancer by a factor of 3.2 Other identified risk factors for penile cancer are phimosis (occurring exclusively in uncircumcised males), genital warts, infection with human papilloma virus, large number of sexual partners, and cigarette smoking.

And of course, circumcision prevents one from ever suffering from phimosis.

So clearly, there are health benefits. There are arguments as to whether these health benefits are "sufficient" to justify circumcision due to incidence of these various issues; but no argument as to the health benefits themselves. My position is that the health benefits themselves are sufficent, and so I do not object on that basis.

but in terms of functionality, it's not really a change for most males
Also disputed.

As to function, as a circumcised male, I can assure you that full functionality is present, as is lots and lots of enjoyment. Anecdotal reports speak to an additional ability to control ejaculation, and to that I can only say I've never had a problem holding off until my partner's orgasm and then going with them; so for my part, if indeed this has anything at all to do with being circumcised, I consider it a huge positive. Functionally speaking, I'm one happy camper, as have been my partners. One thing I can definitively say is that the condition itself does not bring lack of function, or reduced function. No question about it. If the operation was botched (as can happen) or the individual develops mental problems, then certainly you could have trouble, as sex is considerably "mental" anyway, certainly the right attitude is as important as is the physical functioning of the hardware, as it were.

But the basic problem is that young male infiants are routinely circumcised without the ability to give informed consent. You don't have a problem with that?

No, I don't. Their umbilical cords are routinely tied off without their consent as well, because we know that such a proceedure is better for them than to leave it leaking all over the place. Obviously, the parent has the responsibility to choose the path for the infant for best chance for health and survival, just aside from what we might argue are parental rights. I was born with a benign tumor on my left side; they burned it offf with dry ice without consulting my infant self, or waiting until I was older and could actually answer. The issue is crystal clear: I

Researchers at University of Alberta have found that dichloroacetate (DCA) is able to cause tumor regression in a number of human cancers growing in animals. DCA seems to awaken mitochondria, which are present in normal animal cells but dormant in cancer cells, and cancerous tumor growth is stopped.

While DCA has been used for decades to treat mitochondrial diseases in humans, patients are cautioned no human beings have gone through clinical trials using DCA to treat cancer.

I agree objects do not have intent, however human artifacts are always created with one or more intentions, in the case of guns it is obvious one of those intentions is to safely and efficiently kill or maim other people.

Speaking of intent, here in Australia you must sit a test to gain a license for a gun that must be registered. You must state a purpose for owning a gun, "self defense" is not a valid purpose, in the eyes of the law you intend to shoot someone regardless of the morals/legality of any particular situation. It is regarded as a sign of "fear" and trying to work out if that fear is justified just bogs everything down in an endless "what if" argument.

Sports such as hunting and pistol shooting are well catered for, I have participated in both activities with no intention of killing anything other than wild rabbits (rabbits are introduced vermin in this country). Handguns must be stored in a registered and regularly inspected armoury (usually at a gun club). Magazines for shotguns and rifles are illegal but you can store the single/double barrel variety at home. From most Australian's point of view, "African style" anarchy is what you eventually get without effective gun control. I realise the US has a different outlook, that's your perogative and your's alone, I am simply relating experiences from the land down under where I have seen gun control evolve over the last 4-5 decades, if polls are to be belived my personal opinion on our gun laws is a good match for 80+% of Australians.

"Thank god I own a gun, why just last night a roving band of coked up kids veered clear of me. I think it must have been the shiny gleam of my big NRA belt buckle that tipped them off."

Australia has had these laws for ~20yrs now, when the law and associated buy-back program was proposed there was an influx of "NRA belt buckle's" attempting to derail the process. There was considerable public outrage at "arms dealers" attempting to influence our internal affairs, the "belt buckle's" worked out that the public had been "tipped off", packed up their marketing material and slunk out of the country.

The intent of these laws is harm minimization based on epedemilogical research showing (among other things) that a gunshot wound is five times as leathal as a stab wound and far easier to inflict. The event that focused political attention was a heinous crime by a young but deranged individual with a high powered semi-auto who went human hunting and bagged 30-40 of them. None of this has made a significant difference to the overall crime rate (although handguns have never been popular with Aussies anyway), however it has made a significant impact on public health, and just maybe, a greater proportion of a very tiny number of deranged individuals are forced to reload after each shot.

Well, I don't suppose you would trust the U.S. Surgeon General that secondhand smoke causes asthma in children.

