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Why aren't hibernating mammals eaten alive by microorganisms? (yes there was a discussion before) Well, apparantly their immune system is actually disabled. However, they wake up periodically, specifically to fight off any infections.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/04/02040 2074547.htm

Humans can't do this if their cytochrome C is inhibited by hydrogen sulfide, so if you ever do this with humans, you'd have to make sure they wake up periodically to prevent all kinds of nastyness.

Bats seem to have a different strategy. They stay in deep hibernation for prolonged periods up to 90 days, but their biochemistry changes quite drastically in order to do this. It's unlikely that human cells are able to change themselves so drastically.

http://physrev.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/83/ 4/1153

I really wonder what would happen to a mouse if you induce hibernation for more than a month.

Buying hours and preventing damage would be a good purpose for artificial human hibernation, but I think space travel is a little far fetched.

Some research on this was done before.

There was also this fellow, British I think, who did a documentary about early human migration using genetics, he was on TV (PBS?) a few years back. Nice work. He showed that there were two waves out of Africa. One hugged the coastline reaching India then all the way to Australia, and another going to central Asia, then staying there for a while, and then a branch going west to Europe, and another going east to Siberia, Beringia, and eventually to the Americans. Can't remember his name. Rats!

Some other resources:

Scientists trace human migration using DNA.

Wikipedia article on Human migration.

Stephen Oppenheimer did a genetic map.

Kurgan Genetics.

Neanderthaals and mtDNA

Here is a link to a late 2003 transistor build that topped 500 ghz. They've been making transistors well into microwave range since the 60's. I've heard of people talking via amateur radio using the 100+ghz band quite regularly, so I know for sure that we've been able to break 100 ghz for a decade easily.

600Ghz is only a few dozen ghz more than the 509 ghz build of a year and a half ago.

Except its just (nanoscale) DNA molecules, no brains, no eyes, nothing. Its also like a snowflake, in a way.

Different user responding. There are significant differences, recollection of mention at some point in the past in I believe a comment made by a user here in regard to the Harvard professor recently defamed for attempt at objective approach to determine actual causes of gender inequalities in courses and research at the time, still close to that same time, on the larger interconnection of the female brain between hemispheres that increased perception of females at the cost of increased time for decisions, etc. in the popular science-type summary of research. Similar article but not the mentioned for inability to locate it: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/03102 2062408.htm and preponderance of males in the fields tending toward that hobby suggests some default advantage in the skills composing what are aptitudes for those roles-jobs. If institutional-as it may be-change must be shown in advance to give advantage to firms and projects with successes by the current systems to prompt the requisite changes-change for its own sake is not enough or it would have already been accomplished in the gender opportunity equalisation movement.

You do know that, if he existed, he was jewish, right?

Yes, I know that. Israel turned its back on him. The Israelites are God's chosen people (remember Moses leading them to the promised land?)

he never would have said anything about sins etc.

Read the Sermon on the Mount (the Beatitudes) beginning in the Book of Matthew, chapter 5 to read what he said about sin.

Jesus probably never even existed.

You can think what you'd like. I believe he existed and is the Son of Man - the savior for the world.

And, although you didn't directly say that, it is inferred because you have said that that is a sin, and that sinners should burn in hell forever :P

No. I said unrepentant sinners who have not accepted Christ will not have a pleasant afterlife. We're all sinners and we all fall short of the glory of God - therefore we can do nothing to be "good enough" to get into heaven. The only difference is the sinners who have accepted Christ and the sinners who have not. When Jesus died he took on the sins of every sinner that ever lived or ever would live. He is our intercession between us and God.

See you there

I know I'm going to heaven when I die because I've accepted Christ in my heart. I hope you'll read up on the Bible and discover that Jesus loves you - whether you love him or not. The man took a beating and died a painful death just so you could live with him one day. If you don't want to read about it, rent Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" film. It's a pretty accurate depiction of the four gospels from the Garden of Gesthemane to the resurrection.

so you base your life around these two things?

I base my life around three things: Jesus came to this planet as the savior. Jesus died for my sins and Jesus rose on the third day. That's what separates Christianity from all other religions. Mohammed is dead. Buddha is dead. Jesus is alive and he will return one day soon to establish his kingdom on earth.

Let me give you a few points to ponder:

There are some prophecies in the Bible. One is that the city of Damascus would be destroyed. Until this time, Damascus has never been destoyed. The terrorist Palestinians have terrorist headquarters in Damascus. Israel Blames Syria for Suicide Bombing I find it very interesting that a small country like Israel could be in the news so often.

