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Clearly we're not. It's bullshit speculation like this (and that is all this is) that leads to kneejerk legislation like ban incandescent bulbs despite the MULTIPLE hazards and health issues with the only viable replacement.

Multiple hazards? I don't know any. Sure, clumsy people may drop a bulb or two in a time period of several years if they're not paying attention. And release a "horrible" 4mg of mercury (or less). But that's what warning signs are for. Please don't make me "discuss" people who are to dumb or lazy to get rid of used bulbs the proper way.

For every scientist that says "WE'RE ALL DOOMED!" another one says "Erm... No we're not." Just like "video games causes violent behaviour" and "video games don't cause violent behaviour".

"In the journal Science in 2004, Oreskes published the results of a survey of 928 papers on climate change published in peer-reviewed journals between 1993 and 2003. She found that three-quarters of the papers either explicitly or implicitly accepted the view expressed in the IPCC 2001 report that human activities have had a major impact on climate change in the last 50 years, and none rejected it."

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/downloaddoc.asp?id=1630

It's also very hard to take to any talk of global warming that seriously when a large chunk of the northern hemisphere is freezing its ass off.

Maybe the Gulf Stream is slowing down already.

Purely for my own edification I pulled together weather records for where I live. I realise there's nothing scientific to it, but I was curious, since you'd assume if things are as bad as some claim, there's be some sign. Some indication that there was an increase in temperatures, even if only a degree or two.

"Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. (...) Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 C (1.33 ± 0.32 F) during the 100 years ending in 2005." (accentuation by me)

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

I'm in between grad degrees right now, mostly teaching geology. But, I never cease to be amazed at how many old theories and downright myths from paleontology and geology are still circulating. If you look up "north american megafauna" you'll find a number of articles and studies a bit more scholarly than sciencedaily.com. Like this abstract: http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/1dxw1577mlad9wl1/

People forget that as recently as 10,000 years ago, humans were just about on equal footing with the other animals in their environment. What we lacked in strength and speed, we just barely made up for in the ability to communicate and plan ahead. The ability to dramatically impact nature is a talent we picked up much later on.

The journals may not give out grants, but the learned societies that publish and derive income from some major journals do, e.g.:

http://www.aacr.org/

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/

Even so, unrestricted Open Access publication seems (to me) to be the best model by far for the distribution of new research.

Hmm R-ingTFA is highly recommended in these environs.

In fact, this particular topic isn't at all settled. It has been a very active area of research for decades, and questions related to this have spawned field changing debates. In a nutshell, before molecular biology, people thought all change was bad or adaptive. Then a dude named Kimura suggested that a lot of DNA change has very little consequence to survival. If most DNA changes are largely irrelevant to survival, then mutation rates largely dictate evolution. If mutation is dependent on metabolism, the voila! You get the result you see in the article.

However, another unrelated explanation with the very same prediction was made 34 years ago by a Tomoko Ohta, a student of Kimura's. If a lot of mutations have very small effects, then these very small effects can only be fully realized in large populations because of genetic drift. Thus, these small changes can be seen easiest in the larger population, which incidentally tend to be smaller and have higher metabolisms. Again, voila, you get the result you see in the article. In fact, the authors even admit as much:

...larger organisms generally have smaller effective population sizes (Lynch & Conery 2003), we cannot rule out the possible influence of effective population size, as predicted by the 'nearly neutral' theory (Ohta 1973).

Ultimately, the authors have added to the debate and have by no means closed it. But that's what's fun, isn't it?

I guess you might want the customers to be underwater too ;-)? You can see from the cover of this Brochure that the land is pretty flat there: http://etidweb.tamu.edu/classes/entc359/STP%20Brochure%20June%2006.pdf. Here is how close 5 meters of sea level rise gets to the resevior: http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=28.6942,-96.0603&z=6&m=5. I doubt the resevior will avoid being breached in this situation. You can run the level up to 14 meters which we might see by 2200. 25 meters is not available but this is what a 3 C warming would likely cause. The interesting thing is that this seems to happen in centuries rather than millennia: http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/l3h462k7p4068780/?p=0f73dea5b8974dfa837377d459559a91&pi=1.

