Slashdot Mirror

really? thanks for clearing that up, because here i was, believing hundreds of scientifically-backed sources.

"There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity."

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articl eID=000D4121-91C5-1CD1-B4A8809EC588EEDF

... this system is ill-conceived - technically, strategically and politically. Scientific American has an article from last month that drives a horse and cart through the whole miserable boondoggle.

While helping my girlfriend with her lab on the common Fiddler crab (Uca pugilator) I decided to do some side-research of my own*. I found that approximately 1/3rd of Fiddler crabs in our population (of about 20) were left-handed (in that their left claw was freakin' huge). This would lead credence to an earlier post talking about handedness being a surprise to rivals.

It is interesting to see, however, that the Scientific American article covering the same subject seemed to focus more on the study whose results found similarites in the limbic system asymmetry between primates. The handedness study (which of course waters down easier for the average person) seemed to be second fiddle.

By the way, the actual studies are found here (in 300-500KB PDFs):
Asymmetries in the Hippocampus and Amygdala of Chimpanzees
Handedness in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) Is Associated With Asymmetries of the Primary Motor Cortex but Not With Homologous Language Areas

* I had previously determined that the bisque turned out a bit stringy and that scampi was preferred. This, sadly, derailed the other, more "important" research.

Okay, and? You are free to believe what you choose to believe, but in the United States we have, at least in principle, a separation of religion and government. Our founding documents draw very clearly from John Locke, Montesquieu, and other Enlightenment writers, not from the Christian Bible or any other religious document. I believe the heart of this thread to be about the legality of stem cell research, not a holy war. Reason, not faith, is what this country's laws are founded on. As a result, we should legislate science tempered by ethics, and not legislate morality.

That aside, I think that your answer to the previous poster dodges the question.

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

affirm
v. tr

1. To declare positively or firmly; maintain to be true.
2. To support or uphold the validity of; confirm.

Obviously the Christian Bible affirms things in the sense of the first definition. By your post, it affirms that man is imperfect, etc. But the real issue is, in the sense that 'affirm' was being used, does it support the validity of anything? The answer is no, unless you take the truth of the Christian Bible to be axiomatic, which would be an article of faith and not of reason. I personally cannot trust decisions of importance to be handled by a system that requires you to believe in the totality of its truth before it can be used as a source. Quoting scripture to support a position is not self-affirming in the way that logic is, nor can it be.

Oh, and your source on embryonic stem cells is outdated and necessary only for research. True theraputic cloning does not require male oocytes (sperm) since a hollowed out donor egg is injected with different genetic material as described here.

No photographs please.

1000 miles is right.

Even if they do get this laser working the way it's supposed to, it will still be insanely expensive to have 747's aloft circling the "trouble areas" of the world 24/7. Due to range limitations, it might be impossible to take out a missile launched from the center of Iran or China without leaving international airspace. Also, these 747's better have some pretty good countermeasures onboard to prevent the
enemy from just shooting them down before an attack.
Anyways, even if the entire system works as advertised, a "rogue state" could still get the nuke to the U.S. using a ship, submarine, or simply stashed away in one of the million cargo containers that arrive here each day. If highly-enriched uranium is used to make the bomb (that's the route Iran is taking), a simple lead shield would make the bomb undetectable without entirely dissasembling the cargo.

For a very detailed analysis of the technical hurdles blocking the completion of a missile defense shield, check out this article.

Of course we puny humans can't affect the weather with our insignificant activities.

The following contains some links to mostly non-technical explanations of planetary roundness. I'd like to point out that part of this explanation, by "Derek Sears, professor of cosmochemistry at the University of Arkansas and editor of the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science," is wrong. He says "Planets are round because their gravitational field acts as though it originates from the center of the body and pulls everything toward it." But this is a circular argument (pardon the pun). Generally a non-spherically symmetric distribution of matter doesn't have a gravitational field that acts as if it originates from the center of the body (the "center" being the center of mass). Spherically symmetric mass distributions do have this special property, so what Sears really implied is that planets that are already round will have gravitational fields that point towards the object's center of mass. This does absolutely nothing to address cases of objects that deviate from perfect roundness, i.e. all celestial bodies. This explanation by Dr. Sten Odenwald suffers from the same argument, and there's even a hint of it here. Nonetheless, these explanations are approximately true, and require bizarre shapes to break them.