The Bible also says that the east gate of Jerusalem will remain sealed until Jesus returns. To this day, the east gate remains sealed.The Golden Gate

The Bible says that in the end days Israel will be attacked by Russia (known as Gog in the Bible) and Persia (modern-day Iran). Russia Pledges to Finish Iran Reactor

The Bible also says that in the last days there will be earthquakes in diverse places, increasing in frequency and intensity like birth pangs. 2004 Deadliest In Nearly 500 Years For Earthquakes

I firmly believe that Jesus will return soon. In the Book of Matthews, the disciples asked Jesus of the signs of his coming. In the Olivet Discourse, he outlined these signs. I hope you'll take a look at them and see that we are in the season.

Michael

Sorry, I assumed the original article would have been read - it mentions that sexual reproduction is a puzzle. Try this article for a look at some of the problems (and possibly a solution). The only important thing is that they do better in th real world.

Ah, but then that means we don't understand what's going on yet, does it? If we can't reproduce the results with a model, then we need to learn more. That was the whole point. Same reasons many other parasites lost functions of and even the appearance of organs.

Note to self: rhetorical questions don't work well on Slashdot. Flight is a wonderful ability - animals from birds to mammals to ants. Birds that don't have predators almost always lose the ability to fly - c.f. ostrich. Flying's too expensive energy-wise - if it's not needed.

So, what is it that allows giardia to drop sexual reproduction? What is it that forces giardia to keep the genes ready "just in case?" There's a good chance the answer might be found because of giardia!

>Fine but quit whining that stupid hysterical laws like Kyoto keep getting shot down.

Kyoto wasn't shot down. Every country with any leadership whatsoever ratified it. I'm sure it's pure coincidence that a president who is completely in bed with the oil industry would shoot down a treaty that calls for reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

>The idea that man is causing global warming is laughable.

Only by those who refuse to pull their heads out of their asses.

>As is the pathetic insistence that it is real in spite of whatever logic and REAL science is applied to your histrionics.

Pull your head out of there and have a look around sometime.

Okay let's say Bill is worth 50 billion dollars on paper. 750 million is something like 1.5% of his total worth?

You're ignoring the huge amount of money and resources donated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in the past. In fact, this $750 million is in additon to another $750 million they pledged in 1999 to the same organization.

But what's another $12.5 million for immunization in India, or $43 million for antimilarial drugs here and there. After all, it's just a drop in the bucket to Bill Gates -- he would donate more if he weren't so greedy and evil, right? They set up that Foundation as a tax dodge, and certainly not as a way of making sure that money gets directed at the right groups doing the right things, and not people just looking for a handout. No, there's definitely no need to make sure the money gets spent making a difference and not pissed away by NGO bureaucracy. You can just "donate" and forget about it, like you do with that $1.50 to the guy in the street who's just going to go buy some Wild Irish Rose and hit you up for another $1.50 tomorrow.

Yeah, I'm kind of annoyed at the way Slashdotters seem to have reacted to this news.

Actually, I've done quite a bit of library research on the topic while in University. I have a number of friends who have done direct observational and modeling research on the topic.

In fact if you had even bothered to do a google search, you would come to the opposite conclusion:

Top Scientists Conclude Human Activity Is Affecting Global Climate

Why don't you show me your research proving that it is not due to human activity?

If someone tries to intercept this stream of photons--call her Eve--she cannot measure both modes, thanks to Heisenberg. If she makes the measurements in the wrong mode, even if she resends the bits to Bob in the same way she measured them, she will inevitably introduce errors. Alice and Bob can detect the presence of the eavesdropper by comparing selected bits and checking for errors.

The real advantage of using entangled photons would be in sending information faster than light. Entangled Photons in Computers actually might solve all the copper issues in speed we're having in chip DIE size vs clock speed (as in how to get a signal from one end of the chip to the other in a single clock signal).

Crichton's "State of Fear" is fiction, and should be treated as such.

That doesn't mean that the crowd which is arguing against doing anything about global warming is nuts.

The most accepted consensus out there is that Earth's climate changes. It may change relatively fast (dryads, little ice age, etc).

Less accepted (but still widely supported) is the idea that earth's climate is getting warmer.

I agree with the first point, and find the second point rather likely.

The evidence seems to indicate the earth's climate is naturally getting warmer, and, in addition, human pollution is further raising the temperature.

This brings up an interesting issue: Earth's climate will change even in the absence of human pollution. In short, we can't stop the climate from changing.

The question is: How much and how fast will human pollution change the climate by?

This is where I disagree with people and say: We don't know.

I've seen reasonable proposals that suggest normal volcanic activity produces greenhouse gasses on an order of magnitude far greater than human activity. If so, changing our habits will only have an effect until some ubervolcano erupts someplace, dumping a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere. Others disagree, saying that human activity dwarfs volcanic CO2 activity. (Interesting link how 1/10th of a square mile in Italy releases 150 tons of CO2 a day! Mt Etna releases 35k tons of CO2 a day. Here's another link about the over 2 million tons of CO2 (if my math is right) a day emitted by waterways in tropical forests.)

People who disagree with me tend to reply "But if we don't know, shouldn't we err on the safe side?"