And for those of you who don't know, TGGWS is just BS. Start to finish, pure crap. Just about every scientist in it has said that they were misrepresented, the director is known for being a fabricator. It's the "Dinosaurs lived with adam and eve" version of science. Utter shit. And you are below contempt for spreading it. See:

http://flet.org/node/20
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_bas/news/news_story.php?id=178
http://folk.uio.no/nathan/web/statement.html
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/news.asp?id=6089
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2119695,00.html
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2368999.ece

and TONS of others. The data are misrepresented, words taken out of context etc etc. Wall to wall shit from someone with a vested interest in spreading FUD. I know some of you still don't think global climate change happens, and some of you think the earth is flat too, but the HUGE SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS is that the climate is changing, to some degree it's man made and we need to do something about it.

CO2 levels are not linked to climate change in the geological record. One would think they would be if CO2 is a significant factor.

I'd like to know where you're getting this information. My search for papers on this subject shows a strong correlation (see, especially, the graphs on p4 of the full text pdf).

The IPCC is saying no more than a meter, more like 0.4 meters. Hansen has been misquoted in a few places saying 25 meters, but this is a misinterpretaion of this paper: http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/l3h462k 7p4068780/?p=0f73dea5b8974dfa837377d459559a91&pi=1 . There the authors point out that 25 meters is where sea level got to the last time the Earth was as warm as we expect it to be. In that paper they discuss a few meters of sea level rise by the end of this century, and Hansen, in his paper on scientific reticents discussed 5 meters, but that group has not predicted 25 meters that quickly. They do make a persuasive case that ice sheets are lost in centuries rather than millenia.

A big problem for plants in tidal areas is that the London Dumping Convention does not allow nuclear waste to be dumped in the ocean, so existing waste, such as that stored at the decommissioned Humbolt 3 reactor will likely need to be moved. Humbolt 3 had a fairly quick decommissioning because it did not run all that long. Plants that have run longer may need a longer cool down time so getting a handle on how soon thier cores need to be moved to higher ground is something that needs to be done now so that their shut down can be scheduled. Building new plants in tidal regions seems pretty silly. I blogged on this not too long ago here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/08/cliffhanger.ht ml.

Also I couldn't find a link to the paper by Dr. Yacoub which should have been here

This whole carbon thing is utter nonsense anyway. The ocean heats up, it releases CO2. End of. Cause and effect not effect and cause.

Take a look at this: http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a /rspa20071880.pdf The contributions of the sun to earth's warmth has been decreasing since 1985. The sun does not account for the current (incredibly rapid) increase in global temperatures.

"the study shows plants are capable of complex social behaviours such as altruism towards relatives"

Complex? I'm pretty sure that could be defined as the most simple social behavor possible.

The author adapted the scope for Royal Britisch publication.

Original publication

We found that kin groups allocated less to their fine root mass than did stranger groups when they competed below ground, indicating that these plants could discriminate relatives. Root allocation did not differ between kin and stranger groups grown in isolated pots, indicating that the cues for kin recognition lie in root interactions. Siblings were less competitive than strangers, which is consistent with kin selection.

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/biology_lette rs/RSBL20070232.pdf

Some journals are certainly still geared up to use CMYK. See for example:

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/index.cfm?page=1078

If they request CMYK and you send them RGB they'll probably just do a 'one click conversion' to CMYK, so it's better to sort this out yourself in advance if the colour is critical. On the other hand, some journals do indeed specify RGB, especially now that most people read the online editions:

http://www.jhc.org/misc/guidelines_figs.shtml

Academic licenses for PS are pretty reasonably priced in any case, while the 16-bit support, colour management and (for many scientists) familiar interface are significant advantages of PS over GIMP.

"We have also been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished results and ideas of Dr. M.H.F. Wilkins, Dr. R.E. Franklin, and their co-workers at King's College London"

The information reported in this section was very kindly reported to us prior to its publication by Drs Wilkins and Frankilin. We are most heavily indebted in this respect to the King's College Group, and we wish to point out that without this data the formulation of our structure would have been most unlikely, if not impossible"

At least, it can be. A quick search at Pubmed brings up eight studies that examine the phenomenon of 'contagious yawning,' including in macaques and chimps. So even if the mythbusters experimental setup was pretty crappy, and their sample was too small to have enough power to find an effect, at least their conclusion agreed with the literature.

