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Well, academia of all places is expected to create this kind of controversy. Access to research paper is one of the most restricted information sources there is! Mostly because there really isnt a market share for people wanting to read about Health Effects Engineering or some other random technical issue. Meanwhile, the whole world is interested in illegally sharing the new Transformers movie, regardless of its quality.

Also, the fact that it was released under the CC license, does this limit his legal ability to sue? Is there case law to support the CC license as a legally-binding rule internationally?

You always have the option of submitting your paper to the PLoS if it follows the applicable guidelines.

Actually, something 0.001% close to it has been produced in a lab. That doesn't mean that the remaining 99.999% will necessarily soon (or ever) follow, but totally ignoring the possibility of life arriving spontaneously is, in my book, scientifically dishonest.

Besides, evolution exists no matter how life originally occured. Whether God created the first living cell, it came on a meteor rock, the aliens did it, or it simply occured by chance is irrelevant to the discussion surrounding evolution.

Finally, the bible doesn't talk much of either cause or process. The bible is a literary work. I don't go looking for scientific facts in Agatha Christie novels, and I certainly don't do it in the bible either.

he only lasting physical or mental damage that comes from using opiates are things which are not directly caused by the drug

False. Sorry to spoil your romantic dreams but using heavy drugs really is a threat to your life.

Drug Overdose is a very common cause of premature death in heroin addicts, even when they're using medically prescribed heroin. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retr ieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7804091)

It's also very common for addicts to die from chronic liver disease. (22.3% of the years lost was due to heroin overdose, 14.0% due to chronic liver disease, and 10.2% to accidents. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleUR L&_udi=B6WPG-4N0XN9S-1&_user=10&_coverDate=04%2F30 %2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c& _acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid= 10&md5=1f738e8eaa57831070f58bf4a86c2ef8 )

You can google yourself for more research on this topic. It is very consistent.

First Reference.
Second reference doesn't have a link and can be looked up probably at a university.

Blanchard and Klassen (1997); Birth order and sibling sex ratio in homosexual versus heterosexual males and females. Review of Sex Research, Vol. 8

Read my sentence - I said in online peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Sorry, nothing less will do.

OK, fine. I did the Google Scholar search for you.

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

-Ted

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

-Ted

jehovah's witnesses are so nice (not)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2123546.stm

To remind you of your original point:

You [the United States, presumably-- I'm not religious, nor do I export anything] are currently exporting extreme religions (yup, that's what a lot of uk people think of the Johovahs witnesses that come calling, nut jobs to be avoided at all costs),

To support your point that the US is exporting extreme religions, you link to an article about a church elder who abused a kid. How does that show extreme religions being exported in any way, shape or form? In what way does it prove that "uk people" are avoiding Jehovah's Witnesses? Hell, how do you even define what "extreme religions" are? How does it show anything other than, "hey one guy did one bad thing!"

How about finding a demographic study that shows the religion gaining influence over time, or perhaps an opinion poll from UK citizens about their acceptance of Jehovah's Witnesses? Those might actually be more relevant to your initial point than this 1-page newspaper article you Googled.

looking for the ark....

http://www.noahsarksearch.com/

There's nothing on that website about funding. For all I know the entire thing is a single guy with a lot of free time, and given the quality of the website that seems a good guess.

Then again, let's assume it is being funded by someone... so what? Unless you prove that the amount of funding goes towards finding Noah's Ark is increasing over time, this does nothing to support the original point.

(Or perhaps you think it should be illegal to fund searches for mythical objects? I, and a lot of other Americans, happen to believe in freedom. If someone wants to spent money to find the flying spaghetti monster, who am I to stop them? They can do what they want.)

the links between americans extreme religions and isreal/funding of end time stuff

http://www.wluml.org/english/newsfulltxt.shtml?cmd %5B157%5D=x-157-537000

This link goes to a book review. I haven't read the book. If anybody reading this has, please comment on it.

(I will say that President Bush is not a "fervent Christian fundamentalist." If would be interesting to see what definition of "fundamentalist" includes President Bush.)

problems with science in the US classroom

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleUR L&_udi=B6WSN-4J79KGF-4&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F10 %2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c& _acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid= 10&md5=f91bf7d1e0b2f400ab976e4834c79692

"Not available" error.

That enough?

Not for me. And I'm not even Christian-- I just have a pretty well-developed BS filter.

jehovah's witnesses are so nice (not)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2123546.stm

looking for the ark....

http://www.noahsarksearch.com/

the links between americans extreme religions and isreal/funding of end time stuff

http://www.wluml.org/english/newsfulltxt.shtml?cmd %5B157%5D=x-157-537000

problems with science in the US classroom

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleUR L&_udi=B6WSN-4J79KGF-4&_user=10&_coverDate=02%2F10 %2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c& _acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid= 10&md5=f91bf7d1e0b2f400ab976e4834c79692

That enough?