And I suppose the International Journal of Epidemiology is in on the Vast Conspiracy about secondhand smoke: Non-smoker lung cancer deaths attributable to exposure to spouse's environmental tobacco smoke

Not to mention the American Lung Association. "Secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 22,700-69,600 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year." (Source)

Or any of the other 74 citations on Wikipedia.

Seriously, arguing about the negative effects of secondhand smoke is like arguing about evolution. The fact there is even an argument is solely due to misinformation spread by huge enterprises that have a lot to lose.

Go for it, dude. Similarly, I am free to avoid blood transfusions because of the risk of HIV infection. It would be absolutely retarded given the level of risk involved in blood transfusions, but I could do it. As I said, to each his own.

Say, didn't the article say "Infected men ... are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose." Not that that has any bearing on responses in this thread. But let me offer everyone some pyrimethamine with this morning's coffee. Bon appetit.

Clever. Rude and smug....but clever.

I don't know how to make this any more clear except by quoting from established medical research. You are just wrong. This study analyzed the effect of a combination of drugs on mice infected with different phases of toxoplasmosis:

http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/50/6/981 .pdf

Key quote:

"In all models, i.e. in acute, chronic and reactivated toxoplasmosis, the combined drugs were effective in terms of both significantly increased survival and decreased brain cyst burdens compared with no treatment."

This does not show that the immune system can effectively combat brain cysts (something I never claimed anyway--in the cyst phase, the immune system seems to be unable to effect the disease) or eliminate tachyzoites resulting from burst brain cysts (which I believe the immune system can do--your assumption that those tachyzoites remain in the brain and inaccessible to blood flow and the immune system is flawed, IMO). What this *does* show is that certain drug treatments have been successful in attacking brain cysts and significantly reducing their number. The study is interesting and is recommended reading.

This "meta study" was used to analyze treatments for toxoplasmosis in AIDS patients:

http://www.aidsmap.com/en/docs/659BAD5D-332A-4F8D- 9F93-8D0F470B2D32.asp

Key quote:

"Wallace found that Toxoplasma IgG antibody positivity did not correlate with cat ownership."

Anyway, cheers to you. This argument is obviously not "winnable." Neither of us have budged. That's cool. I'll keep on with my "financial analysis" and you can keep up with whatever methods you are using. Happy (and parasite free) living to you.

Taft

Also see this:

"Cancer Incidence near Radio and Television Transmitters in Great Britain"

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract /145/1/1

Full paper is downloadable free from that link

This is the original report on the cell phone radiation research. Much better than abc news http://jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/c ontent/abstract/jnci;98/23/1707 You suck zonk

http://jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/c ontent/abstract/jnci;98/23/1707 Requires subscription

The leading article in the current issue of OUP's International Journal of Law and Information Technology features quite a remarkable discussion of these issues in the context of software.

It seems to work here in Europe: after a big campaign of small IT businesses and citizens, the European Parliament rejected a proposal for introducing software patents in the EU.

...this means Neanderthals and modern humans didn't interbreed.

...or it means that the mtDNA study made an error in either observation or conclusion.

BTW, the article to which you link is about nuclear DNA, not mtDNA, and says "little interbreeding occurred", not "no interbreeding occurred".

Anyway, DNA dating is based on assumptions about mutations occuring at a constant rate - an assumption that is widely debated. Also, others have drawn different conclusions from the mtDNA data.

The 'decrese in fertility' is totally unrelated to the temporary discomfort of burning your wanker by having something too hot sitting on it.

Do a google search for "intra scrotal temperature fertility" and you'll find all kinds of interesting tests that basically say that heat messes with how the dna in your sperm is formed. An increase in heat doesn't damage what you've got, but your newly forming sperm goes 'all out of whack'

Also, wearing tight underpants is worse the boxers or commando, and sitting is worse that walking.

http://www.reproduction-online.org/cgi/content/ful l/129/4/505

http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstr act/20/4/1022

Only fix, I suppose, is to get your computer off your lap, strip naked, stand up, walk around, and eject any damanged sperm. You can just tell whoever walks in that you're busy saving the human race.