For example, imagine a homogenous, perfectly shaped doughnut (a torus with a circular cross section). At the center of the doughnut hole we'd feel no gravitational field at all (a perfectly balanced tug-of-war). But deviate from the exact center just a tiny amount, and the closer side of the doughnut becomes more attractive than the other. One suddenly experiences a gravitational field that points away from the center of mass.

" Workweek Causes Climate Fluctuations"

It only takes one straw to break the camel's back. The environment is all balances, and human pollution breaks that balance - pushing to a new balance, where the ice caps melt. Or don't you believe that we're directly affecting the climate? In the 1970s, you'd have been littering, because we're too insignificant to make enough trash to matter. You probably still do, expecting that the rest of us who know how to act will make up for your abuse of our environment.

And why is he posting an article on a subject that was featured in Scientific American in 2001?

You are right in that there are no hard and fast rules for what should be an attribute and what should be an element, but then I really haven't found it to be a real problem once I adopted the above.

My personal favorite is RelaxNG which most popular parsers support now.

On the other hand, S-Expressions doesn't even have a bad standard schema language. It instead has hundreds. One schema language for almost each S-Expression schema. This is an improvement?

Show me someone credible that claimed that. I don't ever recall Tim Berners-Lee ever saying that.

When I see your sig, I don't have a sudden desire to defend XML from the big, bad Lispers. I simply marvel at the hubris.

A little more detail on the tools and other aspects.

gewg_

Theeeere's my rejected submission...

More information on these hobbit-sized wonders can be found at Scientific American which runs a Q&A with Dr. Brown. As expected, it's a bit more in-depth than "Hobbits Found!"

I've been talking about pollution, which is universally understood to be bad - after the nightmare of the 1960s, when the filth was too much for even Nixon to countenance. I might as well talk about the Greenhouse - you apparently missed the news that the workweek causes climate fluctuations.

Lots of people are innovating alternative energy, including for transportation. A good start, after dropping the unhealthy and expensive denials of pollution damage, would be dropping the subsidies for petro fuels that keep so much R&D budgets and talent tied up in that deadend industry. I personally do my part in the equity analysis of alternative energy corporations, and promote wisdom in energy every chance I get. What do *you* do, other than chide Slashdotters with pollyanna pollution apologies?

NewScientist has some more info on this.

The predator will follow its prey wherever it goes.

'Lupus est homo homini'--an eternal truth, perhaps, but news? Advertisers have been raping the Internet since the 1990s.

Just wait until they start spraying on organic LEDs to display advertisements inside the stalls of public restrooms. That will be news.

What I did learn is HOW to drink though. If they are adding all this sugar and caffeine to beer, its time to buy stock in Tylenol..

Bad idea if you like your liver. Straight Dope and LSU Alcohol Research Center links for some background... A main contributing factor to hangovers is dehydration, so try loading up on water or gatorade or the like. Or eating something first.

> Junk" in DNA (e.g., "latent" DNA) is probably not
> junk

Actually theres an article in this months SciAm that talks exactly about this. Very interesting

http://sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1& articleID=00045BB6-5D49-1150-902F83414B7F4945

The researchers used electron-beam lithography to produce the beam-and-pad

After the evidence that " Workweek Causes Climate Fluctuations", Greenhouse denial is just spit in the wind. We obviously are changing the environment. After laying the clear documentation on them, it's worthwhile to follow up with a stab at their denial itself, pointing out the evidence that they are irrational and dangerous. If not to convince them to reflect, then at least to give them a chance later if something else opens their mind, and for the benefit of those who might be listening, who might take silence for the tacit approval which supports so many flimsy dysfunctions.

I don't know if human-induced global warming is a problem or not, but, there are points of view out there, from highly respected scientists, that argue that it is not a problem. Here is one such article. Having a life-long interest in weather, I've tried to read both sides and both sides make compelling arguments. To the extent that we don't shoot ourselves in the foot economically and otherwise, it is probably a good idea to err on the side of believing that human-induced global warming is a problem. However, I don't see anything productive in blaming Bush or any previous president, republican or democrat for global warming. It is a hellish complicated problem and the ramifications for choosing either side are not small.

Marking up Hilton as <motel> or <celebrity> is all very well. This is what XML is for.

One of the key points behind the semantic web is to define meanings to your meta tags. My system has a <partnumber> tag and so does yours, but that doesn't mean they're the same. I can publish my definition of <partnumber> so that other apps can know how to interpret my partnumbers. Complex definitions can be provided in computer-readable format, which can then be looked up, referenced, shared etc. with other systems.