We've know for the last 30 years, that were are emerging from a little ice age.

The temperature has changed ~1.2C in the last 200 years.

If you read the scholar.google.com papers, 1.1C is caused by increased solar activity. http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2n447034x15v0 87/

0.1C is attributed to atmospheric CO2.

Human activity is responsible for 50% of CO2, the other 50% is volcanic sources.

That makes human activity culpable for about 0.05C in two hundred years.

Of course this paper attributes global warming to cosmic forces http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleUR L&_udi=B6TJK-471854M-3&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F31 %2F2003&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c& _acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid= 10&md5=4df335c97179a6aebe85bacebd0679fe

We've reached the technological ability to see the change, and like Chicken Little run around declaring the "the sky is falling".

"Change, it's the only thing that stays the same" --Levar Burton.

What do you mean 'HIV has never been seen...'? That's just not true

Every study I've seen has shown that there is a statistical correlation between the levels of estrogen in the body, and the interest in math & science. The more estrogen, the less interested the subject becomes (for both boys and girls.)

I've not seen any such studies, and I'd be interested in reading them. Do you have any links? I tried searching scirus.com and only came up with links like this one and this one. (That is, not particularly relevant.)

Actually, using Google Scholar, I did find this PDF (from a law school professor) that suggests what you mention. From that article, I was able to use scirus to find this abstract (from the journal Neuroscience) which supports your position.

I guess it is somewhat indicative of the nature of the beast that although I've also published in Neuroscience, I've never heard of these studies.

Every study I've seen has shown that there is a statistical correlation between the levels of estrogen in the body, and the interest in math & science. The more estrogen, the less interested the subject becomes (for both boys and girls.)

I've not seen any such studies, and I'd be interested in reading them. Do you have any links? I tried searching scirus.com and only came up with links like this one and this one. (That is, not particularly relevant.)

Actually, using Google Scholar, I did find this PDF (from a law school professor) that suggests what you mention. From that article, I was able to use scirus to find this abstract (from the journal Neuroscience) which supports your position.

I guess it is somewhat indicative of the nature of the beast that although I've also published in Neuroscience, I've never heard of these studies.

Actually, the statistical significance of their result was pretty good. From the research paper:

Therefore, the effect of fertility status (testing whether a woman's score was above chance) was estimated at the average of days prior to menstrual onset (roughly a mid-luteal phase day of the cycle) and at the day of ovulation. Scores were above chance, F(1, 27) = 7.06, p = 0.013 (mean = 59.5%; SEM = 5%).

As far as psych experiments go, p=0.013 is pretty good.

Allow me to quote direct from the Daily Mall:

The judges chose the photo taken during the fertile phases 60 per cent of the time.

According to New Scientist, this is "well beyond random chance".


Where the word 'more' came from, other than slashdot summary, I don't know.

The real study is here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleUR L&_udi=B6WGC-4M3J10P-1&_user=10&_handle=C-WA-A-WB- WB-MsSAYZW-UUA-U-U-WB-U-U-AADUEEYDVD-AAZYCDECVD-WU BCYWEWC-WB-U&_fmt=full&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2007&_ rdoc=7&_orig=browse&_srch=%23toc%236819%232007%239 99489998%23638753!&_cdi=6819&_acct=C000050221&_ver sion=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=444a5bf43b7599 407cecc16ac1560df4

The full article can be found here.

I couldn't access the mentioned paper, but I found another paper that I assume that review cited (Lindquist worked on both of them). The summary "CPEB prions might function in the formation of long-term memory" is probably though not certainly taken from:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleUR L&_udi=B6WSN-4C5RJXX-C&_coverDate=12%2F26%2F2003&_ alid=516758008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_c di=7051&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000051401&_version=1 &_urlVersion=0&_userid=1082852&md5=817b088d824d789 e3c68039a6e013561

which talks about CPEB in Aplysia californica, the California sea slug. The results are pretty interesting, but it's unclear whether they apply to higher organisms. I haven't yet found anything where they test this in mice, but that doesn't mean the paper doesn't exist.

Another paper at

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/utils/fref.fcgi ?itool=AbstractPlus-def&PrId=3580&uid=12058449&db= pubmed&url=http://joi.jlc.jst.go.jp/JST.JSTAGE/jts /27.69?from=PubMed

found that: "Whereas the Zurich I Prnp null mice, as well as mice from a later PrP knockout line designated Edinburgh Prnp -/- (Manson et al., 1994) were clinically healthy, mice of other knockout lines, for example Nagasaki Prnp-/- (Sakaguchi et al., 1996) came down with ataxia and less of cerebellar Purkinje cells at 6-12 months of age. In the Zurich I and Edinburgh mice only the PrP open reading frame (ORF) was ablated or interrupted, while the lines developing ataxia had deletions extending from within the second Prnp intron to the 3' non-coding region [which runs into another gene called Doppel]."

