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I enjoy tobacco and don't mind dying younger. They're not doing anything wrong by supplying what I ask of them. They might be abusing dimlows but that does not mean they're abusing me. What they are doing _is_ right.

This is something I wonder about. I do consider tobacco companies an evil force in some sense. They're useful to governments because of taxes so governments certainly don't want to fight them. Let's see, tobacco isn't something that's probably harmful - it has been well proven scientifically that there's tobacco causes health problems. It is also known that it's not causing some minor problems but causes significant problems like cancer, with a statistically significant reduction in life extensiveness. Plus, it's known that tobacco is, because of nicotine, addictive. It seems like a major part of this is that smoking/tobacco use has been around for a while before modern medicine and before definitive proof of its ill effects. Imagine this - I invent a device that, when used, gives you huge, orgasmic physical pleasure. That would be addictive enough psychologically. Now imagine this device also has slight physically addictive effects and, most importantly, gives you an above-normal dose of gamma radiation, high enough so that a significant amount of device users would eventually succumb to cancer or radiation sickness caused by it. Would I really be allowed to market and sell the device? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't, certainly not unless the government would stand to gain very serious revenue from taxes on that, and even then I'm doubtful.

Sure you would be able to. Its called 'high glucose corn syrup'. You can find it in MANY different food products and it causes serious health issues like unhealthy weight gain (they are 'empty' calories). It also causes Diabetes, a life changing and possible fatal health condition. Its even been linked to possible liver scarring. And the best part about this? Its not heavily taxed like cigarettes.

This looks promising:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090127131654.htm

Stuck? no, it's going through the process human trials take time.

Just because it works in animals doesn't mean it will work in people, or has no long term effect.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100111154924.htm

And don't act like it's being used regularly in animals with success. It is not.

never mind I found a much more informative link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070614162223.htm

It is because of our understanding of how deposits of complex-chain hydrocarbons are formed that we bloody know where to look for them.

Please explain something to me. Has anything in science been thought to of happened one way then found out to have happened another or even have more then one possibilities? I'll give you a hint of one, it involves Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. Perhaps we should look in another direction if that's to difficult to follow. In the 18th century, leaches were all the rave of the then modern medical science because they removed the mysterious bad blood from the body. Leaches are still used in medical science today but in a completely different capacity. Here is another, probably closer to the point I'm making.

In case you are still missing the point, science is continuously evolving and even though something is understood to function or operate in one way, it does not mean that it cannot function or operate in another. Saying this is how it is and it has lead to the discovery of all these oil fields so nothing else can be right is little more then the earth is the center of the universe BS. The entire idea of looking in other areas is to find other way to find the crap. It's not in any way an attempt to say the previous way isn't possible, it's only to say this may be possible too.

This whole abiogenesis bullshit is no more valid science than the statement that "I believe there is a pink elephant orbiting Neptune, disprove me." Until the abiogenesis "proponents" (such and few as they are) produce a model capable of being tested (through drilling and subsequent discovery of deposits not predicted by current understanding) they are not science - they are mental masturbaters exploring interesting concepts.

Abiogenesis? How did we get from there being more then one way to skin a cat to life generating from non-life? And no, I wouldn't say that the support for abiogenesis is few at all. In fact, it's the prevailing scientific theory for life as we know it. Of course I agree with you, until we can test and provide a model capable of being tested, it's not a proven fact or anything, it's just an assumption or theory being explored. But the great thing about science is that theories can be falsified which would account for the pink elephant your seeing.

Speaking of mental masturbation, Please don't denigrate anyone because of your own short comings or premature conclusions. What makes science great is that it's not an un-bendable religion- please don't treat it that way.

I guess a simple google search was too hard for you to do before you started trolling.

But hey, everyone loves the little retard forced to sit in regular class with us now that the Special Ed budget has been depleted. It's simply amazing what he will say. (BTW, Ingore the part about god and pay attention to the oil in the lab parts as they are referenced for your enjoyment).

What is really interesting about this is the age of the rock art, which would seem to be as old as any human art anywhere and make the case for the Jawoyn Aborigines having one of the oldest cultures in the world. .

from the original article

The Jawoyn people say they are excited the painting could be Australia's oldest dated rock art. The Jawoyn are a group of Indigenous peoples who are the traditional owners of the land in Australia's Northern Territory...

What leads you to believe that as successive waves of humans entered Australia that the current occupants are in any way related to the painting's creators? Were the original inhabitants pushed further south,overrun,wiped out,walked to Tasmania? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070509161829.htm

"At the time of the migration, 50,000 years ago, Australia and New Guinea were joined by a land bridge and the region was also only separated from the main Eurasian land mass by narrow straits such as Wallace's Line in Indonesia. The land bridge was submerged about 8,000 years ago...

Given 30,000 years plus at the front door entrance to Australia I think the Jarwoyn are the least likely descendants of the original artists.

You seem to have stopped reading that article a paragraph ahead of the answer to your question. One of the key findings from that genetic tracing work is that unlike many other places, Australia had only one genetically significant wave of immigration. Geographically, I believe it is also not quite right that Arnhem Land was the 'front door' into Australia, since Cape York was the most persistent part of the connection to New Guinea.