The problem is that changing our ways has a cost. Or, as I like to put it: How many lives should we sacrifice in order to prevent a .1C rise? How many acres of wilderness do you propose destroying in order to prevent a .1C rise? How can we assess the risk and figure out what we are willing to spend and how far we should go? We can't.

Instead, we seem to run around trying to pass "feel good" treaties such as Kyoto without considering their effectiveness on global warming or their human cost.

From ScienceDaily.com

Extreme changes in the Arctic Oscillation in the early 1990s -- and not warmer temperatures of recent years -- are largely responsible for declines in how much sea ice covers the Arctic Ocean, with near record lows having been observed during the last three years, University of Washington researchers say.

It may have happened more than a decade ago, but the sea ice appears to still "remember" those Arctic Oscillation conditions, according to Ignatius Rigor, a mathematician with the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory and a presenter at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting this week in San Francisco.

The Arctic Oscillation is a seesaw pattern in which atmospheric pressure at the polar and middle latitudes fluctuates between positive and negative phases. The wind patterns associated with the Arctic Oscillation affect the surface winds and temperature over North America and Eurasia, as well as the Arctic.

The Arctic Oscillation was in an extreme "high," ...

More

From ScienceDaily.com

Extreme changes in the Arctic Oscillation in the early 1990s -- and not warmer temperatures of recent years -- are largely responsible for declines in how much sea ice covers the Arctic Ocean, with near record lows having been observed during the last three years, University of Washington researchers say.

It may have happened more than a decade ago, but the sea ice appears to still "remember" those Arctic Oscillation conditions, according to Ignatius Rigor, a mathematician with the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory and a presenter at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting this week in San Francisco.

The Arctic Oscillation is a seesaw pattern in which atmospheric pressure at the polar and middle latitudes fluctuates between positive and negative phases. The wind patterns associated with the Arctic Oscillation affect the surface winds and temperature over North America and Eurasia, as well as the Arctic.

The Arctic Oscillation was in an extreme "high," ...

More

Depends how you define proof. There is a wealth of evidence which seems to point to some form of evolution being the mechanism by which humans appeared, and little or no evidence which disproves an evolutionary theory (which in itself evolves to encompass new evidence). Further more, there is other scientific theory which is even close to describing how we came to be the way we are.

Apes to humans is easy, you just have to look at how similar we are genetically, even fish to humans is quite possible because the parathyroid gland, which controls calcium levels in the blood may well have evolved from fish gills.

I think missing links are to be expected given that fossilisation is hard, and doesn't happen very often and we've only searched a very small percentage of the earth for such fossils.

I should say, I am a christian AND I believe that Genesis is true, in a poetic sense, which is really what genesis is. To understand Genesis you have to think about what the original audience was supposed to hear. Specifically how Genesis differs from the contemporary creation myths where the world was often created as a relic of battles between competing gods, such as the moon gods and sun gods etc. I really don't think the ancient Israelites would have understood if Moses had said

"In the begininng was the singularitly of the Planck era. Around the time of ~10-43 s, the perfect symmetry of the Planck era was broken, giving birth to space, time and gravity. The energy density of the universe at this time dropped below the critical Planck energy ~1019 GeV (~1032 K), resulting in a restriction or limitation of possible transformations between forms. Interactions that mix the gravitational force with the other forces require a minimum energy of ~1019 GeV. As the average energy density of the universe dropped below this critical threshold, these interactions were no longer possible, and so gravity, space and time emerged as stable structures of manifestation. Just as ice comes into being by cooling water below a critical freezing temperature, when the universe cooled below this "freezing temperature" of ~1032 degrees, the threads of reality spontaneously self-organized into a coherent fabric of space and time."

I believe Genesis tells us and the ancient jews exactly what we need to know to understand God's love for us, but to me the fact that God waited 15 billion years from the Big Bang before really getting started, and that the Universe is such an amazing place just adds to His glory, not detracts.

Darwinian history of boygroups

Well, don't boy bands work on similar principles to reproductive success? I'd suggest a large proportion of purchasers of boy band singles and albums wanted to reproduce with them. So past sales must measure percieved "fitness"

What of the strange costumes in the '80s? Well, Zahavi's handicap principle surely comes into play here. Throw in some songbird research and you're done.

Can't go smaller. Quarks are bound in pairs or triplets, unless a tremendous amount of energy is released to overcome the strong force that glue quarks together. It is meaningless trying to communicate with a single quark.

Neutrinos interact extremely weakly with other matter particles, and only rarely is there a "collision" that causes a reaction. This is why it takes a year to detect a neutrino hit in tons of water buried deep underground. Furthermore, neutrions can't be contained like an electron.

Photons carry information, but they need a trigger, like electrons. Photons have the awkward feature of traveling at the speed of light, and so cannot be contained for more than a few picoseconds.