To summarize: at this moment it doesn't seem that taking out only the coding region of PrP wrecks anything blatantly obvious in mice (though other papers I haven't cited show some other effects, not all of them neuro).

Nope. No trolling for me.
but here's two cents of your logic for you.
My logic costs more that two cents. Ya must've gotten some cheap knockoff.

Ice caps are melting - They will stop melting, it is illogical to say they will continue melting given the scientists are hedging on evidence of lack of logic in the arguements by scientists in the 90s.

1. There are some scientists who predict that 'globabl warming' will be followed by 'global cooling' if the deep ocean currents slow down and the carnot style weather patterns which move heat from the equators to the poles fail. You're welcome to lecture them on their 'illogic' in thinking that climate patterns can only move in one direction.

2. Instead of hunting around on Europa, google Nils-Axel Mörner.

"Local people report that the dhonis (local fishing boats) could pass
straight across the Maduvvare Falhus thila in the 1970s and 1980s,"
Mörner reports, "whilst they in the last 15 years have had to make
a detour around the thila, because it is now too shallow. The thila
has not grown, so it must be the sea that has fallen."
http://iceagenow.com/Sea_levels_are_falling.htm
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleUR L&_udi=B6VF0-49C5G0W-2&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2004&_ alid=488820897&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_c di=5996&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1 &_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=ce2f1fe2c68eba06a6eb c818408321ac

He's certainly a minority view, but not insignificant.

3. Ice which is floating in water raises water level minimally. (Ice cubes of fresh water water melting into salt water raise the level slightly.) Salinity of water, among other factors, affects density. Similarly, continents relieved of continental glaciers often 'rebound' upwards. If we're dealing with creating a predictive scientific model to solve a problem, these things could be important in predicting what will happen and how fast. If we're only interested in politics, of course, we'll already know the "right" answer.

4. Australia has been in drought for 10 years and climate has shifted so cities have no water - That is not science
I thought we were predicting stronger storms from global warming? Australia should be having problems with flooding not drought. So yeah, blaming every single environmental anomaly after the fact on 'global warming' is not at all science.

5. We can dump iron in a sensitive ecosystem like the ocean and it will grow disproportionate amounts of algae which will make more fish in the ocean and end climate change

First, the purpose would primarily be carbon sequestration. Replenishment of over-fished schools would be secondary.
Volcanoes dump huge amounts of iron in the ocean all the time. If they weren't natural, someone would probably be protesting them. Remind me again, are we trying to solve a major environmental problem here or aren't we? Bringing ocean iron levels up to where they were in the 1980s at the very least shouldn't be seen as moving the oceans outside of some undefined tolerance levels. Fish stocks are already depleted. Any political action we take to improve or alter our environment is going to have side effects. Either we take no action, or we do a rational cost-benefit analysis to determine the best solution, based on a reliable model. Carbon taxes and carbon sequestration both will have costs. And benefits as well, some of which will

I think the grandparent poster is right on that this should be thought of as a medium-long term goal. Get all of the manufacturers to switch over soon, and let natural attrition shrink the "old power supply" pool while increasing the efficent pool. Eco-hippies can be early adopters if they like, but from a financal standpoint it will take a rather large increase in the cost of power or a significant drop in the cost of efficent power supplies to make this worthwhile.

In the original scientific paper on which this was based, they actually went into detail on anticipated aging and replacement of power supplies. The paper pointed out that, failing incentives, they tended to be swapped out much more slowly than thought, and were recycled far more often than people realize. This applied especially to industrial and large commercial usage. I remember working on mercury and PCB-based transformers, for example, in industrial uses, which had been in operation or kept for temporary standy usage, even though they were many decades old, at the time that more modern transformers were still being brought in based on designs finalized and manufactured eight years beforehand.

Details at Science Direct (institutional subscription required, at most universities/colleges/libraries).

Biological direction sensing with magnetite has been known for a couple of decades. Magnetic receptors in plants is an interesting twist. Having the sensor being light-dependent suggests a tie with phototropism. My question is, do the plants thrive better in one hemisphere than the other? North-seeking plants would be better adapted to the southern hemisphere, etc.