In addition, there is some continuity between essentially modern Jawoyn rock art and the older drawings. When Europeans arrived, they were making red ochre rock drawings in the same places that have similar red ochre rock drawings going back thousands of years. Between that and the genetic evidence that all Australian Aborigines and Melanesians are descendants of a single group of immigrants from ~50kya, it would take significant hypothesizing away from the evidence to not credit their ancestors with the oldest of the drawings.

I think this one seems more valid than cellphones: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100525154002.htm from http://antfarm.yuku.com/topic/9954 ...

What is really interesting about this is the age of the rock art, which would seem to be as old as any human art anywhere and make the case for the Jawoyn Aborigines having one of the oldest cultures in the world. .

from the original article

The Jawoyn people say they are excited the painting could be Australia's oldest dated rock art. The Jawoyn are a group of Indigenous peoples who are the traditional owners of the land in Australia's Northern Territory...

What leads you to believe that as successive waves of humans entered Australia that the current occupants are in any way related to the painting's creators? Were the original inhabitants pushed further south,overrun,wiped out,walked to Tasmania? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070509161829.htm

"At the time of the migration, 50,000 years ago, Australia and New Guinea were joined by a land bridge and the region was also only separated from the main Eurasian land mass by narrow straits such as Wallace's Line in Indonesia. The land bridge was submerged about 8,000 years ago...

Given 30,000 years plus at the front door entrance to Australia I think the Jarwoyn are the least likely descendants of the original artists.

it's not expensive to run one trial.

it's expensive to run lots of trials. Spread that cost to the CDC, NIH, the WHO, various teaching hospitals, universities, pharmacos, foreign medical systems... and yes, research gets cheap per study.

Problem is, the companies spend even more money on ads then medical R&D.

Legal Alternative, you just have to have the guts to drink fish medicine.

One the main contributors to the error rate is the photon detection efficiency, where 80% or better is considered "good". In a major breakthrough last month, NIST (yes, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, not some startup company's marketing hype) has achieved a record single-photon detection rates of 99% - and possibly better, since there currently exists no metrology to test that level of efficiency. So in terms of that source of error, things are looking up.

Sunlight has lots of other benefits as well, not the least of which is you're probably exercising instead of playing WoW all day.

Human skin synthesizes Vitamin D when exposed to the sun. Vitamin D is anti-cancer, anti-rickets, anti-birth-defect, anti-flu (flu season takes place when the sun goes away for the winter), etc.

So basically, Vitamin-D is the Medical-Industrial Complex's worst enemy.

With that said, regular sunburns aren't good. It's usually best to stay out of the sun during the hottest parts of the day, approx. 12-2pm, and avoid sunscreen no matter what (which prevents the synthesis of Vitamin D).

I didn't say he was an expert because of what his Dad did. I said he's brilliant and the kind of person who is way ahead of the class. Who his dad is contributed to that. Look at how far ahead he was of the slashdot crowd on the "Wilma the Capacitor" story published in 2006 at http://pesn.com/2005/10/25/9600196_Wilma_Capacitor/ just recently confirmed by science in April http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100413202850.htm He was totally lambasted by people such as you in Slashdot in 2006 http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/26/1158233&tid=232&tid=14

I remember when an article by Paul Noel was linked from Slashdow in Oct. 26, 2005 called "Wilma the Capacitor", in which he said: "Energetically speaking, the vortex that forms in these storms is also a natural particle accelerator, and a massive capacitor bank. As the harmonic circuit develops, it resonates acoustically and functions as a capacitor, extracting the heat from the storm and transmitting it away. Without this electrical circuit, the storm would fail almost instantly due to the accumulation of heat from condensation of water."

You all thought he was crazy and you were all so smart for pointing that Science Daily published an article on April 14, 2010 titled: "Giant Natural Particle Accelerator Above Thunderclouds". Now its official science.

Are you still laughing?

He was right, you were wrong.

No, he isn't just a software engineer, whose dad encoded the software that put the first astronauts on the moon.

Here is what he wrote this morning to me in a moment of reflection:

It isn't possible that I know what I am talking about is it?



For the record.

I hold 3 college degrees with about 240 Semester Hours including Physics (Including calculus based), Chemistry (Organic, Inorganic, analytic, Qantitative and Qualitative , Accounting, Computer Science, Microbiology, Biology, Accounting, Business, Nursing, and much more). Most PhD's have far less than I hold. I was doing College level Chemistry by 5th Grade. I was doing rocketry, mapping and a lot more before high school. I was breeding plants before I was 11. I don't do it now but I know what is going on. My favorite sciences are agriculture and chemistry. My bedroom was a radio station for 8 years (Ham) during the time I built transmitters, antenna and receivers.

I have done extensive exhaustive studies on public education and what works and doesn't work. I have done extensive work on electronics design and embedded programming.

I have traveled 40 US States and 4 foreign countries.

During my work in Mobile County a typical day might take me as far as Washington County or Dauphin Island. I have worked for months on Dauphin Island and the region around it where the Oil industry works out of.

I am not really wanting to publish all of this. I sort of hate credentials stuff. I figure if the facts don't carry the day it is all a lie anyway.

I just though you might like to know.



So before you go jumping all over this story and dismissing things, do some digging. You just might find out that he is actually far ahead of the curve. He knows as much as most industry experts. The difference? He's not afraid to talk.