this is nothing new: it started before the WWI and now there are dozens of companies, universities or hobbyist doing it. It is called: "content analysis", "data mining", "discourse analysis" etc. There is a legend that sais that British intelligence managed to predict quite acurately airstrikes on England based on content analysis of Goebels' radio speeches. Take a look at this links if you are interested. Bibliography of Content Analysis Listings from Communication Abstracts, 1990-1997 Content Analysis Resources web site Text Analysis Info Page - all on text analysis and related topics The discourse analysis page of AI Topics Centre d'analyse des politiques publiques (CAPP) Département de science politique, Université Laval The Center for Social Research Methods: not necesarily content analysis, but it's good to take a look at Research Methods Knowledge Base The Annenberg School for Communication Web Concordances at the English Department of the University of Dundee Companion Website for the book Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: based on the British National Corpus Journal: Language Awareness; has some free issues/articles. The General Inquirer Home Page Journal of Second Language Writing Writing Guides: Conducting Content Analysis at Colorado State University; with a nice adnotated bibliography The Content Analysis Guidebook Online, An Accompaniament to The Content Analysis Guidebook by Kimberley A. Neuendorf. The Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Literary and Linguistic Computing eximancer - Practical Text Mining and Concept Mapping Journal Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation: some online articles Content Analysis News and Discussion mailing list archives some Resources related to content analysis and text analysis; updated quite recently: June 30, 2005;

The Japanese diet seems to have some protective effects. Japanese women who move the US have higher breast cancer rates, for example. If so that would account for some difference.

Even so the Japanese get lung cancer from smoking. From a Japanese lung cancer study:

Elevated risks were found for squamous cell carcinoma in patients with a history of smoking (all had smoked v. 15/20 for controls) and an occupation possibly related to respiratory irritations (15/20 v. 3/20 for controls). Heavy smokers were distributed more in the cancer patients. Moreover, the average Smoking Index among those without "at risk" occupation was 1, 002 with the least being 700, while that with such an occupation was 723. Heavy smoking alone and a smoking/occupation combination could contribute to an early onset of squamous cell carcinoma.

For detailed explanation, from Oxford, a new issue of the International Journal of Law and Information Technology features scholarly articles putting into perspective the latest cr[o|a]p of patents in the fields of both biotechnology and software.

...and why patents are so unjustifiably incompatible with software, see e.g. this paper, as well as a free book on the "mechanics" of the patent debates.

I can see company X patenting their particular implementation of an IP stack, but not the idea of an IP stack.

So they shouldn't be able to obtain a patent for mathematical concepts and rules: Neither do they need them, nor does society (as long as there isn't any useful disclosure it could get in return).

In case such "inventors" (rather don't call them that!) do get software patents nonetheless, scholars have convincingly argued that something much closer to actual source code than a mere abstract idea ought to be required of them, see e.g. http://ijlit.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstra ct/eai031v1.

The problem is, if a system goes down the path (though the literature points out good reasons not to) of granting software patents in the first place, it will have to recognise the potential case of an idea that is ingenious but incredibly difficult and costly to implement - so you couldn't just ask for a commented source "that GNU make can compile without warnings" for every application - and each "software inventor" would argue that their's is one of these, "exceptionally" not requiring disclosure of a prototype.

Just days before the European Commission's next hearing on patent policy that is still being hatched despite the last directive's overwhelming defeat in Parliament, several recent publications discuss developments of the law on Tux' home continent, and successful steps to avert software patents: The huge new book on "The War over Software Patents in the European Union" by the founder of NoSoftwarePatents has just been released for download. If you prefer a few hundred pages less, see the latest issue of the International Journal of Law and Information Technology for a scholarly article.

That's the whole point of having a gun. The fact that it exists, as a deterrent, generally reduces the need to actually shoot it.

In areas where right-to-carry is present, violent crimes go down. In areas (or whole countries) where guns are banned, violent crimes go way up. It's not a coincidence.

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/27/2/214 .pdf

Whatever small value guns may have as a deterrent in some locales (I'm guessing you live in a more rural area?) is far outweighed by their mere availability. The US has the most lax gun control among first world nations, and we have the highest per-capita gun violence.

... is told very well in this recent publication by Oxford University Press.

I know Slashdot likes to blindly bash things that might prohibit technological advance. But it's been said that the effects of nanotubes could be as dangerous as asbestos.

Here's a study conducted by researchers from NASA, Wyle Labs, UofT Medical:

http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/ 77/1/126

DDT did not decimate the ecosystem of Borneo

Okay, okay, decimate is too strong a word. But it did damage the rivers severely causing large fish die-offs, and when you kill off an entire species in the areas (cats), that's not exactly "no effect."