I really wish submitters would include a link to the research paper, so we could actually judge the research for ourselves instead of relying on some journalist's interpretation. Here's the abstract for this paper, from Neuroscience:

Diurnal gene expression patterns of T-type calcium channels and their modulation by ethanol

The transient (T-type) calcium channel participates in the generation of normal brain rhythms as well as abnormal rhythms associated with a range of neurological disorders. There are three different isoforms of T-type channels and all are particularly enriched in the thalamus, which is involved in generating many of these rhythms. We report a novel means of T-type channel regulation in the thalamus that involves diurnal regulation of gene expression. Using real time polymerase chain reaction we detected a diurnal pattern of gene expression for all T-type channel transcripts. The peak of gene expression for the CaV3.1 transcript occurred close to the transition from active to inactive (sleep) states, while expression for both CaV3.2 and CaV3.3 peaked near the transition of inactive to active phase. We assessed the effect of chronic consumption of ethanol on these gene expression patterns by examining thalamic tissues of ethanol-consuming cohorts that were housed with the controls, but which received ethanol in the form of a liquid diet. Ethanol consumption resulted in a significant shift of peak gene expression of approximately 5 h for CaV3.2 toward the normally active phase of the mice, as well as increasing the overall gene expression levels by approximately 1.7-fold. Peak gene expression was significantly increased for both CaV3.2 and CaV3.3. Measurements of CaV3.3 protein expression reflected increases in gene expression due to ethanol. Our results illustrate a novel regulatory mechanism for T-type calcium channels that is consistent with their important role in generating thalamocortical sleep rhythms, and suggests that alterations in the pattern of gene expression of these channels could contribute to the disruption of normal sleep by ethanol.

Curiously, I get the impression that the emphasis of the research is somewhat different from what was emphasized in the popular-press article.

I don't think this sort of hype helps anyone. The Java code generation story is indeed solid (although the toy benchmarks you cite are meaningless). The real issue is garbage collection. It requires around 3 times more memory (or 7 times more) than explicit memory management to achieve equivalent performance -- less memory means more garbage collections. Unfortunately, more memory means longer pauses. Worse, if physical memory runs short, it's a paging disaster (although this can be fixed). Java - and garbage collection - are great technologies, but it's important to acknowledge their limitations (and try to address them).

Hmmm, it's an interesting idea, but it seems to give a lot of false positives. (So naturally, it will detect fake papers, if it thinks every paper is fake.)

First thing I tried was some pages on computational oncology website, in particular, my cancer primer, which I wrote in not a short time. Everything I fed was determined to be inauthentic. Perhaps I just write like a robot. :-) I figured that perhaps the detector was more primed for real papers, so I figured it wasn't too big of a deal.

So, next I tried my most recent research paper, and it, too, was determined to be inauthentic, and in fact with less authenticity than my website. So much for the theory of being primed for scientific papers only. This thing is starting to look pretty bogus to me ... but an interesting idea, nonetheless. -- Paul

I'm saying Al Gore is an idiot because of all the days he can highlight "Global Warming" he did it on the coldest day of the year. Pretty smart....yep, that Al Gore is a real brain trust. Understand, or did I use words that were too big for you?

Check this out:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleUR L&_udi=B6V6R-4JJGCC0-2&_coverDate=03%2F24%2F2006&_ alid=384954258&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_c di=5821&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1 &_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=59b54a6291e61ddd4124 69654bad6004#SECX14

it was actually WARMER during the last interglacial period.

One scientific study that YOU happen to agree with doesn't prove squat.

Did that precious report in the original posting say anything about that? Nope. Not a thing. Real objective.

I'm something of a polymath :) I follow, in just as much depth, everything from nuclear power to rocketry. On this particular subject, I educated myself because a few years ago I used to debate origins online and wasn't about to show up to a battle of facts half-armed. ;) Ah, PubMed -- quite the valuable resource it was. Someone claims that evolution never produces more efficient enzymes? In a minute, I've pulled up and am reading "Single mutation at the intersubunit interface confers extra efficiency to Cu,Zn superoxide dimutase". :)

This may have applications for soft-body physics in games.

you could always email Nikolaos Scarmeas at ns257@columbia.edu - the author of the original article - I found his email in a 2005 poster display on Science Direct, an educational research tool that most major libraries subscribe to at the university level.

Apparently he displayed a poster on this work back in June 2005, and it took his team this long to get it published - peer review can be a slow process - there's a paper I contributed to back in August 2005 and it's only in revision 47, still not accepted in Science, but should be showing up there.

do the math on how much energy is required

If you would kindly finish that sentence with how much energy is required to do what, I'd happily run the calcs for you. If you're referring to how to obtain the 1GW of power, all I can say is that's the easy part in engineering such power stations.

what sort of remote devices exist for conveying that power back to ear[t]h.

High powered masers into the gigawatt range have been a reality for some time. This paper from 1977 describes experiments with running multi-kilowatt masers all the way up into the gigawatt range. On making these efficient, there has been a LOT of R&D over the years with papers such as this one (1997) describing the work being done. What's been driving the development of such high power beams, believe it or not, is the development of the fusion reactors. Scientists have been investigating the possibility of using high-powered masers to excite the fuel into a fusion state.