-Ted

Wrong.
Most scientists (as far as I can tell, and leaving out the Al Gores and Michael Crichton's) seem to agree that the globe is warming.
Many of them believe that humans are contributing, mainly to an acceleration of a natural increase.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution was 280 ppm, while it's more than 380 ppm nowadays. This is the highest concentration since at least 600.000 years (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/310/5 752/1313/).

According to http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/displaypagedoc.asp?id=20 742, our emission of carbon dioxide is likely a main factor for global warming.

I believe this is one of those news stories that sits around waiting for a slow news day. The original paper was released in November. It's written by Kevin Lafferty and was published in Proc. Roy. Soc. B.

It's a really quite fascinating paper - I recommend tracking it down if you can get access. Here's how it goes: Toxoplasmia gondii is adapated to live in cats and reproduces in felid intestinal cells & is shed, encysted, in their feaces. Then it can directly infect cats who come into contact with the cysts, or it encysts in brains of smaller mammals, and moves up the food chain as they get eaten until it hits a cat, and can reproduce again.

Fascinatingly, T.g. appears to affect rodent behavior to increase predation risk - i.e. the rodents become more active, less fearful of cat/cat smells, and have increased dopamine levels (which supposedly leads to novelty seeking behavior and neuroticism-type behaviors, or at least, they do in humans).

Despite humans not having any major cat predators, it could still affect us as a byproduct type of thing. Particularly that whole dopamine increase - this is should increase neuroticism levels.

So - the big question - does prevalence of T.g. correlate with cultural variation in neuroticism in humans? Lafferty finds a fairly strong correlation ( r2 of 0.38 ) between population aggregate neuroticism (as measured by the fairly standard NEO PI-R personality inventory ).

Unfortunately I think the populations he uses for his stats are a little bit suspect (always the problem with worldwide analyses though), but it's definitely worth a read. You should also keep in mind that so far it's only an interesting correlation and not a direct demonstration that T.g. causes large scale cultural differences.

This special kind of biomimetics is also being researched elsewhere, for example at the Max-Planck-Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. An insightful article can be downloaded from here.

The synapse allows two neurons to communicate with one another. Each synapse involves a transmission point that sends a signal across a small gap to a receiving area.

Signals are sent in the form of a chemical substance, known as a neurotransmitter. These chemicals move across the gap and bind to receptors embedded in the receiving area.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been going through these extremely good scientific lectures at the Royal Society here: Archive - complete list of webstreams. They are available in Real and Microsoft Media Player formats.

This is the experiment that led Rutherford to propose the nuclear model of the atom: http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/link.asp?id=u31 8373867x2v351

Edmundo Halleio, Astronomiae Cometicae Synopsis, Autore Edmundo Halleio apud Oxonienses. Geometriae Professore Saviliano, & Reg. Soc. S., Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775), Volume 24, 01 Jan 1753, Pages 1882 - 1899
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/openurl.asp?gen re=article&issn=0260-7085&volume=24&spage=1882

Wonderful.

A nice discussion can be found here:

D. W. Hughes, P. H. Fowler, Bernard Lovell, D. Lynden-Bell, P. J. Message, J. E. Wilkinson, The History of Halley's Comet [and Discussion], Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences (1934-1990), Volume 323, Issue 1572, 30 Sep 1987, Pages 349 - 367
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/openurl.asp?gen re=article&issn=0080-4614&volume=323&issue=1572&sp age=349

Edmundo Halleio, Astronomiae Cometicae Synopsis, Autore Edmundo Halleio apud Oxonienses. Geometriae Professore Saviliano, & Reg. Soc. S., Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775), Volume 24, 01 Jan 1753, Pages 1882 - 1899
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/openurl.asp?gen re=article&issn=0260-7085&volume=24&spage=1882

Wonderful.

A nice discussion can be found here:

D. W. Hughes, P. H. Fowler, Bernard Lovell, D. Lynden-Bell, P. J. Message, J. E. Wilkinson, The History of Halley's Comet [and Discussion], Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences (1934-1990), Volume 323, Issue 1572, 30 Sep 1987, Pages 349 - 367
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/openurl.asp?gen re=article&issn=0080-4614&volume=323&issue=1572&sp age=349

Now I know of a good way to kill a rattlesnake [.pdf]!

Small correction: Edmund Stone's work described in this article is not the discovery of aspirin (acetylsalycilic acid), but salycilic acid. Salycilic acid has about the same therapeutic effects as aspirin, but is much harder on the stomach. Aspirin was first synthesized by Bayer chemists in the late 1800s.