There were no outbreaks of plague or typhus.

Curiously enough, I didn't say there was. I said the cats were dropped to stop the population from dying. It worked.

Every instance you find of someone saying this is someone retelling a trumped up story they heard. The cats were dropped because there was FEAR an outbreak would occur. It didn't. ... because they dropped the cats!

What am I missing here?

The insect control measures in Borneo are today considered to have been a great success. The problem of malaria went away. Thousands of children lived who might otherwise have died

Yes. Which is why I'm not opposed to it in principle. I'm opposed to people who say it doesn't do any damage. It does. You have to know what you're doing ahead of time. If you just blindly go ahead and do it on a large scale, you could end up with more problems than you started with.

Incidentally, regarding "children living who might otherwise have died", you might want to take a look at Corin & Weaver's paper from the JRTPH. DDT's effects in humans, while not life-threatening, should cause problems with lactation cycles and premature births. It's entirely possible given the levels used that DDT is a net detriment. In any case, it's worse than alternative treatments.

Sorry, I just don't take USAID's position on DDT seriously. They have in the past shown themselves to be tools of of the anti-DDT environmental lobby.

There's plenty of evidence to support their claim. See here, for instance, or here, both of which show that insecticide-treated nets are more cost effective than DDT.

Maybe you could make a program that automatically converts a program made in such a language into a chip design ? There are some that exist. For example: http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstr act/45/1/2

There is no way that the lenght of the day can grow to compensate the reduced (with a sin function) solar radiation. At most, a day can have 24 hours, what is not enough. But, of course, they can produce something, just not as much as tropical areas.

This says otherwise. The lighting conditions would make such a place very interesting. Solar intensity does vary as the cosine of the incidence angle. But remember that the incidence angle must factor in earth's inclination angle of 23 deg. At midsummer at the north pole the sun is surprisingly high in the sky, and stays that way for months.

Modern economics imply that the more variety of people (and natural resources, but that is not the case here) a country have, the less it needs external commerce. That is why the United States have small exports (and imports too). It is just natural to the other developped countries to trade more. And I'm talking about developped countries here, so the rest doesn't apply.

The US is the world leader in aggregate global trade (imports + exports) by far. It is natural for rich countries to want to trade. Throughout history, it is what has made them rich. I will agree that less developed countries attract disproportionate (but fair) levels of investment. I don't mean to criticize trade surpluses achieved by fair means. That is competition. What I do critize are trade surpluses supported by currency manipulation (China) or direct state support.

Not that slashdotters need to worry about this, but there should be a fairly large demand for this type of accessory. Especially since this nice scary study came out:

http://news.com.com/Study+Laptop+heat+a+threat+to+ fertility/2100-1044_3-5485763.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1559108 7&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum
http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/ 20/2/452

The study showed laptop use can significantly increase scrotal temperature. Previous studies have shown regular increased temperature can reduce sperm count for weeks or months.

I'm switching back to a desktop.

--David

see this free access paper.

A Fast Multi-Resolution Block Matching Algorithm for Multiple-Frame Motion Estimation

Efficient Video Similarity Measurement and Searc (probably grad students here)

I felt my brain being damaged while I looked them over, but they appear to employ something similar to image matching with the added component of movement. It looks like if they are implemented as desired, you could find video similar to a reference piece. This is not useful for searching based on a text query, however. But, you could build an index that matched words to a reference library of video clips, then search for matches to your reference clip.

Of course, all the heavy crunching would be used to build a lean, fast search index, hopefully.

In my case, it's a little confused since I have a mild seizure disorder AND have been diagnosed bipolar as well. However, the treatment I'm on for those does seem to mitigate the negative side of Aspergers some. However, without a baseline fMRI and an on-meds fMRI (plus an expert in this field), I have no hard data on that. It could equally well be that the other stuff aggravated whatever the Asperger mechanism is.

The extensive research going on is excellent - I'm surprised it took so long for them to use fMRI, I would have thought that one obvious, although I've been told in the past by my own doctor that fMRI couldn't possibly show anything up. Clearly they were wrong on that. (* Gloat *)

Some more information for the obsessive:

• Neuroanatomical differences between Aspergers and Autism
  
• Home page for Asperger's Disorder, though how the disorder can type is something I don't know.
  
• Another quick intro but good if you don't have gigantic magnetic resonance imaging equiptment in the basement.
  
• Not sure if this is a dupe, but it goes in depth into the differences shown by fMRI.
  