In short, all the technology has been researched, and the groundwork has been laid. What's needed now is a market to drive the development of the technology.

The most common human cell-based therapy applied today is hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation. Currently, human bone marrow, mobilized peripheral blood, and umbilical cord blood represent the major sources of transplantable HSCs, but their availability for use is limited by both compatibility between donor and recipient and required quantity. Although increasing evidence suggests that somatic HSCs can be expanded to meet current needs, their in vivo potential is concomitantly compromised after ex vivo culture. In contrast, human embryonic stem cells (hESC) possess indefinite proliferative capacity in vitro and have been shown to differentiate into the hematopoietic cell fate, giving rise to erythroid, myeloid, and lymphoid lineages using a variety of differentiation procedures.

The main result is that the method (neural net) works a little better than other methods on the same data (Table 4 of paper). It scores 75% in a test; conventional regression scores 71%. As they say in the statistical literature, "big woop"; the fancy new thing is marginally better than the simple old thing.

As for the practical side of things, the main predictive variable is the number of screens on which the film was initially shown. The next-highest predictive variables are a variable representing the use of technical effects and a variable represengint the actors' reputation. Well, none of these indicates that this tool (or others discussed in the paper) is of any real use to the industry. The suggested use of the tool is to predict movie success. But the main predictive variables all represent things the industry already knew, when the film was being made and promoted. It's like asking a patient if they have a cold, and then charging them to tell them they have a cold.

What's with all the ranting?

The ranting has to do with the irresponsible "journalism" at the BBC--and most other "news" organizations-- vis-a-vis science.

1. The BBC article's headline "Colds 'may trigger child cancers'" is sensationalistic to say the least. Monkeys may fly out of my ass, but it is unlikely. Perhaps the single quotes around 'may trigger child cancers' mean that the author made such a statement, but the article never says so. I can only conclude the editor chose this headline for shock value, not for its scientific relevance or merit. By plopping "may" into a headline, doesn't mitigate the damage done by promoting shoddy science and even shoddier science writing.

2. The lead states that, "Scientists have found further compelling evidence infections such as colds may trigger childhood cancers." Compelling? According to whom? The writer? If so, then they need to take a course in virology, one in epidemiology, one in biostatistics and one in cancer genetics, because after reading the articles, "compelling" is one of the last adjective that comes to mind.

3. The BBC article has no contradictory opinions by "experts" and I can tell you that when discussing links between any infectious agent and the etiology of cancer you can find those opinions with ease.

4. The only mitigating statements are like, "but we need more evidence to be sure." They don't need more evidence, they need a mountain of evidence to even begin asserting that childhood infections may "trigger" certain cancers.

5. The article never mentions the source of the information. The European Journal of Cancer is by and large a decent publication, but if the data were even remotely "compelling" it would amount to a bombshell in the infectious disease and oncology communities and Eur J Can would have been pretty far down on the desired publication list.

6. Statements like "It was even possible infections caught by mothers while pregnant could trigger the cancers, the report said" and "People affected by infections would need to carry mutant cells which could be manipulated by viruses, causing a second mutation and prompting the onset of cancer" are laughable. The articles provide zero evidence for the former, while the latter is so inanely simplistic and wrong that it taints an already tainted beyond repair article.

7. To bolster the lack of actual evidence to support their conclusions, i.e. data that show a concomitant increase in a particular disease symptoms that could be attributed to viral infection, they use the good ole' 'it was below the level of detection argument by stating, "These could be minor, common illnesses that are not even reported to the GP, such as a cold, mild flu or a respiratory virus." Apparently there was no evidence of increase disease symptoms reported to the docs in the area, so the authors just decide to make up a reason for why the data don't support the conclusions. And the BBC writer dutifully reports this with a positive spin.

So that's just a slice of why I hate BBC science reporting and why the broader distribution of such tripe on sites like /. is all the more disturbing.

Hell if you believe the NYTimes, a few years back you would have thought that Judah Folkman had cancer all but cured. The NYT has some decent science writers, but in the competition for the worst of the worst the BBC has a commanding lead.

If the article's statistical data regarding "space-time clustering" of certain cancers is bona fide, then why in this article are there no data, zero, none, nada in the results section speaking to the link to infections?