If you're bored at work, read this.

Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA (1954) - requires no introduction really

There is a tiny group in europe that has a mutation of a cell recptor the makes them getting HIV/AIDS more difficult.

But nobody would make the mistake of saying that this gene is the gene for 'chimpness'. It's just an accident of history that SIV arose before HIV.

I learned all of this from an excellent podcast whose name I dare not write for fear of offence...

Perhaps it would be more productive to consider awards in math and science for people who do an excellent job of popularising or explaining existing material

From the British Royal Society:

"Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide"

One possible consequence, down the road: Ocean waters become acid enough to prevent phytoplankton from forming exoskeletons.

Which means the entire marine ecosystem collapses, and Red Lobster is reduced to offering All You Can Eat Guppy Fry-Days. (Oxygen fee waived for parties over ten.)

I think we have different points. My main point is I want verifiable facts. Scientists who do not stand up and voice their disagreements are useless, and history has suggested they are also in error (where's my cold fusion and don't even get me started on that Fermat joker). The vast majority of people voicing doubts about global warming are uninformed people who are not aware of all the currently known facts tossing out FUD. The people I have found who offer scientific opposition with a factual basis they are willing to share and defend are listed in that wikipedia article. He's not the only one. In fact, back in 2001, some 18,000 scientists signed a petition against global warming, including some 2,000+ climate scientists. On the other side, less than 50 climate scientists sided with the IPCC 2000 report. This is interesting - could you cite it? Although I can't help but notice that this petition is prior to the last half-decade of intensive study that has only supported global warming and found that opposing theories to not match the observed facts, for example the discovery of the incorrectly tabulated satellite data (lousy source but I don't have time to find the tech journals online - feel free to do so yourself if you're interested in more than a really simple summary of the facts) suddenly made climatic models look significantly better (they were closer to correct than the 'observed' data was). Without the citation, I have no choice but to dismiss the petition you mentioned as at best a false recollection and at worst a lie at some level (which would include if the petition asked scientists something like, "It is a 100% certain fact that man is causing massive global warming, yes or no?"). As an example of what I am looking for, saying that the National Academies of Scientists for the G8 nations plus Brazil, China and India, who comprise far more than 50 climate scientists, support global warming is a fact with citation. I would further say that these Academies contain reputable professionals. I do not have the time to cite the 1,000s of papers detailing facts that support this position, but I trust the thousands of scientists who have. When I heard a climate scientist at a seminar back in college around 2000, he stated that they did not really know what was going on with global warming - could be man caused, could be a natural variation, could be some sort of pervasive observational error (heat islands, atmospheric effects, misinterpretation of secondary data sources like ice cores and geographical sources, etc.). Now, after years of research and collecting facts, he supports the current theory of global warming. Arguing that consensus doesn't mean anything is cute, but I am talking about facts. Gravity, evolution, relativity theory and global warming have quite a consensus because one scientist has not come forward with facts that defeat them. OK, maybe gravity but take pity on my non-physicist education - its part of the reason I tend to believe the massive consensus of reputable professionals in their fields. Particularly when massive dollars from industry and the potential of a Nobel prize tempts the first person to defeat global warming theory with facts rather than spin. And opposing global warming because the climate modeling tools being developed to better understand it are not perfect - I honestly don't know where to begin on that one. The facts, thousands of them, point to global warming. Are you honestly saying we should toss all those facts and the theory developed to explain them based on the un-reviewed, un-researched, and untested opinion of a single person? What is your competing theory that better explains all the research discovered information? If you do not have a theory that is equally well shown to explain all the facts d

How about using a proper source for this study?

The summary (and the linked articles) are so sensationalised it is ridiculous.