The researchers point out that the computer evolves these laws without any prior knowledge of physics, kinematics or geometry. But evolution takes time. On a parallel computer with 32 processors, simple linear motion could be analyzed in a few minutes, but the complex double pendulum required 30 to 40 hours of computation. The researchers found that seeding the complex pendulum problem with terms from equations for the simple pendulum cut processing time to seven or eight hours.

Um... no. No they would not.

Yes they would. Simple economics says that as the cost of something goes up people look for cheaper sources or reduces the amount needed. That has been proven throughout history, even if not by choice. And as today's conventional energy gets more expensive people will move to other sources.

Geothermal, while prevalent in some parts of the world, is not that big of a resource here. And most of the places where geothermal is available are national parks. Could you imagine the uproar if you tried to build a power plant at Yellowstone?

The only reason it is not big here, in the US, is because little has been done to develop it. And it is even used in New York City. I myself have proposed geothermal in Yellowstone, but you're right so called environmentalists even oppose offshore and onshore wind farms. "Not in my backyard!" Of course I'd want a Yellowstone geothermal power plant to be blended into the landscape and I'd love both solar panels and a wind turbine on my property.

Solar is nowhere near efficient enough to power the country. It can be a nice boost, hardly economic, and government subsidies are not enough to help. For starters, government subsidies exist

Wow! Solar power got $62 million for R&D. That's dwarfed by coal's $3.302 Billion in 2007 alone or Nuclear Power's $145 Billion over the years. "My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'" Wars are even started over oil.

There are also several tax breaks you can receive for "greening" your home, but it will never be enough to make it cost effective

Tell all those who build off the grid that it's not effective. Solar hot water has a payback period as short as 5 to 6 years, and the equipment lasts a lot longer. The payback for PV panels is much harder but estimates have been as low as 7 years and panels come with 20, 25, even 30 year warranties. Even pro-rated replacing equipment is cost competitive. Individually owned PVs aren't the only way to go solar either. The same publication you provide a link to your article, Science Daily, also has this article, Solar Power in Ontario Could Produce Almost as Much Power as All U.S. Nuclear Reactors, Studies Find. On large scales concentrated solar power may be more effective. Another article it has, Fossil-Fuel Subsidies Hurting Global Environment, Security, Study Finds.

Oh, and does he consider the subsidies conventional energy gets too in the study? Does he factor in the billions of dollars coal and nuclear power get? The only mention I see about them is where "he favors more state and federal funding for research and development." Personally I don't think government should be subsiding most of what it does, whether energy or farms or ...

Of course, as the Kennedys showed us, some people don't like the way they look. You remember Ted Kennedy, right? That big green liberal that BLOCKED wind power because it might disrupt the view from some of his mansions?

I don't know how many tymes I commented, but I didn't find any, I posted about how Kennedy or that NIMBY environmentalists opposed wind farm o

Um... no. No they would not.

Yes they would. Simple economics says that as the cost of something goes up people look for cheaper sources or reduces the amount needed. That has been proven throughout history, even if not by choice. And as today's conventional energy gets more expensive people will move to other sources.

Geothermal, while prevalent in some parts of the world, is not that big of a resource here. And most of the places where geothermal is available are national parks. Could you imagine the uproar if you tried to build a power plant at Yellowstone?

The only reason it is not big here, in the US, is because little has been done to develop it. And it is even used in New York City. I myself have proposed geothermal in Yellowstone, but you're right so called environmentalists even oppose offshore and onshore wind farms. "Not in my backyard!" Of course I'd want a Yellowstone geothermal power plant to be blended into the landscape and I'd love both solar panels and a wind turbine on my property.

Solar is nowhere near efficient enough to power the country. It can be a nice boost, hardly economic, and government subsidies are not enough to help. For starters, government subsidies exist

Wow! Solar power got $62 million for R&D. That's dwarfed by coal's $3.302 Billion in 2007 alone or Nuclear Power's $145 Billion over the years. "My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'" Wars are even started over oil.

There are also several tax breaks you can receive for "greening" your home, but it will never be enough to make it cost effective

Tell all those who build off the grid that it's not effective. Solar hot water has a payback period as short as 5 to 6 years, and the equipment lasts a lot longer. The payback for PV panels is much harder but estimates have been as low as 7 years and panels come with 20, 25, even 30 year warranties. Even pro-rated replacing equipment is cost competitive. Individually owned PVs aren't the only way to go solar either. The same publication you provide a link to your article, Science Daily, also has this article, Solar Power in Ontario Could Produce Almost as Much Power as All U.S. Nuclear Reactors, Studies Find. On large scales concentrated solar power may be more effective. Another article it has, Fossil-Fuel Subsidies Hurting Global Environment, Security, Study Finds.

Oh, and does he consider the subsidies conventional energy gets too in the study? Does he factor in the billions of dollars coal and nuclear power get? The only mention I see about them is where "he favors more state and federal funding for research and development." Personally I don't think government should be subsiding most of what it does, whether energy or farms or ...

Of course, as the Kennedys showed us, some people don't like the way they look. You remember Ted Kennedy, right? That big green liberal that BLOCKED wind power because it might disrupt the view from some of his mansions?