Now there is of course the possibility of entangled photon pairs http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/09/00092 6071220.htm, but this is still mostly theoretical stuff.

nah... that's the back mounted ratbrain autopilot...

Back in the day you used to be able to "punch a hole" out of the side of a double density 5.25" floppy and use it as a high density disk.

No, the notch (it wasn't called a 'hole') or the lack thereof was the write protect mechanism. By notching a second corner* of the disk, it could be flipped over and the second side of the media could be used.

It, in effect, doubled the capacity of the disk, but did nothing for it's density.

This is a nice link of information.

*not actually the corner but about an inch down the side.

That's why my original post was written "Any time you see every scientist agree on a very controversial topic, be very suspicious." The issues you mentioned are not controversial.

They were at some point - and like Global Climate Change, they were met with suspicion. In any case, whether or not a subject is controversial is irrelevant to the scientific process - what matters is whether it's true or not. Though when "every scientist agree" upon a topic it can hardly be called controversial, now, can it?

Convenient quoting on your part. Usually indicative of an agenda.

Nah, I was baiting ya. And you took it hook, line and sinker.

If all scientists truly agreed that human activity is having an effect on global climate (lower case is fine) then I don't think you'd have a lot of people doubting them (not just beginning, we've doubted them for a long time!). The fact is that all scientists do not agree this is true.

I'm sorry, but you just claimed the contrary to say that we should be suspicious of self-interest on the scientists' part. Contradicting yourself so quickly?

The fact is that all scientists do not agree this is true.

True. Only the vast majority.

The only thing this article proves is that the collection of articles they selected from the subset of scientific literature that they deemed worthy of reviewing supports their conclusion.

You're welcome to find an equally representative subset supporting the opposite thesis. Oh, right.

Oh really? Who is going to fund research proving that global warming is not real. Industry, that's about it. So they'll be quickly labeled an industry stooge by their colleagues (just as you did in your message) and their standing in the community will go down. Not because they're wrong but because they're going against the grain.

That's one way of putting it. Another way is that it's easy to make a lot of money with a science degree if you provide for hokey science and claim you're going "against the grain." You know, like those scientists hired by the tobacco industry to write papers on how smoking didn't cause lung cancer. That used to be controversial, you know. Now it isn't.

And they spend more time engaging in gloom and doom and explaining why the satellite record doesn't confirm their predictions than actually getting real science done.

Satellite record...I guess you're referring to the controversy earlier this year about how some satellite data tended to disprove Global Warming Models? Yeah, I remember that. You know what? The scientist who authored the original report has come out with new interpretation of the satellite data that, in fact, corroborates the observed warming on the ground.

When I said "In exchange they'll get huge grants from industries whose profits might be diminished by scientific enquiry," you replied: Or by "junk science." Take your pick of terms.

More bull. Junk science won't damage an industry, because all the industry has to do is prove that it's junk science. That's the thing with science, see? Because of the empiric model, junk science is pretty easy to disprove. Which is why scietific papers are usually published in peer-revied journals, so that other people can verify them.

Sorry, that's extremism talking. If there is a 10% chance of it being true and it's going to cost a trillion dollars worldwide to fix the problem then we had better be avoiding at least $10 trillion worth of damage.

Some damage to the environment (like lost biodiversity) is irreversible, how much is that worth? How much is worth most of Florida? How much are polar bears worth? How much is stopping desertification worth?

You're the extremist if this is really the only way you see this. You advocate extreme ROI. Fortunately, you represent a small minority (like all extremists), so there

Look, you'd have to be a moron to argue against the consensus of trained scientists. The scientific evidence clearly indicates that manmade atmospheric pollution blocking out the sun will cause a return to our trend of recent ice ages, thus causing "global cooling".

Oh wait, I thought this was the 1970s, when temperature measurements since the 1940s had showed a gradual cooling trend. Now I mean the scientific evidence clearly indicates that manmade atmospheric pollution will cause a runaway greenhouse effect, thus causing "global warming." Sorry about that. Well whichever is true, man is evil and so is economic production, so let's put a stop to it.

By the way, eat margarine. I mean butter. No, margarine. No wait, butter.

Although his problem was due to "a 20-year history of drinking more than 100g of alcohol per day who had end-stage liver disease and weakness in both legs."

6 years ago he was at the top of his career, doing great research, planning fantastic projects. Then illnesses hit like tornados, tearing his career and health away.

So you'd think he'd just want to kill himself-- how could you ever come to terms with such a change? But, you know, humans are resilient, and the desire to live is tenacious. He learned, most people there learned, to make the best of it. He did go the "Rage, rage" way a few times, but mostly he had peace. Contemplation. TV and music. Family visits. He was no more or less happy in the nursing home than before it all happened: just the focus of happiness changed.

Now, in contrast, the Nursing Home of 2904 is going to Rock. First, its not going to be a nursing home, but a regenerative center for people who need time off while cloned body parts are growing for the transplant. Or a cell-by-cell Hans Moravec style mind transfer zone. Or a place for people to live who want to review, organize and backup their entire lives before they die / copy themselves / do a massive personality change.

