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> Firstly, the fingerprints are not 'taken' but searched.

Pretty sure a warrant needs to be issued for the search part of "Search and Seizure."

> Secondly, I would like to hear more about the "many issues with the accuracy of fingerprints" because in my career as an AFIS engineer, I have never had an issue.
According to a review of NISTs' review, "the best of them are accurate more than 99 percent of the time." 99% is pretty inaccurate in my opinion for something like this. That could mean that 1 out of 100 people pulled over my be falsely arrested.
http://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/ig/fpvte03.cfm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/07/040716080142.htm

2010-Oct-15: What Did Tyrannosaurus Rex Eat? Each Other — It turns out that the undisputed king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex, didn't just eat other dinosaurs but also each other.

2011-Jan-26: No Leftovers for Tyrannosaurus Rex: New Evidence That T. Rex Was Hunter, Not Scavenger (Jan. 26, 2011) — Tyrannosaurus rex hunted like a lion, rather than regularly scavenging like a hyena, new research reveals. The findings end a long-running debate about the hunting behavior of this awesome ...

2011-Feb-22: T. Rex More Hyena Than Lion: Tyrannosaurus Rex Was Opportunistic Feeder, Not Top Predator, Paleontologists Say Was T. rex really the king of the forest? A new census of dinosaurs in Montana's Hell Creek Formation shows that T. rex was far too abundant to be a top predator. ...

2010-Oct-15: What Did Tyrannosaurus Rex Eat? Each Other — It turns out that the undisputed king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex, didn't just eat other dinosaurs but also each other.

2011-Jan-26: No Leftovers for Tyrannosaurus Rex: New Evidence That T. Rex Was Hunter, Not Scavenger (Jan. 26, 2011) — Tyrannosaurus rex hunted like a lion, rather than regularly scavenging like a hyena, new research reveals. The findings end a long-running debate about the hunting behavior of this awesome ...

2011-Feb-22: T. Rex More Hyena Than Lion: Tyrannosaurus Rex Was Opportunistic Feeder, Not Top Predator, Paleontologists Say Was T. rex really the king of the forest? A new census of dinosaurs in Montana's Hell Creek Formation shows that T. rex was far too abundant to be a top predator. ...

2010-Oct-15: What Did Tyrannosaurus Rex Eat? Each Other — It turns out that the undisputed king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex, didn't just eat other dinosaurs but also each other.

2011-Jan-26: No Leftovers for Tyrannosaurus Rex: New Evidence That T. Rex Was Hunter, Not Scavenger (Jan. 26, 2011) — Tyrannosaurus rex hunted like a lion, rather than regularly scavenging like a hyena, new research reveals. The findings end a long-running debate about the hunting behavior of this awesome ...

2011-Feb-22: T. Rex More Hyena Than Lion: Tyrannosaurus Rex Was Opportunistic Feeder, Not Top Predator, Paleontologists Say Was T. rex really the king of the forest? A new census of dinosaurs in Montana's Hell Creek Formation shows that T. rex was far too abundant to be a top predator. ...

I'm guessing this.

The mission is called MESSENGER, for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging.

They certainly did a lot of "ranging" coming up with that acronym.

Actually, ranging is an important part of any space mission. What they call "ranging" is measuring the distance from an earth station to the spacecraft and it's what allows then to calculate the orbit the spacecraft is following.

Without accurate ranging the spacecraft would either get lost in space or crash on the planet. With accurate enough ranging one can even find out details about the planer's interior. Thanks to ranging, we know that Mars has a liquid core.

Ha ha well said!

I imagine this genome dump is also more of a "memory dump" of your DNA's in-memory values, of your current state. DNA can, and does, mutate, naturally or via external factors.

From what I gather, all your cells share the same base DNA, as they are derived from the Zygote, when you were just a single cell. Over time, however, some cells mutate and differ.

If you were to compile this code, miraculously, into living cells, you'd probably end up with a squishy mucus monster, as there are apparently major DNA differences between say blood and tissue cells, and probably mucus cells too.

You jest, but I really find the practice of using fingerprint and DNA evidence to prove guilt disturbing and flawed.

Lets say I were going to commit a crime.