A Neurology journal article on the anatomy of Asperger's, as seen from fMRI scans

Another neurology article, on the anatomy of Autism, as seen from fMRI scans

The research at the Institute of Psychiatry, by Professor Declan Murphy is beginning to indicate that autism affects the frontal and mid-sections of the brain, whereas Aspergers appears to affect the frontal sections only. Nonetheless, other studies (not linked to here) have shown that those with asperger's have an elevated probability of having autistic children. In other words, there's good evidence they share mechanisms BUT there is also good evidence that autism outside of Asperger's involves additional mechanisms that are NOT present in Asperger's.

I asked the IoP about research on Asperger's and autism a while back, and they pointed me to the following lecture (which does not appear to be on the web anywhere):

Frith U. (2004) Emanuel Miller lecture: confusions and controversies about Asperger syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry & Allied Disciplines. 45(4):672-86, 2004 May

I hope this information is useful, trivially interesting or even interestingly trivial, depending on perspective.

the next generation merom will, apparently, operatate at wattages of ~0.5 watts. Maybe now they will be a bit more cool. And, maybe, now I can buy a laptop that wont heat to the point of causing infertility. Kool. This better happen soon or there will be no "geeks, the next generation"(TM)!

It's not just a story. Several health care workers have been exposed to HIV through needlestick injuries and show no measurable sign of infection. Presumably this is due to post-exposure prophylaxis, which is to say, huge doses of anti-infective drugs within less than an hour of the injury. One common protocol among healthcare workers involves zidovudine, lamivudine and indinavir, all three of which are pretty strong anti-retroviral drugs.

That's a little like saying that this rock I'm holding is keeping all of the tigers away, but there are similar cases involving HIV-contaminated needlestick injuries in which the worker did not follow the post-exposure protocols fully and is now infected with HIV.

For a bit more information, read this whitepaper: Ignorance of post-exposure prophylaxis guidelines following HIV needlestick injury may increase the risk of seroconversion

> can we also discontinue the statement that people "boot down" every night.
No. The brain has effectively shutdown:
  http://www.wisconline.com/feature/deep_sleep_image s.html
Vaguely alluding to electric field frequency (ie. EEG frequency) is useless. Embryonic tissues has eletric fields:
  http://rpd.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract /106/4/375

> Kindly contrast this with a collection of cells that has no functional organ

Yes, lets - both are collections of cells _completely encapsulate_ a _unique _human _individual life_. So you think one is undeserving of life - why - on the basis of strength and power? You would be at home in Nazi Germany.

> I think the more proper analogy is to make a comparison to someone
> who is in a persistent vegetative state, but even then, someone in
> a PVS still has more function than 'none'.

Yes, sure. See above.

> ...I think that once the brain has had enough time
> ... dropping that fetus becomes a very tricky matter.
Spare me your attempt at feigned righteousness. Do you support doing anything except wringing your hands for abortions after your "tricky" deadline? Are they murder?

> comparing a zygote to an out-of-the-womb human being is an irrational argument
Why? Just because one is bigger and stronger than the other?

> (further compounded when there are those that support protecting
> that zygote by law are more than willing to let the out-of-the-womb
> individual die by law; but,
> that's not really a part of this thread of discussion).
You said it.

> You are, of course, free to think or feel as you wish...
So are you, and we both are accountable for our thoughts and actions. You base yours on speculation and ineffectual compromise.

From http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/18/ 4/684
"These results have implications for the understanding of bat evolution, for example, flight in bats may have arisen only once within the Chiroptera (see also Allard, McNiff, and Miyamoto 1996 ). "

For example, you'd expect to see animals with 1 arm, 2 arms, 3 arms, 10 arms, no arms, half an arm, round arms, and so on for every part of the body while evolution is fine tuning this stuff.

In high school, a friend of mine was born with only one small, withered arm. Three arms in a person would be difficult from a genetic standpoint, because we develop two arms due to the initial symmetrical division of the body during development. You could have three of lots of organs, but it sure would be difficult to get all the plumbing right and have a surviving person come out of that development.

On the other hand (no pun intended) polydactylism, having one or more extra fingers or toes, is probably the most common abnormality found at birth. The tendency to have offspring with polydactylism is possibly genetic in some instances.

Syndactylism, having no fingers or toes, can also be due to a genetic mutation.

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract /161/2/136

Summary -- it's hard to tell.