It doesn't have to be a home: it could be a life-support exoskeleton letting you wander the world. Or a Matrix-style feed, but one without crazed killer AIs. Unless you want them there. Unless Microsoft-RIAA has taken over, you'll have all the social networks, movies, music, books, interactives, VR worlds, MMOGs, and world's largest poker tournaments you've ever wanted to experience.

For food you can have direct olfactory / taste stimulation. For fun you can have direct any-other-type-of-nerve stimulation.

Yes, it will be a big change from the previous 860 years- a step down, a shrinking of your life. But you'll learn to adapt. People are resilient. If you choose to spend your last century in a nursing home (don't know why you'd choose that, but go ahead) you'll be just as happy as you were in the previous 900 years.

On the other hand, for a well-written SF noir on why immortality and the rich don't mix, try Richard Morgan's extraordinary Altered Carbon.

Yet, it works.

To my knowledge no one has demostrated the effectiveness of extremely diluted homeopathic solutions. (Some homeopathic solutions do contain significant quantities of active principles.)

There's actually some sense to the basic premise of homopathy, that substances should be administered that enhance rather than mute the patient's symptoms. If someone is experiencing diarrhea, for example, it can be the body's attempt to expel a pathogen or poison, and perhaps should be assisted with a purgative rather than resisted with a drug that paralyzes the intestinal muscles.

But the notion that water somehow "remembers" the active principle at extreme dilutions and has some therapeutic effect, has never been demostrated in a good controlled study.

And does the placebo effect work on small children?

Sure it could. Mothers use this all the time, "kiss it and make it better". Works wonders. Unfortunately most adults have to be fooled more elaborately, requiring a nurse or doctor to distribute pills, injections, or even placebo surgery to break the cycle of injury, stress, pain, and suffering, and fully mobilize the body's own healing resources.

The only problem with your argument is that this is no longer held to be true. Work has been done and continues to be done on methods to revert adult stem cells to precursor stem cells that could be just as versatile...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/08/03081 9073513.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/03/04031 5071240.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/04102 5120923.htm

The only problem with your argument is that this is no longer held to be true. Work has been done and continues to be done on methods to revert adult stem cells to precursor stem cells that could be just as versatile...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/08/03081 9073513.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/03/04031 5071240.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/04102 5120923.htm

The only problem with your argument is that this is no longer held to be true. Work has been done and continues to be done on methods to revert adult stem cells to precursor stem cells that could be just as versatile...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/08/03081 9073513.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/03/04031 5071240.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/04102 5120923.htm

Older version of tongue interface.

University of Montreal news release

But wait, there's more cooler brain interfacing going on! Mystic Visions

I see, in the very near future, big wads of $100 bills moving into my pocket from users of the APE(TM) helmet. A Psychedelic Experience! Users don the APE helmet and the core moderating frequencies of the brain are modulated to produce everything from the mystic experience (sans the nasty side effects of peyote, psylocibin, or X) to a full blown emulation of a trip on the finest of Dr. Hofmann's concotions.

Franchise options available NOW!

Bacteria actually use genetic material to communicate... much like how cells in multi-cellular organisms use RNA to signal protein production from one cell to another, bacteria use RNA to tell each other things as well. Typically an animal doesn't have receptor sites for these signals and the just get broken down by macrophagic activities via white blood cells, etc. but when you've physically manipulated genes in an animal to have bacterial DNA..??? you may be opening up a pandora's box of recombinant activity.

Here's some more info but with a different angle on what's happening:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/05/04052 6070821.htm

In this study they found that bacteria were stealing genetic material from animals and then passing it around between bacterial species... whose to say it doesn't go both ways.

Worldwide study that indicts Australia more by saying that climate was a factor elsewhere. Even so, 121 genera of megafauna extict out of 150 is a pretty sizable chunk. (That's 80% of the megafauna alone. Smaller species also went extinct.)

Science Daily has a report from a while back that goes into depth in the specific case of Australia.

Australian Museum factsheet on this subject.

Hope this helps

Links here:

Olfactory Bulb Stem Cells And Lou Gehrig's Disease

Jefferson Scientists Find New Way To Convert Adult Human Stem Cells To Dopamine Neurons

These are studies published in the last two weeks that successfully demonstrate that adult stem cells can be used for treatment of diseases such as Lou Gehrig's and Parkinsons. What is significant is that they are non-destructive techniques that do not require the destruction of the host provider... AND they will not be rejected by the person being treated or require the extensive anti-rejection treatments that using foreign stem cells to treat an individual would require.

In fact the study using mice can be directly compared to a similar study using embryonic stem cells:

Human Spinal Cord Cells Help Rats With Lou Gehrig's Disease

The embryonic stem cell study only allowed the mice to survive an additional 11 days... while the adult stem cell study allowed the mice to live an additional two months! In mouse years that is a huge difference... 11 days or 60 days? which treatment was more successful?