I've seen many people who approximately match my description. It would take very little time for me to follow behind someone and nab their used drink cup and/or a few strands of their hair. After studying their routine I could schedule my crime to leave them with a very weak alibi (or none at all).

After finishing my dirty deed I could simply plant their DNA & fingerprint evidence and give an anonymous tip in order to put the detectives firmly on their trail. One thing I've learned about cops (My Aunt and Uncle are both detectives) is that once they "like" someone for a crime and have a bit of "hard" evidence, they really try to make the charge stick more so than they try to pursue other suspects (unless contradicting evidence is staring them in the face).

Found a hair? Hmm, was that a hair that fell directly from someone's body, one that was transplanted after falling from someone's body, or one grown in a lab from someone's stem-cells? Impossible to tell, really**.

My point is this: Your DNA and Fingerprints ARE ALREADY VERY PUBLIC INFORMATION (unless you wear a full body condom out of the house). Finding your DNA or fingerprints at the scene of a crime is only evidence that you may or may not exist*; DNA and fingerprints should be considered no better evidence than finding fibers of the type of clothes you wear, not as the smoking gun that today's courts treat them.

To me: The ease of access to virtually anyone's DNA and our recent technological advances have redefined "reasonable doubt" (hell, even the low tech method I described makes DNA that much less credible).

* we have engineered synthetic life forms with custom designed DNA.

** Stem cells can be made from your skin, and Stem cells can be used to produce any of your tissues.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090930121512.htm

The Kleck study wan't very good.

For the record, I don't care which is right or wrong, only that we have a good conclusion based on good data... for anything, really.

what we do know for certain is that we need more studies, and you need to stop cherry picking data to support your belief.

Statements like this is why it is hard to take AI fanatics seriously.

I doubt many of us that have actually worked in the field of AI really care whether you take it seriously or not. The point about intelligence that, try as I might, I can't seem to get across here is that intelligence is the measurement of the amount of reasoning or decision making capability an entity has. There is no concept of "this is intelligent while this is not" but rather the concept is "this is more intelligent than that". If an entity has the ability to receive input and based on that input make a decision, it is exhibiting intelligent behavior. Is it exhibiting "human level" intelligence? Of course not. Humans possess the most advanced level of intelligence that we are aware of, but that intelligence is the result of millions of neurons with billions of interconnections, each with their own ability to receive stimulus and produce behavior. It is the aggregate effect of these smaller units of intelligent behaviors that constitute what we think of as human level intelligence.

However, the thermostat is not deciding(1) to change the temperature. It is opening or closing a switch based on a logic table or algorithm.

Oh, and I suppose the network of neurons in your brain works on magic. There is no logic or algorithm implemented organically within the cell structures and connections. When you make a decision do you not think there is some underlying set of chemical and electrical processes that occur that generate that decision?

None of these really exemplify AI.

We'll just have to disagree here. You may not want to call a chess program an example of AI, but I'm sorry, it most definitely is. You misunderstand what Deep Blue and it's team of programmers were doing. Obviously if there were just programmers in the back room making all the decisions that wouldn't have needed a multi-million dollar computer. While I agree that having the programmers involved during the games taints the results, the programmers were merely tweaking the algorithms as they encountered new situations their algorithms had not taken into account. The choice of moves was done using AI logic.

It's obvious you haven't thought though either the parallel parking or the cross country driving examples. Parallel parking is a lot harder than you imagine, having to process visual input, make judgments as to how much to turn the wheels, how much to back up or go forward, judging the distance to the curb and the cars in front and back. If if were that easy it would have been made available years ago.

The cross country driving I'm referring to is what MIT, Carnegie Mellon and others have been working on. The goal is a completely automated vehicle capable of navigating through traffic and driving from one end of the country to the other without any human intervention. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071105230951.htm

How does evolution explain a four chambered heart? Take away one chamber and the whole thing doesn't work. Add a chamber to a three chamber heart and it fails. Nowhere is there any type of record, fossil or otherwise that explains how a four chambered mammalian heard evolved from a three chambered reptilian heart.