I don't know how many tymes I commented, but I didn't find any, I posted about how Kennedy or that NIMBY environmentalists opposed wind farm o

Um... no. No they would not.

Yes they would. Simple economics says that as the cost of something goes up people look for cheaper sources or reduces the amount needed. That has been proven throughout history, even if not by choice. And as today's conventional energy gets more expensive people will move to other sources.

Geothermal, while prevalent in some parts of the world, is not that big of a resource here. And most of the places where geothermal is available are national parks. Could you imagine the uproar if you tried to build a power plant at Yellowstone?

The only reason it is not big here, in the US, is because little has been done to develop it. And it is even used in New York City. I myself have proposed geothermal in Yellowstone, but you're right so called environmentalists even oppose offshore and onshore wind farms. "Not in my backyard!" Of course I'd want a Yellowstone geothermal power plant to be blended into the landscape and I'd love both solar panels and a wind turbine on my property.

Solar is nowhere near efficient enough to power the country. It can be a nice boost, hardly economic, and government subsidies are not enough to help. For starters, government subsidies exist

Wow! Solar power got $62 million for R&D. That's dwarfed by coal's $3.302 Billion in 2007 alone or Nuclear Power's $145 Billion over the years. "My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'" Wars are even started over oil.

There are also several tax breaks you can receive for "greening" your home, but it will never be enough to make it cost effective

Tell all those who build off the grid that it's not effective. Solar hot water has a payback period as short as 5 to 6 years, and the equipment lasts a lot longer. The payback for PV panels is much harder but estimates have been as low as 7 years and panels come with 20, 25, even 30 year warranties. Even pro-rated replacing equipment is cost competitive. Individually owned PVs aren't the only way to go solar either. The same publication you provide a link to your article, Science Daily, also has this article, Solar Power in Ontario Could Produce Almost as Much Power as All U.S. Nuclear Reactors, Studies Find. On large scales concentrated solar power may be more effective. Another article it has, Fossil-Fuel Subsidies Hurting Global Environment, Security, Study Finds.

Oh, and does he consider the subsidies conventional energy gets too in the study? Does he factor in the billions of dollars coal and nuclear power get? The only mention I see about them is where "he favors more state and federal funding for research and development." Personally I don't think government should be subsiding most of what it does, whether energy or farms or ...

Of course, as the Kennedys showed us, some people don't like the way they look. You remember Ted Kennedy, right? That big green liberal that BLOCKED wind power because it might disrupt the view from some of his mansions?

I don't know how many tymes I commented, but I didn't find any, I posted about how Kennedy or that NIMBY environmentalists opposed wind farm o

For Pete's sake, the guy was saying we should stop oil production to force people to use non-existent renewable energy.

Ever hear of geothermal? Solar? Wind? They all exist. And if they were given as much in subsidies as coal, nuclear power, and petroleum they would be producing a lot more energy.

Falcon

Um... no. No they would not.
Geothermal, while prevalent in some parts of the world, is not that big of a resource here. And most of the places where geothermal is available are national parks. Could you imagine the uproar if you tried to build a power plant at Yellowstone?
Solar is nowhere near efficient enough to power the country. It can be a nice boost, hardly economic, and government subsidies are not enough to help. For starters, government subsidies exist. There are also several tax breaks you can receive for "greening" your home, but it will never be enough to make it cost effective:

He found the cost for an installation ranges from nearly $86,000 to $91,000, while the value of the power produced ranges from $19,000 to $51,000.

I don't know about you, but I don't have an extra $91,000 sitting around to spend on something that will save me $51,000 over the next 20 years. Also, this study fails to consider the sunk costs. In other words, if I were wisely invest that $90 G's instead of blowing it on solar panels, it would grow. Take whatever money it would have made and add that to the loss. I'm not alone here. A very small percentage of Americans have $900.00 to spend, much less $90,000.00. Oh, and then there are cloudy days, night, snow covered roof tops, hail, shadows from when the sun crosses to the other side of your house and so on that make solar an even less economic proposition.
Now, if you are talking about massive power plants located in the desert, when then you have other issues. See, you green buddies at the Sierra Club tend to block most of these programs because, even though they could save the earth, they may endanger a turtle that lives in the sand. That pretty much stands for any of these green projects. Someone, somewhere is going to get their feelings hurt. And these someones tend to have lawyers. So, don't bitch at me. Call the Sierra Club!
Finally, Wind! Wow! This is a fun one. I'll start with this quote:

Another interesting point with wind systems is that fossil fuel plants normally run on standby to support the wind fluctuations that occur. So, not only do we see only 8 to 10% of a rated power output, but this is offset by the fossil fuel consumed an not delivered to the grid. The net result is that most wind packages deliver less then zero power, when you consider the wasted fuel at the fossil fuel plant.

Of course, as the Kennedys showed us, some people don't like the way they look. You remember Ted Kennedy, right? That big green liberal that BLOCKED wind power because it might disrupt the view from some of his mansions?

So, in to put it more succinctly, renewable energy does not exist, at least not to the point where it can completely replace fossil fuels. While all these other ideas do produce energy and will reduce our fossil fuel dependence for producing electricity, I believe the only viable solution is nuclear. Oh, your green buddies blocked that too!
Now the elephant in the room that I've ignored until now is that all the proposals yo

Water vapor is a feedback , not a forcing.