The real point is that valid and successful research is being carried out that does not require the destruction of embryos... this is not to say that there isn't something to be learned from embryonic stem cell research, there is BUT and this is a big BUT... IT SIMPLY ISN'T THE ONLY VALID RESEARCH OPTION AVAILABLE.

That point made, you can no longer claim that stopping federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is giving up on treatment or cures for said degenerative diseases.. in fact IMHO without the ban some of these approaches may not have been considered due to the perceived superiority of using embryonic stem cells.

'nuff said.

Links here:

Olfactory Bulb Stem Cells And Lou Gehrig's Disease

Jefferson Scientists Find New Way To Convert Adult Human Stem Cells To Dopamine Neurons

These are studies published in the last two weeks that successfully demonstrate that adult stem cells can be used for treatment of diseases such as Lou Gehrig's and Parkinsons. What is significant is that they are non-destructive techniques that do not require the destruction of the host provider... AND they will not be rejected by the person being treated or require the extensive anti-rejection treatments that using foreign stem cells to treat an individual would require.

In fact the study using mice can be directly compared to a similar study using embryonic stem cells:

Human Spinal Cord Cells Help Rats With Lou Gehrig's Disease

The embryonic stem cell study only allowed the mice to survive an additional 11 days... while the adult stem cell study allowed the mice to live an additional two months! In mouse years that is a huge difference... 11 days or 60 days? which treatment was more successful?

The real point is that valid and successful research is being carried out that does not require the destruction of embryos... this is not to say that there isn't something to be learned from embryonic stem cell research, there is BUT and this is a big BUT... IT SIMPLY ISN'T THE ONLY VALID RESEARCH OPTION AVAILABLE.

That point made, you can no longer claim that stopping federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is giving up on treatment or cures for said degenerative diseases.. in fact IMHO without the ban some of these approaches may not have been considered due to the perceived superiority of using embryonic stem cells.

'nuff said.

Links here:

Olfactory Bulb Stem Cells And Lou Gehrig's Disease

Jefferson Scientists Find New Way To Convert Adult Human Stem Cells To Dopamine Neurons

These are studies published in the last two weeks that successfully demonstrate that adult stem cells can be used for treatment of diseases such as Lou Gehrig's and Parkinsons. What is significant is that they are non-destructive techniques that do not require the destruction of the host provider... AND they will not be rejected by the person being treated or require the extensive anti-rejection treatments that using foreign stem cells to treat an individual would require.

In fact the study using mice can be directly compared to a similar study using embryonic stem cells:

Human Spinal Cord Cells Help Rats With Lou Gehrig's Disease

The embryonic stem cell study only allowed the mice to survive an additional 11 days... while the adult stem cell study allowed the mice to live an additional two months! In mouse years that is a huge difference... 11 days or 60 days? which treatment was more successful?

The real point is that valid and successful research is being carried out that does not require the destruction of embryos... this is not to say that there isn't something to be learned from embryonic stem cell research, there is BUT and this is a big BUT... IT SIMPLY ISN'T THE ONLY VALID RESEARCH OPTION AVAILABLE.

That point made, you can no longer claim that stopping federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is giving up on treatment or cures for said degenerative diseases.. in fact IMHO without the ban some of these approaches may not have been considered due to the perceived superiority of using embryonic stem cells.

'nuff said.

All planets (and moons) have magnetic fields.

Actually, that's not true at all. Among the objects that don't generate a real, structured magnetic field, we have Venus, The Moon , Io, Europa, and Mars. Of course, *why* some planets have fields and some don't is still up in the air (rotation of the Earth's core generates our magnetic field, or so it is assumed, and yet Mercury, which almost certainly has a solid core, possesses a planetary magnetosphere).

I remembered reading something about this, so I Googled it. There was a Harvard/U Toronto study about the linkage between creativity and "latent inhibition". Basically the conclusion is that highly creative people with high IQs don't filter incoming information in the same fashion that the rest of us do.

This is just one study, of course. But it is interesting. One thing I've noticed about the mentally instable people I've met (not that my sample is large), is that they do tend to exhibit more outward manifestations of creativity. Perhaps it's because they are less bound by the need to categorize the world in which they live. We certainly do have a lot to learn about how the mind works.

I think this paints a complete picture of the future of transportation: a plug-in diesel/electric hybrid running on biodiesel. The batteries are charged from zero-polution electric plants which feed the carbon dioxide to algae farms which create the oil for biodiesel. The car runs most of the day on the electricity, but switches to diesel when the battery gets low. IMHO this is a far more realistic scenario than the fuel-cell which is getting a good deal more political attention than it deserves at thsi stage.