See here. Reptiles have a 3 chambered heart, but some (turtles) show the beginning of the formation of a septum separating the ventricle in two chambers. An article in Nature back in 2009 described the discovery of the genetic mutation that led to complete separation - I couldn't find the link to the Nature article itself, but here's a digest and here are a few quotes. The most important conclusion there is IMHO that there exists a relatively minor genetic change which leads to the formation of the extra heart chambers, advantageous for natural selection

except at night when most of those plants *produce* CO2 to respire just like everything else.

While growing its still a net CO2 sequestration. Sort of on topic but also interesting:
"A new NASA computer modeling effort has found that additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback – a cooling effect – in the Earth's climate system that could work to reduce future global warming."
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/cooling-plant-growth.html

Only plants which tie the CO2 up in wood or which get burried and turned into oil take more out of the atmostphere than they put back.

I believe plants have some direct uses beyond wood and there is also the potential for things like plastic precursors (eliminating another need for petroleum).
"Now, in a first step toward achieving industrial-scale green production, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Dow AgroSciences report engineering a plant that produces industrially relevant levels of compounds that could potentially be used to make plastics."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101108140638.htm

So just "plants" isn't good enough. it has to be the right plants.

In general I think it is plants that are in a growth phase, not necessarily particular species.

Graphene actually can be made to have a bandgap so this problem may only be a temporary one.

Here's a paper which discusses graphene's band gap: Direct observation of a widely tunable bandgap in bilayer graphene

Here's a free article discussing this: Tunable Graphene Bandgap Opens The Way To Nanoelectronics And Nanophotonics

In fact, here's an article about IBM doing research on this very topic: IBM opens bandgap for graphene

Note that the date of the article discussing graphine with a bandgap is after the date of the article linked in the slashdot summary discussing that graphine can't have a bandgap. Sounds like the authors of the articles need to talk to some more people and get their facts ironed out.

The AGW community ... refuse to look at green technologies like nuclear because they’re ignorant. ... [ShakaUVM]

Already discussed, but note that nuclear plants do generate small amounts of CO2 due to current enrichment and mining methods, as well as the curing of concrete containment domes. Averaged over the projected life of the reactors, this CO2 is only a few percent of the emissions from an equivalently powerful coal plant. Pebble bed reactors might be capable of safe operation without containment domes, but that unfortunate incident in Germany makes it unlikely that they'll be built that way for a while. Nuclear power is our best hope of maintaining a prosperous civilization. Please don't oversell it by making claims it can't live up to yet.

... It is possible to reduce our CO2 by 50%, maily because we can attack the problem in a centralized way at the power plant level. 0 CO2 emission is simply not on the table, but the fact that climatologists think it is doable is yet another bit of evidence for the fact that being good at science doesn’t make you good at policy. [ShakaUVM]

Dr. Knutti's emissions graph makes it clear that he's examining a scenario in which CO2 emissions only drop to half of 2010 values by ~2030, and a quarter of 2010 values by ~2070. That doesn't seem too different from the Lieberman-McCain "Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007" which seemed doable.

Because much of the CO2 emitted by nuclear plants is emitted in a pulse as the concrete dome cures, any nuclear plants built in the next few decades won't be emitting CO2 past ~2070 (unless we still haven't perfected mining and enrichment in the next ~60 years.) As you say, centralized power plants are easiest to upgrade, but we've got ~60 years to perfect electric cars in order to hit Knutti's target. They certainly can't universally replace gasoline vehicles in time (especially in developing countries) but biofuels can be produced carbon-neutrally (albeit inefficiently at present) in a centralized fashion. Distributing biofuels just like gasoline will avoid the need to make and sell billions of electric cars by 2100. Even if that fails, I'd be astonished if ~60 years isn't enough time for humanity to devise and implement a carbon sequestration program capable of making up the difference.

In fact, the only way the human race could possibly fail to tackle climate change would be if there were legions of crackpots arguing that climate "scientists" are actually just deceitful, shady, laughably dishonest, perverting, badly reeking, dogmatic, anti-scientific, idiotic, disingenuous, scurrilous, nefarious, damned, indefensibly guilty, laughably wrong, fundamentally rotten, self-discrediting, fraudulent, bullshitting partisan hacks with something to hide who do bad things, don't fucking know

How about Ramanathan & Coakley (1978)? The 1970 SCEP report?