The carbon cycle is not in balance any more. The concentration of carbon dioxide has been at about 200-300 ppm for millions of years. Now that humans are burning fossil fuels at an increasing rate, the concentration is approaching 400 ppm. Because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, this is increasing the temperature of the planet. We will have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2050 to keep temperatures from reaching two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This reduction can be achieved by increased energy efficiency and use of alternative methods of generating energy, such as nuclear power plants.

> It would be cool to have a cheap way to find out what microbes are on the human forehead and armpits.

Or arteries.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071120095413.htm

http://www.perio.org/consumer/bacteria.htm

With this they might be able to find other diseases which could be caused by infection and not solely "lifestyle".

Here is one from back in April. Pardon me if projections 3 days out are taken with some degree of skepticism.

My pardon. Being skeptical of what is basically a meteorological forecast is totally understandable. You're going further and predicting that it won't happen, that's fine, that's your opinion. My opinion is that it makes sense to prepare ourselves for the worst reasonable case, and there is undeniably a reasonable potential for ecological disaster from this spill as the history of oil spills makes imminently clear.

Of course here we are both talking like this is a fixed-size spill, like the fate of the oil currently on the surface and thus near-term weather is all that matters, when the oil is still spewing. Let's talk about what's going to happen in the aftermath of the spill when it's actually after.

Important for Brown Pelicans living in that area. The world-wide population of the Brown Pelican is around 650,000 and it is distributed throughout coastal areas of both North and South America. It is not endangered or at risk as a species by this oil spill. The article you linked is very much missing a lot of information. In fact this bird disappeared completely from Louisiana once before and came back.

You're missing a lot of information that wasn't in the WP article you just read. Pelicans migrate. Birds from all along the eastern seaboard will nest along the Gulf coast -- are currently nesting. The reason they vanished from Louisiana was because the species nearly went extinct, and it's only there now because of human reintroduction efforts. Pelicans are still recovering. Many animals that are taken off the endangered species list end up right back on it, should unfortunate factors turn against it. Especially things that occur when they're nesting, which is now. If a lot of pelicans die because they're trying to feed in oil-slick-covered waters (note this doesn't require the slick reach shore), and thus their breeding season isn't successful, that weakens the recovery, and leaves them vulnerable to other factors that might not be as bad otherwise, like a bad hurricane season. You're right that possibility doesn't threaten the entire species directly, and I was not trying to say it does. But it does affect the recovery and stability of the whole north east region's population.

Which is important. Brown pelicans, plus countless other seabirds and if we're unlucky shorebirds and other animals that will be affected by the spill play important roles in the ecosystems in which they live. Unbalancing those ecosystems puts them under further stress and makes them vulnerable to further industrial accidents or natural disasters. Nature is resilient but that resilience is not infinite, and individual species can and do go extinct. Replacements for their ecological niches don't magically reappear; recovery can occur over periods far longer than human timescales.

Just this past weekend I had face-to-face conversations with actual ornithologists experienced with endangered species recovery programs. They were concerned, ergo I am as well. You're not, but that has nothing to do with a well-informed opinion on the risk factors to the brown pelican. It's because you apparently aren't concerned with anything less than the complete collapse of the global biosphere. Well, real conservation has to start long before that's a realistic possibility or it's long too late.

Here is a study of a natural seep in California that totally refutes your statement.

Here's a better version where the graphic actually works which I read shortly before making those statements. It's funny because it does refute the part about there not being satellite-visible slicks, while simultaneously supporting the important point which is that the scale is vastly smaller than the major human-caused spills, and suggesting that biodegredation in the sediments as the oil

The problem with your assumption is that this is destroying an ecosystem. Do you even know what crude oil is? It's a naturally occurring, additive free, organic substance. It doesn't rampantly kill life on contact like say, mustard gas.

It's not an assumption, because this is not the first oil spill ever.

And yes I know what crude oil is, do you know that "naturally occurring, additive free, organic substance" and "harmless" are not adjectives?

Nobody is claiming it's going to instantly kill anything on contact. But if you had any idea of the environmental damage caused by previous spills, you wouldn't be talking like this "naturally occurring" substance isn't going to cause any problems in the quantities and concentrations here. Go ask an actual biologist or environmental scientist or anyone who has actually studied the impact of oil spills if they're concerned about this "organic substance". If they say that yes they are, make sure to remind them that the oil is additive free!

Oil naturally leaks in plenty of places on the planet. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090513130944.htm

You realize that article is talking about oil seeping out over an extended period of time, filtered through and partially biodegraded passing through ocean floor sediments before it even reaches the ocean water? Not pumped out through a cleanly bored holed designed to maximize pressure and thus output. The Exxon Valdez spill wouldn't have been a big disaster if the oil had been leaked out slowly over twenty years, and 11-110 of them wouldn't be a big issue on the time scales it took it to reach that level of concentration in the soil.

It does kill some animals fairly quickly, but it also feeds algae and other microorganisms as well as plant life on the shore. I expect that the "fallout" from this spill will hurt the fish and shrimp industries this year, but in the coming years, they will have bumper crops. I'm not saying this isn't an environmental incident, I just fail to see the doomsday scenarios that everyone is talking about.