The English grammatical structure was primarily taken from early Germanic languages (probably from early Scandinavian), whereas our core vocabulary is mainly derived from Latin (a good deal of it comes via French, thanks to the Normans). Although English has become quite a bit removed from its Germanic origins, our grammatical structure still greatly resembles German in many aspects.

The core vocabulary, which is inseparable from the grammar, is clearly predominantly Germanic. There is no grammar left without to, of, a, the, and, or, etc. Core religious vocabulary like god and hell is also Germanic, just like the days of the week, the numbers, basic agricultural and hunting vocabulary etc. Just nouns and verbs are to a large extent derived from Latin, and remarkably it is the only Germanic language, as far as I know, that uses non-Germanic words and concepts for core legal vocabulary (law, violation, guilt, responsibility, liability, act, court, etc.).

German changed a lot over a long period during the High German consonant shift (look at the map) originating from northern Italy in the early Dark Ages. That is why nowadays you find so-called High German dialects, closely related to standard German, in the south, and Low German, which is more distant to standard German and closer to Dutch, and English, in the north. Morpholinguistic distances between (remnants of) dialects of villages from Austria to England are a lot less than the difference between standard German and English would suggest. English also changed a lot through Romance influence, but in another period and in a completely different way. English became much simpler: a kind of pidgin Germanic for French conquerors.

In my opinion, the Germanic core of English only appears to be more related to the Scandinavian languages, or minority languages in the Netherlands and Belgium like Frysian and coastal Flemish/Zeeuws, because these changed less than standard German or - to a lesser extent - standard Dutch. One of the problems facing Dutch linguists for instance is that old Dutch is completely indistinguishable from Old Kentish on the opposite shore of the North Sea, making it impossible to attribute sources. British historians unfortunately read too much into these modern similarities, and pretend that Angel, Dane and Saxon tribes tribes more or less jumped to England from southern Scandinavia.

A sideline: History makes a lot more sense if you note that people in northwestern France around Calais (where the Channel is at its narrowest) still spoke a - Germanic - dialect of coastal Flemish in the 19th century, and that the language border between Germanic and Romance languages hardly moved for two millenia. The burden of proof is on those that claim that whole nations moved and invaded areas not even adjacent to the area they were born in. There is little hard evidence for mass migrations before the modern colonial ones. The 'genetic evidence' for Germanic invasion based on the close relatedness of English and Frysians in the Netherlands overlooks the possibility that a 'Germanic' population already lived in England in Ceasar's time and gradually expanded over the centuries, even though there is as much Roman and Celtic lore about the 'Belgian' (Fir Bolg etc.) migration into Britain as there is for a Saxon invasion.

We haven't yet observed such a pattern, although I think people have looked. We may yet find this, but the longer we look without finding it, the less likely the interbreeding hypothesis becomes.

Perhaps you missed this publication from this past spring which has found very very interesting evidence for interbreeding between homo erectus populations in Asia and anatomically modern homo sapiens spreading out of Africa. The group even found a neat gradient (what would be expected if interbreeding did occur on an infrequent, but significant basis) of the genetic locuses they examined, with the highest percentage of people with the gene located in Southern China (the epicenter of homo erectus as far as we can tell), decreasing across China, through Asia and dwindling to near nil among native Africans.

For those of you non-scientists, this means that a larger proportion of people from southern China have a particular gene (of sorts) that people from other parts of the world (e.g. Africans) do not have. Since homo sapiens spread out of Africa, carrying their genes with them, for some ~53% of southern Chinese to have a gene that native Africans do not have, the ancient ancestors of those Chinese very well may have acquired the gene from another species that was reproductively compatible but separate from homo sapiens arriving from Africa. This is further supported in the paper I linked by the gradient the group discovered. The highest percentage of people who have the gene in question are located in Southern China, while the percentage of people who have the gene slowly tapers off as you go west and south from China towards Africa, until you reach Africa itself and find that almost no Africans have the gene at all.

IAAMBS - I am a molecular biology student. :P

I think you're making love and hate out to be more "intellectual" than they really are. Love and hate are simply emotions (really just stronger versions of like and dislike).

Emotions towards companies (and people) are actually very useful. They help us make decisions, either in the absence of other information or when the decision needs to be made quickly.

Next time you're in the store, think about how your feelings about a company (or a brand) influence which products you buy.

More Info

http://www.unc.edu/~cory/autism-info/orgautsa.html

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ awh330v1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1593599 3