The first report says in the forward that it leaves out many of the variables I listed. The second report forecasts both cooling, maybe due to particulates and warming, maybe due to C02, and also implicitly leaves out many of the variables I listed, explicitly in many cases. So I guess the second report would be right no matter where the temperature goes, but as vague as they are I'll concede that at least the second report predicted warming as well as cooling.

The radiative properties of CO2 are different in the atmosphere than they are everywhere else?

Yes, that's the idea. There's this near vacuum called space that adds some still unknown variables, the sheer size of the planet and lack of any reliable temperature data going back more than 20 years. The lack of any working models, none of the models correctly predict past climate changes, which should be enough to give anyone pause. None of these things are taken into account. You are keeping in lock step with the characterization "All that can be known is known" though.

All of the things you mention are considered. I'm rather shocked that you think you have come up with a half dozen items that the scientists somehow missed.

Your statement is demonstrably false. Every single one of the things I mentioned are either left out implicitly or explicitly left out with a note reading "This model is not reliable for predicting climate because we are leaving these things out." So how you can say "All of the things you mention are considered" if you read any of these papers? Either you didn't read the papers and are just going off of what someone else said, which in my opinion is most likely. Or you're just making things up and hoping I won't read any of your citations, I just really hope it’s the former and not the latter.

Here's an idea. What if we took an infrared camera and measured the observed opacity of the atmosphere?

What are you talking about?

You mentioned this before. I pointed out that it doesn't mean what you think it means. You will need to study statistics for this one.

I think Hanson and Jones needs to study statistics, at least that was the finding of the investigation of the CRU. I however understand perfectly what no 'statistically significant' warming means. It means that the rise or fall of temperature does not exceed the noise present in the system. Why doesn't that trouble you when the predictions made are for cyclic warming? Let reword it so stupid old me can understand it better: There has been no detectable warming in the last 15 years.

Ok, for the next few paragraphs you descend into conspiracy theory territory

Ya, Science Daily, real lunatic fringe stuff: ...the debate is growing ever more contentious in light of the recent disclosure of e-mail messages suggesting that some scientists supporting the human activities scenario tried to suppress publication of opposing viewpoints.

And that's the "light" version. They don't even talk about the effort to delete emails to avoid FOA requests. They don't talk about "loosing" the raw data. They do talk about suppressing other scientists who disagree with them. Real hero's you have there! Sounds like a real unbiased source that’s out to find the truth no matter what that might be. And this is the source of information you use.

This is how the "consensus" was won,

Remember? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060126190325.htm

The metallic glass research was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. Along with Sheng and Ma, the authors of the Nature article included Weikun Luo, a Johns Hopkins doctoral student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; F. M Alamgir of the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and J. M. Bai of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

This news today is the next step in bringing these realities to market. Bravo to them all.

Season of Birth May Have Long-Term Effects on Personality, Study Suggests
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101205202510.htm

your personal comfort and blood clots be damned

I just wanted to tell you the bloodclot problem is because of the bad air conditioning, not from lack of movement. see here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060517084330.htm

So it is entirely the whole industrys fault for reducing the quality of air, because the risk is real, and they're not doing anything about it.

I wanted to find a link to the "quite interesting" clip with this information, but couldn't find it.. Google failed me :(

Why not?

On one day, the Milky Way became 2x as thick as previously thought.

On another day, the estimated number of stars tripled.

And on a 3rd day, there's 30x as much entropy as previously thought.

So, why shouldn't astrophysicists come out next week and say that the Universe is actually younger (or older) than we once thought?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080918170357.htm
Solution To Global Fisheries Collapse? 'Catch Shares' Could Rescue Failing Fisheries, Protect The Ocean
A third of open fisheries have collapsed. A sixth of privatized fisheries have collapsed.
Even with privatised fishers, instead of a staple, fish becomes a luxury as "the per-pound price has increased significantly."