Yeah, now who's making assumptions? Fail is the operative word here. Here's a couple links: http://www.answers.com/topic/exxon-valdez-oil-spill and http://www.eoearth.org/article/exxon_valdez_oil_spill showing how the environmental impact and disruption of ecosystems was ongoing ten and even twenty years later. There's plenty more on teh googles. Fishing was disrupted for multiple years, and catches have never recovered. Mortality remains high among contaminated fish and other animals.

It's not about doomsday from one spill, it's about damage to ecosystems that are already stressed. It's about idiots saying that it's not such a big deal so lets not stop doing it, ensuring that there will be subsequent stresses.

The problem with your assumption is that this is destroying an ecosystem. Do you even know what crude oil is? It's a naturally occurring, additive free, organic substance. It doesn't rampantly kill life on contact like say, mustard gas. Oil naturally leaks in plenty of places on the planet. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090513130944.htm It does kill some animals fairly quickly, but it also feeds algae and other microorganisms as well as plant life on the shore. I expect that the "fallout" from this spill will hurt the fish and shrimp industries this year, but in the coming years, they will have bumper crops. I'm not saying this isn't an environmental incident, I just fail to see the doomsday scenarios that everyone is talking about.

You seem to think that the environment can't cope with oil. Natural oil seepage in the Gulf of Mexico amounts to about 500,000 barrels/yr. (You didn't think those oil fields we're tapping were static, did you? They leak oil by themselves all the time.)

The big difference in this case is that the oil is concentrated to the point where it can gum up birds' feathers and kill off shellfish. With natural seeps, the oil is spread out where microbes can break it down before it adversely affects larger life forms. Over time the same microbes will deal with this spill. A lot of damage will happen before then, but they will deal with it. It happened before in 1979 (estimated 10k-30k barrels/day for 10 months) and it didn't kill off the ecosystem in the Gulf then. This one won't kill off the ecosystem in the Gulf either. It will be bad for a time, but it's not the end of the Gulf as you seem to think it will be.

You seem to think that the environment can't cope with oil. Natural oil seepage in the Gulf of Mexico amounts to about 500,000 barrels/yr. (You didn't think those oil fields we're tapping were static, did you? They leak oil by themselves all the time.)

The big difference in this case is that the oil is concentrated to the point where it can gum up birds' feathers and kill off shellfish. With natural seeps, the oil is spread out where microbes can break it down before it adversely affects larger life forms. Over time the same microbes will deal with this spill. A lot of damage will happen before then, but they will deal with it. It happened before in 1979 (estimated 10k-30k barrels/day for 10 months) and it didn't kill off the ecosystem in the Gulf then. This one won't kill off the ecosystem in the Gulf either. It will be bad for a time, but it's not the end of the Gulf as you seem to think it will be.

That said, of course we still won't see all the oceans get destroyed, but worst-case the ecosystem of the gulf may be decimated for the rest of our lives and then some.

That may be a bit overly dramatic. The spill hasn't even added up to the Exxon Valdez yet, and this particular well will have to flow for a few more months past that to add up to what seeps into the gulf naturally. Now obviously one big leak isn't the same thing as 600 smaller ones, but oil isn't exactly new to the ecosystem either.

Link here

To get an estimate of how much oil seeps into the Gulf each year, the researchers took into account the thickness of the oil-only a hundredth of a millimeter, the area of ocean surface covered by slicks, and how long the oil remains on the surface before it's consumed by bacteria or churned up by waves. "The number is twice the Exxon Valdez's spill per year, and that's a conservative estimate," said Mitchell.

30 to 40 years ago, the tree of evolution was missing an entire kingdom of archaea. When I took high school biology, they told us that archaea are "extremely rare bacteria" that only live in hot springs. We now know this is not true; archaea are ubiquitous, only scientists didn't know where to look. Biology teachers like to show microscope pictures as "proof" of whatever theory they teach, though it's interesting they spent hundreds of years unable to find archaea that live all over the place.

We are no longer descended from sponges, according to this article -- it's the opposite of what they taught us.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090402124316.htm

They still claim that humans descended from African apes. However, humans share more DNA similarity to Asian orangutans.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090618084304.htm

And when I was in high school, they claimed that HIV was a new mutant virus that appeared in Africa in the 1950s or 60s. However, we now know that HIV has been around as long as mammals have walked the Earth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090927145354.htm

So yes, there seem to be giant gaps in our understanding of life's origins. It will be interesting to see how different the theory of evolution will be in the future; maybe by then, "evolution" will be a dirty word and scientific zealots will demand that nobody mention it.

30 to 40 years ago, the tree of evolution was missing an entire kingdom of archaea. When I took high school biology, they told us that archaea are "extremely rare bacteria" that only live in hot springs. We now know this is not true; archaea are ubiquitous, only scientists didn't know where to look. Biology teachers like to show microscope pictures as "proof" of whatever theory they teach, though it's interesting they spent hundreds of years unable to find archaea that live all over the place.