Take Dublin Core, for example. A standard set of tags to describe document attributes, such as title and author. Why should I write my own <author> tag when I can simply pull-in part of Dublin Core's vocabulary. Not only does that save me (the developer) time, but it means any app that knows about Dublin Core will know what I mean when I say "author". Or, if an app doesn't know about a particular term it can simply go look it up.

Sharing vocabularies is time-saving, but also helps computers process information automatically. Mr Berners-Lee and some colleagues had a good article published in Scientific American a while ago which explains their vision of intelligent software agents doing the sorts of things computers should be doing with the information the web has to offer. Such as automatically adjusting your schedule if your gym's online timetable has changed and your squash game needs to be moved. OK, that's a very basic example, but the point is that although the information needed to do this sort of stuff is already on the web, it is currently only readable by humans.

If anyone is interested in learning more about this stuff then have a look at the Resource Description Framework (RDF) which is a foundation technology of the Semantic Web (There's more to it than HTML META tags!). There's a lot of activity involving RDF-based technologies such as OWL, FOAF and the popular RSS.

GM has a concept fuel cell car that uses electric hookups for the controls. It has an interchangeable "skateboard" base partly as a result, and can swap out the rest of the car entirely. Swappable exteriors is a big potential change in the manufacturing and sales model you're using, anyway. I don't necessarily see why something like Subaru's "boxer" engines couldn't get some of those same advantages without giving up the gas engine -- that engine's pretty low in the car, granted not quite as low as the GM chassis.

But yeah -- personally I'm with Al Gore -- the internal combustion engine is a 19th century technology that should be nearing the end of its life for lots of the ways we use it. Take a look at lots of people's lawn mowers spewing white smoke from their little two-cycle engines. That ain't the future. It's only the weight of the existing distribution model for oil and gas that's keeping those things around. (All points Al Gore made in his pointy-headed environuttiness. Gosh, what a kook.)

Bird deaths may be overrated, but bat deaths have been shown to be a concern, as noted in a Scientific American article. At least 400 red bats died in a 44 turbine wind energy center in West Virginia during the bat's migration period last year. The bats seemed to have died by flying into the turning blades, though the exact cause for that is still under study. Scientists are trying to come up with a solution, but meanwhile this is threatening construction of other wind turbines in the area.

Language and colors

The increased variation enhances the ability to discriminate between colors in the red-orange spectrum, particularly among females, because they have two copies of the X chromosome. Previous research in other primates has suggested that enhanced red vision in females allows them to better distinguish between berries and foliage when they are gathering food.

3D Holograms Detect Fake Signatures

Several sources reported last week that a new technique that produces 3D holograms of handwriting could be used to detect fake signatures on checks, credit card receipts or other important handwritten documents. Here are pointers to Nature , Scientific American or BBC News Online . Instead of using 2D techniques to look at the sequence of pen strokes in a signature, this new method is based on 3D micro-profilometry which permits to translate the writing into an image showing dips and furrows of the sample so that anomalies can be detected. If you plan to imitate your spouse's signature, beware! Forensics have a new and very efficient tool. As an example, for the use of ballpoint pens on normal paper, the success rate was 100%.

Nature describes the problem and its solution.

Suspect signatures are usually analysed by expert graphologists, who compare the appearance of different letters in a name with a verified original. However, they are restricted to looking at flat, two-dimensional writing, and good forgeries can sometimes slip through the net.

The new three-dimensional analysis reveals the sequence in which each pen stroke was made on the page. The technique also highlights differences in the pressure applied by the writer as they marked the page. Such pressure differences are extremely difficult to mimic.

Let's turn to BBC News for more details.

Conventionally, handwriting has been analysed by forensic experts in 2D, looking at the sequence of pen strokes in handwriting, like a signature.

But this is not entirely accurate, because the exact sequence of strokes is not always clear and can vary.

"Using virtual reality and image processing, it is possible solve two of the most difficult problems in graphology: strokes superposing and strokes direction.

"These, in particular in case of same inks, are not detectable in a objective way with the traditional methods," Lorenzo Cozzella, part of the research team, told BBC News Online.