As a geologist, I do find the prospect of earthquake prediction quite exciting. I even worked a few doors down from Dr. Keilis-Borok (predicted Japan and San Simeon, failed prediction in Southern California) this summer at UCLA, doing some earthquake research.

Dr. K-B's approach used statistical analysis and was quite an interesting idea. His paper even correlated some previous earthquakes (such as Landers and Northridge) using his "tail-wag-the-dog" method to try and verify his results.

Anyway, regarding these latest predictions by John Rundle and his team, I decided to read the paper. You can actually find it here.

I'm not understanding how they succesfully predicted certain things or how useful his theories are. They are saying they predicted three of the earthquakes that happened in Big Bear.

From what I am understanding, the way their method works is that it shows potential "hot spots" for earthquakes for the next 10 years. That means the whole Big Bear/San Bernardino Mountains area should show up as a hotspot on their map. This doesn't mean they have succesfully predicted all 3 earthquakes though if I understand this right. They predicted the potential for one M5.0 or greater there withing the next 10 years. The fact that there were three of them is just icing on the cake I suppose?

I also can't find any information that shows how many false-positives they nailed as well. This might be kind of hard since they won't know about false-positives until after their prediction period is up in 2010. Without that data though, we can't really be sure of how good this method works. And even if it misses some, it only reduces the chance of an earthquake happening in the next X years to some percentage (which we already have certain data for from the USGS. 67% chance of a M6.7 or greater striking the Bay Area before 2030 and an 80% chance of a M7.0 or greater striking Southern California before 2030).

Admitedly, if this method is promising, it might put better constraints on the data though, so we could say something like, "97% chance of an M7.0 striking within 10 years." However, this still won't help all that much in the scheme of things.

Additional information:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/04100 5071107.htm
John Rundle's Paper

Hmmm...Is the parent a nice molecular-biology troll or just a gem of ignorance mixed with self-confidence?

"Because there's very little in the virus that is guaranteed to be common to ALL instances of said virus, it is hard to see how immunity could exist, even in theory."

The resistance mutation depends from the absence of a particular chemokine receptor on human white blood cells. In principle, the HIV virus could use another receptor to enter. In practice it's quite improbable the virus can mutate his whole capsid proteins to get advantage of a totally new receptor.

"Then, you have other problems. HIV is detected in a number of ways, but probably the most common way is to detect the antibodies to the virus. This causes an obvious problem. If your immune system is damaged, in some way, it may not be able to detect the virus and/or produce antibodies to it. Either way, any technique for detecting HIV through the antibodies would fail."

You obviously have no grasp of immunology. HIV infects primarily subsets of T cells. They are not B cells, that produce soluble antibodies. B cells are not attacked by HIV,therefore you argument is bullshit.
(In fact, B cells are indirectly affected by HIV, but only in late stages of AIDS disease.)

"So much so that they could fight the disease and not even need to generate antibodies to do so."

You have no grasp of immunology,it's obvious now. Your body doesn't "feel the need" for antibodies.It just produces them when encounters an antigen. In fact, you probably already have cells with anti-HIV antibodies: they're just very,very few and are not activated.(Wanna know why? RTFM, i.e. a molecular immunology textbook)

"In theory, since we don't actually know in practice."

We know. Check other /. comments and what I wrote before.

"Provided the self-destruct triggers faster than the virus can spread"

It seems you know nothing about virology and apoptosis too...

"...you're probably not going to live very long anyway, and your quality of life isn't going to be noticably better than those with the disease. In fact, it would probably be a whole lot worse. But, hey, if that's what these two women want for their life, that's their problem. "

If these women were immunodeficient, physicians should have noticed it immediately. Such a severe immunodeficience is, like you seem to understand, practically incompatible with life.

These naive hackers also leave clues. Although they use IP (Internet protocol) addresses to bounce from machine to machine, hackers pick up languages used on interfaces along the way, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that trace back to the point of origin.

to This?
you know, the speech recognition system that worked with a whole 11 virtual neurons and could distinguish between individual speakers perfectly over the roar of a jet engine?

Feeding the fascination many /. readers may have for the escalation of technique and counter-technique beteween hackers and computer forensics experts may not be as valuable as keeping clues about how to avoid getting caught out of the hands of the hackers but I just can't resist... Sciencedaily.com pointed me to something hackers and other criminals might want to study carefully: the PDF guidebook that NIST wrote for the DOJ's first responders to computer crime scenes. Though it has John Ashcroft's name at the top, a glance at the document's time line shows that it was authored by experts mostly from outside the DOJ and completed before the current administration's appointments: the imprimatur of Justice Department on the document may not be ironic.

There was also an article on the subject in The Economist a couple of weeks ago. The Economist story refers to a paper by Chris Duif that looks at other gravitational anomolies. Specifically there is something called the "Allais effect" which describes a measurable change in the force of gravity during solar eclipses. The effect has been experimentally confirmed by a number of observations with different measurement methods - and is also inconsistent with General Relativity. It will be interesting to see what - if anything - comes from the NASA Gravity Probe experiments.