And guess what, in

A little more poking around takes you to the abstract at Science Direct

http://users.rowan.edu/~marchese/blr.html

> If they had something strange happen during an experiment they should have left it at that and write
> a paper called something like "Something strange happened during blah blah blah...", then describe in
> detail the setup of the experiment and the results, then wait for peer review

Have done:

http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0963-0252/12/3/312

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?isn umber=27155&arnumber=1206739&count=18&index=5

http://www.edpsciences.org/10.1051/epjap:2004168

http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServ let?prog=normal&id=JAPIAU000096000006003095000001& idtype=cvips&gifs=yes

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleUR L&_udi=B6TGS-47C8N0P-B&_coverDate=12%2F19%2F2002&_ alid=308918281&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_c di=5262&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1 &_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=82d2cdf37641d3ec848f 070de1f6a1d2

The correct response to this article is,

(a) yes, H-B fusion (aneutronic) is possible, but...

(b) it requires very high temperatures, and suffers from a variety of energy loss mechanisms which make getting usable energy from it difficult. This is similar to when I was in grad-school, and everyone was whispering about Muon-catalyzed fusion, which turned out to be impractical for energy extraction as well.

IANA(N/P)P (i am not a nuclear/plasma physicist), but the papers I skimmed suggest that you could use this method, mixed with a conventional Deuterium/tritium mixture, to get cleaner fusion and better burn rates. Of course, not being a physicist, it's possible that the journals I found the citations in are the physics equivalent of Journal of Pointless Chemistry.

http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServ let?prog=normal&id=APCPCS000406000001000216000001& idtype=cvips&gifs=yes/

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleUR L&_udi=B6TVM-3WN77X7-19&_coverDate=06%2F17%2F1996& _alid=331683658&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_ cdi=5538&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version= 1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=fad383390465b806fd1 b90abff541fee/

Probable Translation: Another backyard inventor who can read enough of the literature to be encouraged, but not enough to admit the drawbacks.

Secondary Translation: I canna' change the laws of physics, Captain.

I was even told that everything was fine or at least according to the examinations. That I lost more and more weight, could not digest *any* food at all any more, had a steadily dropping blood pressure and so on was...well...a little inexplicable (in the words of my physician). But so what? Only by accident I stumbled over what food intolerance can do to our metabolism - celiac disease, lactose intolerance, iodine intoxication (for example). And it was the internet where I could find the explanations, the doctors couldn't give me. Changing my diet changed my life. Many thanks to PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=p ubmed and Elsevier http://www.sciencedirect.com/!

Yea I know what you mean, the doctor that gets paid 100k a year just wrote me off as another case of IBS after charging me 7k for 2 invasive tests. I knew it wasnt IBS and I told him so, did he listen? No, hell no he didnt. I ended up stumbling up Celiacs via Google which then in turn lead me to a Celiacs sufferers website where I found a forum that basically everyone that posted their was a exact clone of me in terms of symptoms and habits.

Charge and tell them they are simply nuts? Or, somewhat more sensible, tell them they have IBS and they should realize it that there is no cure?

Doctors getting paid 100k and up shouldnt just write people off like that.

GOOGLE SAVED MY TEH INNARDS FROM POO OVERLOAD.

I was even told that everything was fine or at least according to the examinations. That I lost more and more weight, could not digest *any* food at all any more, had a steadily dropping blood pressure and so on was...well...a little inexplicable (in the words of my physician). But so what? Only by accident I stumbled over what food intolerance can do to our metabolism - celiac disease, lactose intolerance, iodine intoxication (for example). And it was the internet where I could find the explanations, the doctors couldn't give me. Changing my diet changed my life. Many thanks to PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=p ubmed and Elsevier http://www.sciencedirect.com/!

And for the scientific rigour of medicine: Almost all tests have a specific rate of failure. They either give false negative or false positive results. And some people simply are so called non-responders when it comes to medical tests. What then? Let them suffer? Charge and tell them they are simply nuts? Or, somewhat more sensible, tell them they have IBS and they should realize it that there is no cure?

That is exactly what happens today.

No, thanks doctor! No more pseudo-scientific talking here! Let's have a look at the web!

PS: Perhaps it is time to create something like OpenHealth.org - "Health for geeks" ? ;-) (Oh no, the address is already taken...) Any better suggestions?

5+ standard deviations against the control is interesting. Should be easy to reproduce. (or not).

Well, the Slashdot story is not a hoax, nor is the ABC News article, though the original article in vol 233 issue 4 of Journal of Theoretical Biology might be. (If that link doesn't work, go to Science Direct and do a search for kanazawa.)

Repeat after me: "Correlation does not imply causality."

And the Internet as a whole is a terrific place for posting as fact misreadings of misinterpretations of things people don't say. (No, not you.)

The original paper, which was a study based on a few thousand people, was looking at extreme male-brainedness in autism. They picked out profession as an indicator of male-brainedness. The data for sex of the offspring was available only one year (1994) of the data they had.

They also selected the professions ad hoc. That is, they didn't test the wider profession for male-brainedness. They didn't directly test the individual people involved either, but just looked at their profession, race, and other data.