On top of that,
http://www.healthcastle.com/fish-safe-eat.shtml
Fish are contaminated with mercury and industrial chemicals.
It's okay to eat low mercury fish-- just limit it to 12 oz per week.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080911234836AAEic4K
Since 1945- almost 11% of the earths land area degraded for raising crops. 70,000 sq k. abandoned annually.
While food production has risen, the rate of increase has been dropping for decades.
"If the trend towards soil exhaustion and degradation continues, food production will not keep pace with population growth; this is already the situation in Africa."

http://www.unwater.org/wwd10/faqs.html
Water quality is declining.

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/gradual-decline-in-suffolk-s-drinking-water-1.2570399
Suffolk's draft water management plan found "a continued gradual decline in water quality" since 1987.

---

Up to about 1960, you could pollute and the earth had enough excess capacity to handle it.
After that we started having pollution outbreaks and tighter laws. The laws will need to get tighter.
Once you have enough people. you reduce the earth to lifeless soil and the water to mud. Their urine and wastes are coming in large enough quantities that it's increasingly difficult to keep up.

---

What could we do now? Well, we could remove the tax deduction for having a child. That's not killing anyone, right?

But as i posted elsewhere-- I don't think we fix this one. The folks who breed will come to dominate the population. I know three ladies who each had 4 kids. All of modern industrialization didn't do anything to slow them down.

No, the big "bugaboo" is that there just isn't enough raw material.

Here for instance is a study which gives the unrealistic assumptions of SugarCane production/conversion efficiency, for half of all available arable land. And even then, with such wildly unrealistic assumptions, the figures are still abysmally low.
http://imgur.com/94nsn.png

And of course the already serious global scarcity on Potassium and Phosphorous.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311092124.htm

And given the growing populations this planet is expected to have, it would be rather criminal to place event further scarcity on those resources.

The oxidizing event was the appearance of the mushroom which drifted in from spores floating through space.

Science Daily Article

The dates don't really match, but do they ever?

Sort of a good point about waiting to have children in your 20s. Problem is that any pregnancy after age 35 is "high risk" by default. I'm surprised that there hasn't been more publicity regarding the link between a mother's age and the child's risk of having autism, but I think society prefers to keep living the lie that it is a good idea to avoid being "stuck with kids" until the "prime of their life" is over.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090715160823.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101208085145.htm

This is a much better summary. Also, the OP misquotes the 2X CO2 value as 1.64. The study found 1.94C, and a decrease of 0.6 compared to the model without the feedback. Even 2.6 is on the low end. With some recent work on cloud feedbacks, 4C is more likely.

1.94C was _without_ negative feedback from plants!

Oops, should have looked lower down: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101208085145.htm The global number is a -0.3 C reduction in climate sensitivity for a doubling of carbon dioxide. In their realization they get a sensitivity of 1.94 C not 1.64 C but applied to the mid-range 3 C sensitivity we'd expect 2.7 C so not a large effect. It will be interesting to know if the effects of drought on clearing land of vegetation have been included.

This is exactly right, sequestering energy in a highly complex system with millions or billions of feedback loops, produces effects which are difficult to predict and are not intuitive. Increasing energy causes chaotic change. The Thermodynamicist Prigogine spoke of dissipative structures. Adding energy to steady state systems has little effect as the system absorbs the energy up to it's limit, and which point the system becomes perturbed, and goes into chaotic fluctuation (and continues to do so until it arrives at the next steady state.)

Ocean acidification is reflective of a fundamental change in global environment. The "Rise of Slime" is a powerful indication that the chemistry and biology of our oceans is going through a revolutionary transformation. Even fresh water lakes are showing increasing signs of anaerobic bacterial growth, expanding growth of both cyanobacteria and blue green algae, and acidification.

The accurate term now is climate and ecological change. The wise woods-man knows not to defecate close to where he masticates. It's time the species got that lesson, and stopped using the world we rely on as a toilet. The growing changes indicate wild swings and a system slipping into chaos.

This is why I'm skeptical of this result. Models are only as good as the assumptions put into them. And I've seen other data, some from experiments, suggesting that CO2 may not be as helpful to plant growth as this study assumes.