The BBC have a slightly better written article

Better yet, here's the actual research abstract and article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The article seems to be accessible without an institutional subscription, but just in case, here's the abstract text:

Reading men's faces: women's mate attractiveness judgments track men's testosterone and interest in infants

James R. Roney, Katherine N. Hanson, Kristina M. Durante, Dario Maestripieri

This study investigated whether women track possible cues of paternal and genetic quality in men's faces and then map perception of those cues onto mate attractiveness judgments. Men's testosterone concentrations served as a proxy for genetic quality given evidence that this hormone signals immunocompetence, and men's scores on an interest in infants test were chosen as prima facie markers of paternal quality. Women's perceptions of facial photographs of these men were in fact sensitive to these two variables: men's scores on the interest in infants test significantly predicted women's ratings of the photos for how much the men like children, and men's testosterone concentrations significantly predicted women's ratings of the men's faces for masculinity. Furthermore, men's actual and perceived affinity for children predicted women's long-term mate attractiveness judgments, while men's testosterone and perceived masculinity predicted women's short-term mate attractiveness judgments. These results suggest that women can detect facial cues of men's hormone concentrations and affinity for children, and that women use perception of these cues to form mate attractiveness judgments.

On a related note, this reminds me of research previously done linking finger-length ratios with things like testosterone levels, sexual orientation, and male aggressiveness.

How about using a proper source for this study?

The summary (and the linked articles) are so sensationalised it is ridiculous.

The BBC have a slightly better written article

Better yet, here's the actual research abstract and article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The article seems to be accessible without an institutional subscription, but just in case, here's the abstract text:

Reading men's faces: women's mate attractiveness judgments track men's testosterone and interest in infants

James R. Roney, Katherine N. Hanson, Kristina M. Durante, Dario Maestripieri

This study investigated whether women track possible cues of paternal and genetic quality in men's faces and then map perception of those cues onto mate attractiveness judgments. Men's testosterone concentrations served as a proxy for genetic quality given evidence that this hormone signals immunocompetence, and men's scores on an interest in infants test were chosen as prima facie markers of paternal quality. Women's perceptions of facial photographs of these men were in fact sensitive to these two variables: men's scores on the interest in infants test significantly predicted women's ratings of the photos for how much the men like children, and men's testosterone concentrations significantly predicted women's ratings of the men's faces for masculinity. Furthermore, men's actual and perceived affinity for children predicted women's long-term mate attractiveness judgments, while men's testosterone and perceived masculinity predicted women's short-term mate attractiveness judgments. These results suggest that women can detect facial cues of men's hormone concentrations and affinity for children, and that women use perception of these cues to form mate attractiveness judgments.

On a related note, this reminds me of research previously done linking finger-length ratios with things like testosterone levels, sexual orientation, and male aggressiveness.

Here is the paper in question, although I don't know if it requires an institutional subscription to download. Partial citation: G. W. Milton & N. A. Nicorovici, "On the cloaking effects associated with anomalous localized resonance", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A (2006).

However, there is a genuine point in the parent post, which is that we need to evaluate the credibility of sources. You can find sources stating every possible point of view on global warming. How do we evaluate them? Or do we just say that the cacaphony is proof that there is no consensus?

The latter approach is intellectual cowardice. The correct approach is a systematic evaluation of the sources. For each source, a whole range of factors need to be taken into account, including, off the top of my head:

1. What is the expertise of the source?
2. How is the source regarded by other respected sources in the field?
3. What data does the source make use of?
4. How reliable and complete is that data?
5. What models are used by the source?
6. What is the explanatory and predictive power of those models?
7. Are there other factors which may have influenced the source, apart from the data?

I'm not a climatologist, and I suspect neither are most of the posters here, so we're not in a position to do most of this evaluation. So for my opinions, I must seek out meta-sources which I trust to do the evaluation for me.

For me, the most plausible sources are national scientific academies. These organisations have diverse roles, but one of them often includes evaluating scientific opinions to inform government policy.

The most convincing source I have therefore is this report, from the scietific academies of the US, UK, France, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada, Brazil, China and India. Note that this includes at least one country whose government is not exactly sympathetic to the climate change viewpoint.

I am prepared to be convinced that I am wrong. But I need a more credible source than the one above. So far, nothing has come close.

See online journals of the Royal Society -- it can be found under Proceedings of the Royal Society B:Biological Sciences titled "The absence of sharks from abyssal regions of the world's oceans".

We propose that they are excluded from the abyss by high-energy demand, including an oil-rich liver for buoyancy, which cannot be sustained in extreme oligotrophic conditions. . . . All populations are therefore within reach of human fisheries, and there is no hidden reserve of chondrichthyan biomass or biodiversity in the deep sea.

Life on Earth 'unlikely to have emerged in volcanic springs'

13 Feb 2006

"The latest findings of experiments to re-create the conditions under which life could emerge from chemical reactions suggest that volcanic springs and marine hydrothermal events are unlikely to have provided the right environment, a leading researcher from the United States will tell an international meeting tomorrow (14 February 2006) at the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science."