Here is a an example of "profilometric acquisition by means of conoscopic holography. These strokes were made by a BIC pen on common paper. The investigation area is about 5 mm × 5 mm. (a) 3D view of the strokes' profile. It is possible to note the regularity in the (S) line. (b) 3D view of the strokes' profile. The presence of bumps is evident. (c) 3D view with a mirror along the z-axis."

The research work has been published by the Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics in its Septemebr issue under the name "Superposed strokes analysis by conoscopic holography as an aid for a handwriting expert." Here are two links to the abstract and the full paper (free registration needed, valid for 30 days, PDF format, 6 pages, 320 KB). The above images come from this paper.

How is this technique working? Surprisingly well, according to Nature.

To test their system, the scientists used a database of 126 letters, each written by a different author. In almost 90% of the cases they tested, the author of a particular letter could be identified by comparing details of how their pen strokes crossed with a set of verified writing samples. For ballpoint pens on normal paper, the success rate was 100%.

If you want to see the

You know, I was interested in this when I read the blurb. Still am. But I can't help being put off when the first thing that I check out, this page from SciAm, starts out with the following sentence:

"Skeletal muscle accounts for more than a third of an average healthy 30-year-old's body mass, but its cells are unlike most human tissues."

Think about that. Thirty five percent of your body is unlike the other sixty five percent. I'd hazard a guess that that would be a true statement for almost any given discrete subset of your body. Its not like its saying that a few small cells (1%) responsible for your conditioning and are unlike the rest of your body. Your muscles are useful, yes, but hardly unique.

Ah, but you have to fill inches...

• Argentine Ants Invasion: Success Tied to Reduced Genetic Variation
• Supercolony of ants found (Europe; Mirrored articles: #1 and #2)
• Invading Ants Press United Front in California
• Argentine Ants Threaten Californian Horned Lizards
• It's the weather
• Giant mutant ant colony found in Australia (similar story.
• Might not be 'supercolony' after all: #1 and #2.

• Argentine Ants Invasion: Success Tied to Reduced Genetic Variation
• Supercolony of ants found (Europe; Mirrored articles: #1 and #2)
• Invading Ants Press United Front in California
• Argentine Ants Threaten Californian Horned Lizards
• It's the weather
• Giant mutant ant colony found in Australia (similar story.
• Might not be 'supercolony' after all: #1 and #2.

The counter argument of course is that to detect laser light, the remote civilisation have to be pointing their laser at us, whereas with radio it doesn't matter since it's not a directed beam.

Why are you assuming that radio signals wouldn't be directional? Assuming ET knows where to direct a LASER, there's nothing stopping them pointing a MASER at us either. Although I would've thought that we're far more likley to pick up distinctive omnidirectional signals since it seems somewhat more likely that ET wouldn't know specifically where to direct the signal.

I've seen some suggestions that advanced civilisations may use twisted light or graviton waves to communicate too.

Ian Crawford's "Where are they?" presents an interesting argument for the possiblity that we are alone.

Scientific American: From Finish to Start
Was the Grand Challenge robot race in March the fiasco it appeared to be? Hardly, argues William "Red" Whittaker. The annual event is pushing mobile robotics to get real."

Excellent! No more "Out of Print" (Hopefully).

Nah, instead you get "Out of Paper" or perhaps "Out of Toner."

Still a good idea, but electronic paper is what I'm holding out for.

/ Is that a library in your pocket, or are your just happy to speed read?

You are talking about NASA's older plan; I am talking about Mars Direct. I am not arguing that costs have decreased; only that better mission plans exist. What has advanced is not the technology or the financial situation, but the plan.

The reason I say your figures are out of date is that (unless I misunderstand) they come from the 90-day report of ca. 1989/90. Since then, NASA has itself considered Zubrin's Mars Direct plan and adopted based on it the "Mars Design Reference Mission," with costs about twice that of Mars Direct (so, 40 billion dollars). Reference here. I found the Design Reference Mission plan document itself in .gov but could not find the official estimates; the plan itself breaks down by percentage but not dollars.) So as you can see, costs of 400-500 billion dollars are way off.

And there is no need for a moon base before we go to Mars. This is part of the foundation of Mars Direct.

I encourage you to get ahold of the book A Case For Mars, which lays out the Mars Direct (though only at layman-level detail). Even NASA does not now believe Mars will take 400-500 billion dollars.

More references:

A design reference mission based on Zubrin's proposal, but considerably scaled up in personnel and equipment landed on Mars, was costed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who estimated the cost at around $50 billion for three missions. (emphasis added)

It was essentially a compromise between Mars Direct and the Ninety Day Report, and became known as the Reference Mission. A cost estimate even emerged from the Reference Mission design: $55 billion.