Plus, if we keep chopping down rainforests, this effect will hardly help at all!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101208085145.htm

This is a much better summary. Also, the OP misquotes the 2X CO2 value as 1.64. The study found 1.94C, and a decrease of 0.6 compared to the model without the feedback. Even 2.6 is on the low end. With some recent work on cloud feedbacks, 4C is more likely.

Where can I go for science news thats not quite as intense as the journals themselves, but more in depth than the normal news outlets? Something that explains whats going on without having to create controversy to justify airtime but recognizes I have a Bachelors and a job and not a PhD?

I've always been rather partial to Science Daily. I find it invaluable for keeping up with the latest advancements and discoveries, presented in a way that is understandable yet not insulting to your intelligence.

Please don't think I take anything I state here as gospel truth, this is just a hypothesis I play with to help explain why there seems to be actual ethics in the real world (beyond prescriptive academic philosophy) while there is no apparent source of these ethics (yes, I'm an atheist).

No danger of that here. There are few things I take as gospel truths and this is just an informal discussion. As for theism, I wish I could say I believe in God, but it's more like I *want* to believe in God and often operate under the assumption that there is a God. But that's besides the point (which is off-topic to begin with :).

Some of these traits are uniquely human, and some continued on from previous primate iterations (notice the commonalities within social structures of divergent primate groups).

Your hypothesis seems perfectly tenable. Since you bring up other primates, the question arises (again?) how we define "human". Chimpanzees are 96-99% genetically identical to humans. According to this article, Chimpanzees are more genetically similar to humans than various species of yeast are to one another. Recent research indicates that there are non-human animals which are self-aware to some degree.

What we define as human, or human like varies with culture. Black people weren't human for a time, and neither were Jews or women (who still aren't in many cultures considered fully human), for example, and thus were not part of the formula.

Exactly. The demarcation line is not at all immovable. So, why not err on the side of caution? Of course, that's a personal choice (albeit influenced by our cultural progress).

There are many variations by culture since the evolutionary framework only provides us with a hard and fast default, which can be somewhat overwritten by cultural conditioning and personal circumstances, it becomes more and more apt at larger aggregate levels though.

Is culture evolutionary as well?

Cannabalism can spread nasty prion diseases (kuru, historically), meaning there may be larger cultural and traditional forces against it, or even another slight evolutionary imperative.

So can eating non-human animals. Some folks suspect that vCJD (Mad Cow Disease) is much more prevalent than meat industry stakeholders want (or will allow) us to believe. Since it takes so long for symptoms of the disease to manifest, it's hard to know. Some have suggested that, perhaps, Alzheimer's is also prion-related.

We didn't genetically evolve past slavery, we just culturally reclassified black people (or poor people, or whoeever) as being equally human with us, and thus entitled to the same rights and ethical choices as us.

Well, yes. Time has shown that there's more to evolution than simple genetic mutation/natural selection. *Choices* do play a role. Much of human "evolution" in the past 10,000 years have been a product more of adaptation to circumstances and our lifestyle choices than pure survival. More and more evidence is revealing that many of our former assumptions about other animal species (e.g. that they are essentially automatons driven by instinct) are not valid.

The problem is that animals are not human, and thus face an uphill battle.

Not human by our current definition. We could (once again) redefine what it means to be human.

The only alternative I can see is that ethics and rights are completely socially derived, and thus completely transient and arbitrary.

It's a scary thought, but it might be so. Anyways, I thank you for your though-provoking response. I wish my own response was more detailed and reasoned, but this is the best I can do at the moment. I have way more questions than answers. Cheers!! --MM

2010 is on track to record territory again, despite the recession:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101121160229.htm

Okay, here's a relatively recent citation to get you started:

[Cumulative Radiation Exposure Shows Increased Cancer Risk For Emergency Department Patients]

That said, it has been common knowledge in medical and scientific circles for decades, so it really doesn't need a citation.

To make that comic safe for work, always include this variant. Besides being upbeat, it's a better reflection of what's really going on -- the stationary rover was just involved in finding evidence of subsurface water.

This article has an image, or at least a "visual reconstruction"
sciencedaily

law enforcement isn't exactly a money making industry

Really? They must be doing it wrong in Canada. Law enforcement is very lucrative in the US. Here are a few examples:

Carrying an unusually large amount of money? The cops will be glad to keep that for you.