Didn't we go through this with less angst for
Hurricane Floyd?

weren't these things in the news last week? yup

Why aren't ion drives used more?

That's actually quite a good question, given the huge amount of power available from sunlight in the inner solar system. A continuous-burn trajectory to Mercury would probably be very much shorter than the current one; the thrust may be small, but craft speed builds up rapidly under such continuous acceleration. You'd only need to carry enough conventional chemical propellant for the final orbital insertion.

NASA has been very active on the ion-engine front -- last year it successfully completed a pretty advanced test: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/03112 1072826.htm. (And enter "ion engine" at NASA's main site for a huge number of links.) So, it's not only ESA that have their fingers in this pie.

Maybe the answer is that ion engines still need a few more years of development? Certainly not long though, since small ion thrusters are already in use, as you point out.

The tales of marijuana's health risks, like tales of Mark Twain's death in 1897, are greatly exaggerated.

The relationship between cancer and marijuana seems to be a myth. Consider that the lung effects apply only if you smoke it instead of eat it (people smoke it for maximum affect because of the inflated cost due to prohibition. Also, unlike tobacco, marijuana enlarges rather than restricts passages so the airways don't become clogged. It is particles that stick in the lungs for very long periods of time that cause cancer. And while it was reported that marijuana was more carcinogenic than tobacco, people smoke less of it. Also, the claims of its carcinogenic properties are falsified. Marijuana was shown to be less irritating than tobacco to 28 out of 29 areas of the lung. The one area where it appeared more irritating (irritating != cancerous) was an area where tobacco has little effect (so, you have a division by zero problem here). After that, government funding was cut to all studies of those 28 areas of the lung. Oh, and pot doesn't need all the radioactive fertilizer used on tobacco (you did know that one of the ways of disposing of certain types of radioactive waste is to scatter them by incorporating them into fertilizer). "[...] not one single case of lung cancer in someone who only smoked cannabis, has ever been reported." . On the contrary, marijuana smoking has actually been shown to be benificial for emphysema, cancer patients with nausea, glacoma patients. And it has been shown that cigarette smokers are healthier if they also smoke pot. And one study that was commissioned to show immunosuppression actually showed that marijuanna reduced tumers.

The DEA administration must have shit bricks sideways when their own agency Judge concluded:

In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating ten raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death. [...] Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.

Study after study commissioned by the government has come out in favor of marijuana. The government has taken to commissioning bogus studies that do not specify the test methods used and it has taken years to sue for that information which once released is immediately ripped to shreds. For example a study that showed that marijuana destroyed brain cells in monkeys actually proved that suffocation destroyed brain cells (equivalent of 63 joints administered in 15 minutes through a facemask). They still also like to quote studies by Dr. Nahas who has 1) been renounced by his own university, 2) been declared ineligable for NIH funding, 3) 3) been subject to ridicule by other scientists, and 5) renounced his own studies in 1983. "Study Finds No Association Between Marijuana Use And Incidence Of Oral Cancer" . This study refutes a previous study that had shown a cancer link. However, the prior studies "control" group, which the marijuana smokers were compared to, consisted of blood doners; blood doners are a lower risk population than the population at large.

Next time you see a study mentioned in the press about marijuana, get a copy of it and see who funded it, if its conclusions were accurately reported, if the conclusions were supported by the results, and if the methodology is sound.

Most of the health information cited comes from the first link, since that is the source I read most recently. Sometimes I really do wonder why I don't use the stuff myself.

What about single occupant cars with a proper hands free kit installed?

No such thing.
It's not the hands that are the problem, it's the brain.

Nah, the reason we don't eat people is more likely the diseases like kuru. Or perhaps because the symbolic kind of cannibalism practiced in Catholicism is just less messy.

There is another technology, which seems to be better - nanoshells, developed in Rice, which can identify cancer cells and once enter inside it, the nanochells can convert IR light to heat. So, the nanoshells are injected inside the body, and after while a IR lasers starts to lighten the areas around the tumor. The nanoshells heaten to more than 40 Celsium and the cells with nanoshells inside - dies. The body then throws the cells outside. Something like that. Here is the news :
ScienceDaily

So where's the push to even out the gender imbalances in those areas?

Many universities actually give preference to male nursing students. I think it's a stupid idea (just like all race and gender discrimination in the university), but it's there.

I generally agree with the rest of your post, though. Someone said that the reason why there are so few women programmers is because females aren't pushed to work hard in math and science. That's silly; no one is pushed to work hard in math and science during formative years any more, at least not in America. The reason why you see so few women in math and math-based science careers is because women generally don't like math as much as men do. It's not that they're worse at it or are pressured away from it, they just don't like it as much as they do more verbal and social subjects. If it were the stereotypical line of thought that deems women bereft of scientific ability, then why are there so many female biology students?

Rob