In the alternative Plos ran an interestin article titled Jump-Starting a Cellular World: Investigating the Origin of Life, from Soup to Networks which touches on the front running theories on the origin of life.

The main point of this article that tends to be overlooked/ignored, even by the OP, is this:

The Royal Society fears it could lead to the demise of journals published by not-for-profit societies, which put out about a third of all journals. "Funders should remember that the primary aims should be to improve the exchange of knowledge between researchers and wider society," The Royal Society said.

Also, its worth linking the entire Royal Society position on open access, so those who read it would realize the OP is presenting a very selective view of the Royal Society's position.

The Royal Society's point is that free stuff might make non-profit/commercial organizations lose big money, possibly forcing them to stop producing their peer-reviewed journal. This is obviously bad for a scientific community trying to reach a larger audience, and thusly the above quote on exchanging knowledge and what-not. As scientists/free-as-in-beer advocates, this is the sort of concern/fear that we need to squash, and pronto.

What I believe the Research Council UK and the Royal Society should consider is a position put forth by Paul Ginsparg, who helps run arxiv.org (an open access system primarily for math/physics based papers). His idea, contrary to the Research Council UK plan of concurrently publishing research on the web at the same time as in such journals as Philosophical Transactions, is to publish research of refereeable quality immediately in a "standard tier" system primarily interested in dissemenation, rather than review of, the information - similar to that provided by arxiv.org. That way, experts in the field have immediate access to the work, can review/comment on the work so that the authors can improve upon it, respond to comments, post updates, etc. Upon meeting some guidelines put forth by an "upper tier", the work could then be submitted for peer review knowing it had met the standards for that tier. Only upon acceptance through peer review would the article reach the larger audience via publication, thereby fulfilling both the needs of open-access advocates and commercial/non-profit societies.

As an aside, Paul Ginsparg makes the interesting note that this system would also put the power of publication back in the non-profit sector: commercial entities only got involved due to the enormous costs associated with mass-production quality control of submissions. However, the dissemination of information and communication across the 'net essentially eliminates this requirement.

For one thing, the Royal Society have considerable prestige.

The Royal Society do have considerable prestige, but we're talking about the The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce - commonly known as the RSA. As far as I know the two organisations are not connected. You may know this already but plenty of people wont.

Britain - and other nations - have lots of Royal Societies for all sorts of things. Convention has it that the only one called `The Royal Society' is this one:

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/

Lots of Royal Societies? Yep - look here:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=royal+society&sou rceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=u tf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:offici al

You can't get away from Royal stuff in the British Isles - I mean, even the definitely very anti-British-rule and entirely republican Republic (i.e., we have no royalty here, matey[1]) of Ireland has this:

http://www.rsgyc.ie/ - founded in 1838, so that `Royal' was a definite reference to the British monarch - Queen Victoria at that time (reigned 1837-1901).

[1] Aside from the point that all of Irish descent are the descendents of kings. Nothing's straightforward.

A while ago in an article in the Economist they picked out the phrase

just because it's a market-based solution doesn't mean it's a socially desirable one.

(Also, the subject line is slightly misleading. The Royal Society is the UK's equivalent of a National Academy of Sciences.)

The Royal Society* is an organisation that promotes UK science, The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce is different.

*Yes, they should call themselves The Royal Society of Britain or something else a bit more specific to prevent confusion like this.

Well, I didn't do the calculations myself:
"However, kinetic calculations predict that
small fragments of DNA (100-500 bp) will survive for no
more than 10 kyr in temperate regions and for a maximum
of 100 kyr at colder latitudes owing to hydrolytic damage
(Poinar et al. 1996; Smith et al. 2001). Even under ideal
conditions, amplifiable DNA is not thought to survive for
longer than 1 Myr." - see reference below

  As to your proposal, if I make enough random DNA out of monomers, eventually one of those artificial chains will form a complete dinosaur chromosome. How, exactly, do you propose that I identify this perfect chromosome from among the population in my (absolutely enormous) sample?

  Reference:
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/openurl.asp?gen re=article&eissn=1471-2954&volume=272&issue=1558&s page=3

  For what you *can* do with fossil DNA, read this:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/39/13783