Local coffers a little low? Just write more traffic tickets!

You mean fair and balanced like ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Comedy Central? I'm so tired of whiny liberals that moan about Fox News because it's to the right of their views. Waaaa, waaaaa, waaaa. Maybe their obsession to Fox News has something to do with who they are.

Can a wind cart travel faster than the wind?

If boats can go faster than the wind, why not a wind cart?

So it should have been made much more clear that this is about down wind. OK. mentioned later, but who reads that far in a summery.

Nature article(reg required)
Here we use a holographic stereographic technique and a photorefractive polymer material as the recording medium to demonstrate a holographic display that can refresh images every two seconds. A 50Hz nanosecond pulsed laser is used to write the holographic pixels. Multicoloured holographic 3D images are produced by using angular multiplexing, and the full parallax display employs spatial multiplexing. 3D telepresence is demonstrated by taking multiple images from one location and transmitting the information via Ethernet to another location where the hologram is printed with the quasi-real-time dynamic 3D display.

If you understand any of the above you probably need to spend more time outside.

ScienceDaily
"At the heart of the system is a screen made from a novel photorefractive material, capable of refreshing holograms every two seconds, making it the first to achieve a speed that can be described as quasi-real-time," said Pierre-Alexandre Blanche, an assistant research professor in the UA College of Optical Sciences and lead author of the Nature paper.
[...]
Currently, the telepresence system can present in one color only, but Peyghambarian and his team have already demonstrated multi-color 3D display devices capable of writing images at a faster refresh rate, approaching the smooth transitions of images on a TV screen.

Sounds like they've still got a way to go before we get Holo-TV.

And the toxic* enzyme which causes the cancer cell to die: Croakin.

Good guess.

You may be thinking of reaper. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101020131710.htm

Or caspase http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspase which turns the cell into Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Or you could give it a Smac http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071112133819.htm

You can't make this stuff up.

And the toxic* enzyme which causes the cancer cell to die: Croakin.

Good guess.

You may be thinking of reaper. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101020131710.htm

Or caspase http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspase which turns the cell into Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Or you could give it a Smac http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071112133819.htm

You can't make this stuff up.

Supposedly, intelligence correlates strongly with liberal tendencies. Somehow I don't think we should all persistently imbibe to see if we can fix that little problem. The same applies to "curing" liberalism, as you put it.

The guy who posts a link to actual research on the subject gets modded flamebait while the guy who makes unsupported claims, some of which are contradicted by that very research which was linked to gets modded insightful.

Some of the possibilities are:

(A) The guy making unsupported claims has a lot of sock puppets with mod points.
(B) Slashdot is filled with people that don't care about the facts.
(C) Slashdot is the victim of an organized astroturf.

Wow. I'm hurt Mr. Anonymous.

NO, I don't have any sock puppets. I don't have that sort of time.

But as for links, here a few:
Study links more hurricanes, climate change or
Warming doubles number of hurricanes both referring to this paper but containing their own research, too.
Then there is this: Research Meteorologists See More Severe Storms Ahead: The Culprit -- Global Warming

There is a very clear link between storms, hurricanes and increased atmospheric temperature. I actually thought it was common knowledge by now, so I didn't bother posting links. As to why or who modded the other guy flamebait, I don't know, but the idea that I'd spent extra time creating and logging in with sock puppets is so hilarious from my perspective, that it almost made me smile.

Or practice at the right age. Why is there an abnormal number of "perfect pitch" incidences in Tonal Language speakers. (See the Science Monitor Article from a half decade ago.) Neural pathways are built because we create them. Grey matter is created cause our body pooped it out.

Saying one is more important than the other is like saying a sculptor is more important than the stone they chiseled out on. Both were integral in creating a work of art, and both can be studied, but should not be taken independent of the other. (Unless you're just being foolish for the sake of argument.)

By that order of thought, posting on /. is not natural (ever seen an animal do it?), yet females eating the males after having sex is.

Or maybe that argument is bollocks because the correlation between "natural" and moral is not strong at all.

I'll take it you're not a woman. What about a sex change?