They then produced a cost estimate for what a Mars exploration program based upon this expanded Mars Direct would cost. Their result; $50 billion, with the estimate produced by the same costing group that assigned a $400 billion price tag to the traditional cumbersome approach to human Mars exploration embodied in NASA's 1989 "90 Day Report."

Mars Direct homepage

My rant Friday on the subject (I was hot about this issue at the time; still am, though I've cooled off somewhat)

Better Displays with Organic Films

Also, see this recent article in Scientific American about an interesting case of a "low functioning" autistic kid who can write about it. The most fascinating thing I saw in the article is that his senses can interfere with each other, so he has to avoid eye contact in order to hear someone. If even part of his specifics are more general to others with autism, it could lead to great insights into how to help them, I would think.

the average duration of a reversal is close to 7,000 years. The analysis further suggests that the timescale of the transition differs at various latitudes. During the last polarity shift, approximately 790,000 years ago, sites close to the equator underwent the 180-degree change over the course of 2,000 years, but the process took closer to 10,000 years in midlatitude regions.

the average duration of a reversal is close to 7,000 years. The analysis further suggests that the timescale of the transition differs at various latitudes. During the last polarity shift, approximately 790,000 years ago, sites close to the equator underwent the 180-degree change over the course of 2,000 years, but the process took closer to 10,000 years in midlatitude regions.

Im not sure how long you can make the rotation, but a corkstrew (sciam.com) lasertag gun might be really cool.

I would just like to point out that, up until as late as the late 50's, it was believed that radiation was actually good for you.

There's a lot of evidence that low dosages of radiation are good for you. Google "hormesis" or check out this article.

There's also a psychological issue about radiation or toxic exposure. To make up some numbers, let's say 10,000 soldiers get exposed during a nuclear bomb test in the '50s. Let's say that based on normal demographic statistics, 1,000 of them would have gotten cancer 50 years later. However, the radiation exposure increases the number of cancers by 50%, so 1,500 get cancer. In other words, only 1/3 of the men who got cancer did so because of the exposure, but I guarantee you that nearly all of the 1,500 would be sure that their cancer must have been caused by the bomb test.

Unless over the last 13 years you have used your immense cash stockpiles to hire people for the sole purpose of research.

Yeah well except most ebryonic stem cells come from unused inventro-fertilization embryos. Ones that would get "thrown away" anyway. They have no chance at actual survival. Because IVF is risky and low yield, they have to try many (I think groups of 4) eggs to reliably get 1, but in some cases, get more. In those cases, they pick one and toss the others. Or in some cases, use them for stem cells.

The reason embryonic stem cells are the niftiest, is because they can be transformed into any other cells. Other stem cells, like those from teeth, blood, etc are usually "stuck" to only turn into a certian subset of cells.

Check out this article on Scientific American

Scientific American is the only magazine that is interesting enough to make me regularly read it cover to cover.

Yes, given the state of education in America, the magazine title is becoming an oxymoron. :(

The best system I have seen so far is the U.are.U 4000. This system uses multiple CMOS camera's to construct a 3D image of the ridgelines which is not easily defeated by a gelatin mold (rarely do they build a good 3D map), if they added a camera which was sensitive to IR they could take a temerature or bloodflow measurement and make it basically foolproof. Besides which a 3D gelatin mold is basically impossible to obtain without the subject's knowledge. Also the way we are using the U.Are.U for our client involves a password, the scanner, and a hardware token/encryption system, to defeat this system you would have to record his password, obtain a 3D fingerprint mold, AND steal his hardware token! He is an engineer taking a laptop full of trade secrets with him to the far east and his company is worried about theft of the data.

There's also an article about myostatin in this month's Scientific American, which includes an even more striking photo of a Belgian Blue. Here's the original from Corbis (which belongs to Bill Gates... ugh).

There's an article about gene doping (which talks about myostatin) in Scientific American this month. You can read it here.

It's particularly interesting that this [the German child's case] is the first time it's been recorded from infancy - that seems very odd!

There's an article about gene doping (which talks about myostatin) in Scientific American this month. You can read it here.

It's particularly interesting that this [the German child's case] is the first time it's been recorded from infancy - that seems very odd!

Here's a direct link to that story.