We are no longer descended from sponges, according to this article -- it's the opposite of what they taught us.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090402124316.htm

They still claim that humans descended from African apes. However, humans share more DNA similarity to Asian orangutans.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090618084304.htm

And when I was in high school, they claimed that HIV was a new mutant virus that appeared in Africa in the 1950s or 60s. However, we now know that HIV has been around as long as mammals have walked the Earth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090927145354.htm

So yes, there seem to be giant gaps in our understanding of life's origins. It will be interesting to see how different the theory of evolution will be in the future; maybe by then, "evolution" will be a dirty word and scientific zealots will demand that nobody mention it.

30 to 40 years ago, the tree of evolution was missing an entire kingdom of archaea. When I took high school biology, they told us that archaea are "extremely rare bacteria" that only live in hot springs. We now know this is not true; archaea are ubiquitous, only scientists didn't know where to look. Biology teachers like to show microscope pictures as "proof" of whatever theory they teach, though it's interesting they spent hundreds of years unable to find archaea that live all over the place.

We are no longer descended from sponges, according to this article -- it's the opposite of what they taught us.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090402124316.htm

They still claim that humans descended from African apes. However, humans share more DNA similarity to Asian orangutans.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090618084304.htm

And when I was in high school, they claimed that HIV was a new mutant virus that appeared in Africa in the 1950s or 60s. However, we now know that HIV has been around as long as mammals have walked the Earth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090927145354.htm

So yes, there seem to be giant gaps in our understanding of life's origins. It will be interesting to see how different the theory of evolution will be in the future; maybe by then, "evolution" will be a dirty word and scientific zealots will demand that nobody mention it.

I know this is a bit late for a response, but...

They don't just mow down the field and turn it all into Cheerios, otherwise you'd have lots of leaves and stalks from the wheat plants in your cereal bowl.

Anyway, such monoculture is unsustainable, especially when combined with our current industrial agriculture practices. It ruins and erodes the soil, is dependent on petroleum and herbicides, and is beginning to require plants with genetic modifications.

I thought that the Civil War technology to make die out of Pokeberries was about the least interesting part of the story, but for some reason the writer chose to focus on the berries instead of the innovative fiber-based solar cells - odd?

The Pokeberries increase the efficiency of the panels, that's why they are brought up. "By coating the plastic sheets with a layer of purple pokeberry dye, the fibers can absorb even more sunlight to convert to power."

That however is not the original article, Science Daily has it, Purple Pokeberries Hold Secret to Affordable Solar Power Worldwide. It says "Nanotech Center scientists have used the red dye made from pokeberries to coat their efficient and inexpensive fiber-based solar cells. The dye acts as an absorber, helping the cell's tiny fibers trap more sunlight to convert into power."

Falcon

If we could make some kind of plastic as a transparent conductor, that would be helpful.

This graphene/carbon nanotube hybrid research looks promising.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100429141430.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+(ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News)

The summary link is to a blog, which gives a short not too useful summary and then links to this Science Daily article.

I like how Science Daily includes APA and MLA citation information at the bottom of their articles. Also, it seems like the fiber-based solar cells this article is about are the development, and the purple pokeberries are one of many possible natural or artificial dyes which could be used.

It's a shame that the article tells us nothing about how the fiber-based solar cells work. Here is some information on that:
http://www.fibercellinc.com/Technology.html

The patent is with the EPO (european parliament patent office), so if anyone could find that, it'd be rad.

But further down this thread there's a study showing the opposite for those under 40. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090126082343.htm

well research shows that the more you have sex and masturbate when you are young increases your chance of prostate canacer, and with teens having sex at a younger and younger age i think this company will be making some good money from this later down the road. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090126082343.htm

the 20k number is the outer edge of one range i saw. it might have high flakiness.

but here is a bit about the indian legend

http://oregonexplorer.info/craterlake/history.html

note that it is not what we would currently expect of an eye-witness account. but i use the term, with the qualifier "bit", in an obvious way. I guess you might compare it to the noah flood stuff. Again, eye witness stuff, but a different approach to the treatment of the event than we would use just now. things have to "fit" to last. but the time scale always impressed me too.

here is a flood link that looks at some flooding 9500 years ago, these guys figured 2k square kilometers of prime farm land.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090123101207.htm

the dates might be in the same magnitude. on the flood, there are the religious obstacles and on the volcano, some crap established science that pretty well argues nobody was around these parts 20k years ago. and this was very unassailable in the 1950s.

The question here is - how long will the eruption and the ash cloud last? Judging from historical records, it's not uncommon for eruptions to last decades. If - then what? New routes? Limit cross-atlantic flights endpoints to southern Spain or something?

According to this article , it may last for another month, and possibly a year or longer. It will be interesting, if somewhat uneasy, to see how people will react to this (boats to the US? fly above/below the ash clouds?). Clearly this cannot go on for long, given the damage that it is doing in terms of lost revenue for businesses, mail not being delivered (so i hear) and thousands of stranded customers.

And please let a molecular biologist correct me, but I think from my reading that the current theory is that mitochondria entered the tree of life once or twice. (as in plants got plastids and animals got mitochondria) So according to that, the same mitochondria have been around for *billions* of years!!!

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiotic_theory

They might have killed the male members of the opposing tribe but our historic and genetic records show they had often a different purpose for the females. A good example is Iceland with it's Viking male and Celtic females settlers: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090116073205.htm

The whole racial thing might be the result of contemporary bias and perhaps future historians will present the PRAM II tool as evidence of how our current society is preoccupied with race.