The question is: how many of the engineer types would have had more male children anyway? Are people who will naturally have more male children just more likely to choose engineering professions? I think you could draw that conclusion more easily, but still it's only one study using data from one year out of several they studied.

Systemizing occupations

• Executative, managerial, adminstrative such as financial managers, analysts, etc.
• Professional: architects, engineers, etc.
• Technicians

Empathizing occupations

• Professional: nurses, speech therapists, teachers, counselors

(So people don't have to dig around for it...)

Remote Control of Behavior through Genetically Targeted Photostimulation of Neurons

Susana Q. Lima and Gero Miesenböck

Optically gated ion channels were expressed in circumscribed groups of neurons in the Drosophila CNS so that broad illumination of flies evoked action potentials only in genetically designated target cells. Flies harboring the "phototriggers" in different sets of neurons responded to laser light with behaviors specific to the sites of phototrigger expression. Photostimulation of neurons in the giant fiber system elicited the characteristic escape behaviors of jumping, wing beating, and flight; photostimulation of dopaminergic neurons caused changes in locomotor activity and locomotor patterns. These responses reflected the direct optical activation of central neuronal targets rather than confounding visual input, as they persisted unabated in carriers of a mutation that eliminates phototransduction. Encodable phototriggers provide noninvasive control interfaces for studying the connectivity and dynamics of neural circuits, for assigning behavioral content to neurons and their activity patterns, and, potentially, for restoring information corrupted by injury or disease.

I'm sort of a neuroscientist...

Unless I'm grossly mistaken, haven't there already been studies which used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to induce phosphenes in sensory cortex areas like V1 and MT? Granted, targetting is still quite crude, but I don't see any particular reason why the resolution can't be improved in future techniques. I don't we're going to be stimulating individual cortical microcolumns non-invasively any time soon, but it certainly seems possible to put together something which would be useful enough for entertainment purposes. Getting FDA (or whatever the associated gov body is) approval though is an entirely different question.

In any case, ultrasound seems like it might be an interesting research tool for neural stimulation. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with they physics though to know how feasible it is.

This publication from 1995, Application of focused ultrasound for the stimulation of neural structures seems interesting, but I don't have access to the fulltext.

I'm sort of a neuroscientist...

Unless I'm grossly mistaken, haven't there already been studies which used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to induce phosphenes in sensory cortex areas like V1 and MT? Granted, targetting is still quite crude, but I don't see any particular reason why the resolution can't be improved in future techniques. I don't we're going to be stimulating individual cortical microcolumns non-invasively any time soon, but it certainly seems possible to put together something which would be useful enough for entertainment purposes. Getting FDA (or whatever the associated gov body is) approval though is an entirely different question.

In any case, ultrasound seems like it might be an interesting research tool for neural stimulation. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with they physics though to know how feasible it is.

This publication from 1995, Application of focused ultrasound for the stimulation of neural structures seems interesting, but I don't have access to the fulltext.

I realize your comment was toungue-in-cheek, but on a serious note: if only it were that simple. Data extraceted from DNA only represents potential outcomes in many instances. The genome is often called a blueprint but as any architecht knows, there's a huge potential for the finished product to have alterations. It's the same way with DNA. The emerging fields (maybe it's already emerged?) of proteomics seems more likely to predict actual outcomes, like in this study. Sorry, but I think most you will have to pay to read the entire article.

There was actually an article on this a few days ago.

Original research paper in Cell: Environmental Enrichment Reduces Alpha-Beta Levels and Amyloid Deposition in Transgenic Mice
Summary in Cell: Exercise Your Amyloid

Article in Medical News Today

Quote: Mice that keep their brains and bodies busy in an "enriched" environment of chew toys, running wheels, and tunnels have lower levels of the peptides and brain plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease compared to mice raised in more sparse conditions, according to a new study in the 11 March issue of the journal Cell.

Levels of b-amyloid peptides, which clump together to form the brain "tangles" or plaques that are toxic to nerve cells in Alzheimer's disease, were significantly lower in the enriched mice, say Sangram Sisodia, of the University of Chicago, and colleagues. The enriched mice may have been better equipped than their less-stimulated counterparts to sweep these peptides out of the brain, according to the researchers' analysis of gene and enzyme expression in the animals.

"This goes back to the old idea of use it or lose it, that using your brain keeps it more active," Sisodia says. "It's more common sense than anything, but what we didn't previously appreciate is that it might affect the pathology that is characteristic of Alzheimer's disease." ...

The researchers also found intriguing clues that an active body, as well as an active brain, might be a key factor in reaping the benefits of an enriched environment. The most physically active of the mice in the elaborately furnished cages had the most dramatic reductions in amyloid peptides and deposits. At least among this small group of mouse workout devotees, "exercise appears to play a significant role in modulating amyloid deposition," Sisodia and colleagues write.