Hang on a minute - you're saying that if for example heat energy is used to create electricity, as in a quantum thermoelectric engine, you'll end up with more heat at the end?

The thermoelectric effect does not mean you can absorb arbitrary heat energy and convert it to electricity. What it does mean is that you can take a thermal differential and get some energy out of the natural flow of heat energy across that differential. Do you wind up with more heat at the end? No, not more, but it's not clear to me that you wind up with less, either. What you have less of is thermal differential, not necessarily less heat. If you don't have less heat, but you do have electric potential, and heat results from the use of that electric potential, then at that further point, yes, there might be more heat. Even if you do have less heat initially, it is still possible that the use of that electric potential will still result in more heat eventually. This is the edge of my understanding, perhaps someone who understands the thermoelectric effect better can fill in my ignorance.

The earth can only eliminate thermal waste (biproduct of entropy) at a maximum theoretical rate-

Hang on a minute - you're saying that if for example heat energy is used to create electricity, as in a quantum thermoelectric engine, you'll end up with more heat at the end? I cannae figure that, if the electricity is being produced by thermal energy, how can you end up with x thermal energy going in producing x+y thermal energy + electrical energy? I get that entropy is produced, but how does that then create more heat?

Actually, halving our CO2 output is the consensus view of what we need to do to stabilize temperatures at a reasonable level. [ShakaUVM]

Huh? The IPCC AR4 WG1 says: "For comparison with this constant composition case, it is useful to note that constant emissions would lead to much larger radiative forcing. For example, constant CO2 emissions at year 2000 values would lead to concentrations reaching about 520 ppm by 2100."

Furthermore, "A 50% reduction would stabilise atmospheric CO2, but only for less than a decade. After that, atmospheric CO2 would be expected to rise again as the land and ocean sinks decline owing to well-known chemical and biological adjustments. Complete elimination of CO2 emissions is estimated to lead to a slow decrease in atmospheric CO2 of about 40 ppm over the 21st century."

Notice that reducing emissions by 50% would only stabilize CO2 for less than a decade. It wouldn't stabilize temperatures at all (see "constant emission commitment") because the huge thermal inertia of the oceans causes surface temperatures to lag behind changes in the effective radiating temperature of the Earth brought about by increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

The scientific consensus is actually that the total amount of CO2 emitted is what's important, not the emission rate. Every gigaton of CO2 we emit in 2010 is one less gigaton that our descendents will be able to emit in 2100. Therefore, the person you were lecturing was actually correct about this one point. Scientists wouldn't ever say that we just need to emit 50% less CO2 in order to stabilize temperatures, because that's simply not true.

As usual, I'll have to guess that you're referring to the title of a pop-science article. Next time, read past the title:

"It is wrong to believe that the temperature will remain constant with constant emissions," says Knutti. ... The models show that there is a 75 percent probability that global warming will not exceed two degrees if a maximum of 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 are emitted into the atmosphere from 2000 to 2050. This number seems high, but 234 billion tonnes had already been flung into the atmosphere between 2000 and 2006. If the emission remain at this high level, or even increase, the budget would be exhausted before 2030. The results show that time to act is short. ... This study also concludes that the total amount of CO2 emissions is crucial in terms of how much the earth warms up. The authors summarise a political interpretation in comments in Nature Reports Climate Change3. According to Knutti, "Every tonne of CO2 is one tonne, whether it is emitted today or in fifty years. This is often lost in the tangle of emission targets, certificates and negotiations. The total quantity is what matters, and must be limited, but short-term goals are necessary to see whether we are on the right track." ... The series of studies show that the total quantity of CO2 emission is limited if people want to limit climate change. "With every year of delay, we are using up our quota, losing flexibility, and increasing the probability of dangerous consequences," says Knutti.

Or, look at the picture next to the title. Notice that Knutti's graph of CO2 emissions doesn't just drop in half, because that wouldn't stabilize temperatures. As Knutti stresses, the total amount of CO2 emitted is what's important, which is in this graph is the area under the curve. Knutti's curve has finite area because in hi

BS! I dare you to cite one scientific study supporting your statement. Here are some studies or references to studies that conclude organic food [pdf] can feed the world.

Falcon