Very good argument. Concise and it makes sense. Why would our ancestors kill the females? I doubt they would even kill all the males. Most of the time only the males who wont give in are killed and the males who submit or who surrender are spared except in the very worst of wars. These males are made into servants and the females are taken as wives, and over a period of hundreds of years their genes mix.

This has probably happened hundreds or maybe thousands of times in the history of a tribe and this would explain why the genes of one tribe is very different from the genes of another. Race on the whole really isn't a lot of genes, and if we describe race by the common diseases of a group then even here it's still not going to completely align with the social concept of race.

Slavery and war has always existed but racial slavery is new and did not exist until very recently. Genocide always existed but it was very rare and usually only happens when too many males are in the same location in a competition for natural resources.

They might have killed the male members of the opposing tribe but our historic and genetic records show they had often a different purpose for the females. A good example is Iceland with it's Viking male and Celtic females settlers: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090116073205.htm

The whole racial thing might be the result of contemporary bias and perhaps future historians will present the PRAM II tool as evidence of how our current society is preoccupied with race.

And... what problems does the higher lead concentration do? At least it does not seem to be fatal...

That depends on how you look at it.

Seriously, red-light cameras have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with money making. Often the contracts with the company providing the cameras sets a specific maximum length for the yellow light. Making it longer would bring penalties to the City.

Don't recall the specifics, but at least one study found that lengthening the yellow light acually reduced accidents more than installing cameras.

The study noted here actually found that accidents went up after installing the damned things. Then again it was Florida...

A bit offtopic but I enjoyed the overtly blue-collar ill lit picture that a site called Science Daily employed.

An unshaven sun-reddened face focuses all its concentration on a cigarette protruding directly in front of his nose. His lips are pursed as if to indicate that connecting the tip of that cigarette with that flame requires all of his concentration. If his eyes weren't hidden to prevent us from identifying him (or to keep us from identifying with the subject) we might see them as cross-eyed staring down his nose intent to satiate his addiction. His shirt (which is plain white) and knuckles are smeared haphazardly with grease and his skin glistens with a workingman's sweat. Whatever iconography that hangs from his neck (Isreali dog tags? a Star of David?) can only afford a cheap black cord. The subject is off center to the right with the background as a pitch black. Nothing but a single source of light coming from the left.

It amuses me that the site employs such a suggestive picture of smoking so that it almost screams to be a blue collar, unintelligent, near evil addiction. I understand this image adds to the effect of the article but if ever there was anti-marketing for smoking here it is at a site that claims to be objective in its name. Movies of yore portrayed the beautiful, the rich and the strong smoking. I can walk outside my office building and see well paid people smoking. It's disingenuous to portray it as only a blue collar problem no matter what statistics about IQ say. This only tells me that, on average, low IQs are more likely to succumb to well funded advertising or lack information about smoking. Not that they are any less powerful at breaking an addiction.

I find smoking abhorrent and disgusting but I also think that it detracts from your goals to say that smoking destroys your beauty when young people can see beautiful celebrities smoking. And I also think that a "Science" site shouldn't have such goals or propaganda baked into its articles (one way or the other).

if I were such an inventor and saw an invention I was the first to invent in Walmart without any compensation to me, I would feel wronged.

You would have first mover advantage. If I were to invent something I could then take my idea to a business like a fab. I go to Fab ABC and say I would like them to manufacture something I invented. Fab ABC asks to see it and I say only if you sign an NDA, non-disclosure agreement. they sign it so I show them my invention. They like it and say they can make it for X dollars. If I agree, okay we sign a contract, if not then I go to Fab XYZ.

After seeing my work Fab XYZ then asks me to invent something that does something else. That's what happens every day, employers pay employees to perform X work, in this case it's inventing things.

However, thinking about areas of science and technology where the cost of entry is high, the need for patent protection becomes clearer. Without sufficient protection, products that require substantial R&D expenditures are less likely to be developed because the developed product can then be produced by competitors. This is most evident in the field of pharmaceuticals, with the constant push-and-shove between developers and generics.

Pharmaceutical patents aren't needed either. There are two facts many people don't know about pharmaceutical businesses. They spend more on marketing than research. And the biggest cost of new drugs is testing to get FDA approval not development. Clinical testing for FDA approval can cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Falcon

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100322121115.htm

I googled "hfcs obese."

HFCS is much worse than sugar as far as weight gain is concerned.

SO if you indiscriminately pump loads of CO2 in the atmosphere what do you think is going to happen?

Assuming some nature is left to take it's course, the trees will start growing much faster, absorb the extra CO2, and eventually die off to create the next layer of coal for us to burn in the far future. Yes, that's already starting to happen now. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091116163206.htm

Of course if we cut all the trees down we will then seal our own fate.

Biochemically [fructose] can enter the glycolytic cycle and is rapidly metabolized in much the same way as glucose.

Fructose is only metabolized when there is fructokinase available, and that exists only in the liver (well, and in sperm). Glucose, on the other hand, can be metabolized by just about every cell in the body. This has big implications for obesity and health. In addition, fructose seems to affect appetite differently from glucose. See the links below.

http://www.medbio.info/Horn/Time%201-2/carbohydrate_metabolism.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090325091811.htm