The researchers caution, however, that it will take more experiments with larger numbers of animals to determine exactly how enriched environments benefit mice, whether through increased physical activity, a boost in visual, social, and spatial stimuli that awaken the brain, or some combination of all of these factors.

Sisodia says exercise, along with any kind of mental activity from reading to doing the crossword puzzle, are probably the equivalent of chew toys and running wheels for humans. "It's all very important in keeping the mind active and potentially staving off effects of old age."

Maybe because Humans, Neanderthals, Australopithecines All Variations on One Species, and that apes and such are vastly different from humans??

Not everything they say on the Discovery Channel and on National Geographic is true about the origin of man.

Best Regards,

dan :)

A recent study suggests that global warming might have saved us from the next ice age.

A recent study suggests that global warming might have saved us from the next ice age.

I suffered from very similar symptoms for longer than I really can remember. It all started with a growing belch often compared with acid from my stomach some 6 or 7 years ago. I tried to ignore it but that didn't help. Nor did the few doctors I went to. Symptoms grew heavier in about the way you described yours. According to my blood (and other) test I should have been healthy. But I wasn't. I couldn't digest any food any longer. Consequently weight loss accelerated. I almost resignated.

Few weeks later, at the beginning of this year, I almost died from heavy cramps all over my body even within my lung, stomach, liver etc. My internist didn't know what that could have been after I told him about what happened to me.

By accident I made the experience that pure natural source water mixed with some vinegar and sea salt made me pretty fast feel better. How so? Water, vinegar and sea salt aren't exactly the substances a doctor would prescribe, are they?

I followed this very thin trace and started buying and reading books on pharmacology, biochemistry and medicine.

Somewhere I stumbled over a description for a shock induced by the failure of the calcium control system of the cells. I recognized a description of the cramps I had. It was pure luck that I hadn't died I learned... And I was on the right way it seemed.

But what could my water+vinegar+salt mix have to do with all that?

After having investigated what could happen if I put organic acid into my stomach from where it would rinse into my bowels I came up with the theory that most of the enzymes working at digesting the food I ate would have to work with lower pH values. Since they behave like catalysts that would greatly enhance their effect (of most of the enzymes).

That being my assumption I developed the hypothesis that I had (at least) a problem with my enzymes.

If that would be the case, I couldn't get the nutrional elements (from the food) that my body's cells needed and, accordingly, my cells would degrade until I would die from some infection or whatever.

Next question was, how to better the current state. Thinking about the future, about causes and all what would come later (if their would be a later...)

Okay, what did I lack most? "Vitamins" sprang to my mind. And magnesium (against the nightly cramps in the calf; and zinc (because of the so called "zinc finger" part of most enzymes); and keeping up my water+vinegar+salt treatment.

It worked.

My state bettered reasonably within a two weeks (but still was far from healty).

And their was hope now.

Hope for a future for me.

From here on I systematized my search. The biggest and best source of information was Elsevier's database of articles at http://www.sciencedirect.com/.

Over the course of the last half year I have studied the current research in metabolism as far as possible, made "impossible" (from the medicines point of view) assumptions of what could go wrong in my cells and guts, and looked for possible treatments. Trace elements and other micro nutrients provided a key. (At least that was what I concluded from what I saw in hundreds and thousands of studies.)

Just to name a few:

* zinc, magnesium (already mentioned)
* niacine (for the synthesis of gall bladder and for the energy production within the mitochondria)
* a number of other vitamines (too much to shortly describe)
* selenium (very impressive protective factor for many metabolic processes as well as during cell reproduction and more)
* chromium (supports carbohydrate and fat metabolism, leptin synthesis, serotonine synthesis)
* essential fatty acids (e.g., the mysterious omega-3 fatty acids).
* ubiquinone (also called coenzyme q10, needed for the respiration system of the mitochondria)
* L-carnitine (need to transfer fatty acids into the mitochondria where they are "burned")
* (what will come next)

I tried them out, and other peo

Your girlfriend's problem indicates that she might have a chromium and/or L-carnitine deficiency.

Chromium in the form of glucose tolerance factor supports insulin in the carbohydrate metabolism. On the other hand, chromium is (somehow) responsible for the synthesis of leptin within some cells. Together with L-carnitine it controls the leptin levels in the blood. So maybe she should having tested their chromium and L-Carnitine levels and in the case of a deficiency try to take chromium and L-carnitines rather than leptin alone.

A helpful resource for investigations if this kind is Elsevier's database of articles. At least the abstracts come for free!

[And don't expect your doctor to tell you much about problems with metabolism. You're mostly on your own here...]