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No, I don't know any scientific data from the 1980's and 90's that predicted a 2 ft/year sea level rise. Please add your references.

Al Gore made a comment that sea levels would rise 20 feet in his 2006 movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," that the global warming critics like to hype to death. Any comment by Al Gore should be taken with a hefty amount of sea salt.

Some of the most memorable images from Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, are the graphics that show how rising ocean levels will dramatically alter our planet's coastlines. As Greenland's ice sheets collapse, Gore predicts that our shores will be flooded and sea-bordering cities will sink beneath the water leaving millions of people homeless. His narration tells the audience that, due to global warming, melting ice could release enough water to cause at 20-foot rise in sea level "in the near future."

http://scienceline.org/2008/12/ask-rettner-sea-level-rise-al-gore-an-inconvenient-truth/

The insightful AC forgot to cite, but the title was enough for a Google search. First hit: No need for the pharmacy; just press print. When it comes out, let's call it Dial-A-Drug and plug it in right next to the fridge.

Plausible but unlikely. Plausible since remnants of methane tend to form complex organic compounds but unlikely since if the entire composition was a single compound, the spectrographic analysis would have likely identified it! And honey does dry out! http://scienceline.org/2007/04/ask-westly-crystallizedhoney/

Actually, the idea is to breed the fish and then release millions upon millions of fingerlings into the various oceans. The real problem is how we got here and what will change. Basically, countries need to change. For example, the Atlantic tuna is about collapse. The reason is that overfishing is being done. By who? Well, America and Canada have STRICT limits on Canadian/American fleets which are checked pretty thoroughly. We also have foreign ships here that are under restrictions. Most are Chinese and Japanese. The japanese ships will dock at our ports, be checked, and then take the whole load back to Japan. OTH, The Chinese ships come in, drop off their max allowed load, and then show up back in China with a full load. IOW, they are taking another load on their way back (illegal, but easy enough to pull off from what I have heard). But that is not the full issue. EU has been horrible about putting restraints on their taking of the Tuna. And those nations that do, simply look the other way when the ship is over.

What needs to happen is that ALL OF THE NATIONS that have fisheries need to protect these. It can not be so half ass anymore.

Scientists have put the commonly-cited five-second rule to the test. They found that food that comes into contact with a tile or wood floor does pick up large amounts of bacteria. Food doesn't pick up many germs when it hits carpet, but it does pick up carpet fuzz.

Since this is slashdot, I'd bet most will pick bacteria over carpet fuzz any day ... after all, if it doesn't look fuzzy ...

or this ...

many people believe that gastric acid enzymes found in the stomach are strong enough to destroy the "small, harmless" amount of bacteria that could gather on a piece of food in five seconds. But are these bacteria really harmless?

In 2003, Jillian Clarke, then a high school senior, decided she wanted to find out. During an internship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she and a doctoral candidate, Meredith Agle, took swab samples from floors all over the campus, including labs, hallways, and bathrooms, and found that the amount of bacteria on the floors was very low. When she published her research, she concluded that if a piece of food falls on a relatively clean floor, the five-second rule is, in fact, applicable.

I came across this article a while back; there's speculation that the correlation between rainfall and autism is caused by kids staying indoors most of the time; whether that meant a lack of exposure to something important outdoors or an exposure (constantly) to something dangerous indoors was an open question. This continues down that path, accidentally.

I hadn't meant for this to become a Primer on the state of blood and artificial blood products, but considering the importance of the topic... blood is in fact life, and is therefore an issue worth going over thoroughly. The whole synthetic blood discussion is both fascinating and critically important. There simply isn't enough blood available for saving people's lives during disasters and large scale emergencies. That, and blood has a short shelf life so you simply can't build up stocks for the future. Lastly, transfusing blood comes with a raft of serious medical problems including distribution, contamination, typing accidents, rejection, allergies, tainting, and a host of unpleasant interactions that can span the gamut from uncomfortable to fatal. all of this underlines the need for a good synthetic blood alternative.

We're on the verge of amazing new products which will make sudden death or injury due to loss of blood or blood flow a problem of the past. Some of the more interesting work is being done in the following areas;

• Synthetic Heme Containing blood substitutes
  This has been an area of significant research and development. Part of the problem is that the naked HEME molecule is toxic and causes damage to the kidneys (and may also cause problems with the liver and spleen.) As well, until recently, artifical bloods had a serious problem with Nitric Oxide Scavenging resulting in constriction of the blood vessels, increased blood pressure, reduced blood flow, and ultimately tissue damage and death. Interesting work is being done on breakthroughs in both oxygen transport and the design of the vesicles which hold the the transport technologies.
• Perfluorocarbon Emulsions
  You may be familiar with Perfluorocarbons from their use in deep sea diving, As seen in the movie "The Abyss". What you may not know is that Perfuorocarbon Emulsions are one of the leading candidates for a new Synthetic Blood Substitute. The coolest feature of this product, is that the droplets of perfuorocarbon are nano-scopic. Literally hundreds of time smaller than blood cells. When administered they pass through blood clots as easily as crickets would pass through a highway traffic jam. This means, your heart and brain could continue to receive plenty of life giving oxygen even if a clot stopped the blood flow cold. No more death or long term tissue damage from strokes or heart attacks. If this isn't cool I don't know what is!
• Respirocytes
  This is more than a little further off in the future. Its a nano machine designed to store oxygen at around 50 atmospheres, and move freely through the blood stream like super small blood cells. You can read volumous writings and illustrations by nanotechnology advocates Ralph Merckle and Ray Kurzweil on this topic. You can also visit the subject at Wikipedia or see a cool video about them at Youtube. The respirocyte has the same advantages as perfluorocarbon, but will work even if your heart stops. So you have that critical golden hour to get to a hospital with what would certainly otherwise be a fatal condition or injury. Of course by this point, we'd almost certainly have all sorts of other nanotechnology available probably making the whole need for such devices moot. Maybe respirocytes would be the "Po Boy" technology available to those folks who couldn't afford godlike status.

Whatever succeeds in the market place, the future of synthetic blood substitutes is going to save a tremendous numbe

This is interesting. but not wholly surprising. Bacteria exist in basically every part of the world, including areas even a "reasonable" person might find incredible. NASA clean rooms have turned up a lot of exotic, unique bacteria which defy common sense (like bacteria who live solely on aluminum IIRC). So, UV resistant bacteria in the stratosphere is nifty in that they confirmed it exists, but isn't revolutionary.

All kidding aside, women scientists are hot.

I don't know if it's because most of them were quiet overachievers growing up or what, but they are a lot of fun in bed.

As a plus, they tend to make for good conversation after. It's win-win.

Psst - if you're a guy and you feel like talking after sex, you're either not doing it right, or not long enough (but I repeat myself).

http://scienceline.org/2006/09/25/ask-wenner-sex/

Then there is the biochemistry of the orgasm itself. Research shows that during ejaculation, men release a cocktail of brain chemicals, including norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, nitric oxide (NO), and the hormone prolactin. The release of prolactin is linked to the feeling of sexual satisfaction, and it also mediates the recovery time that men are well aware ofthe time a guy must wait before giving it another go. Studies have also shown that men deficient in prolactin have faster recovery times.

Prolactin levels are naturally higher during sleep, and animals injected with the chemical become tired immediately. This suggests a strong link between prolactin and sleep, so its likely that the hormones release during orgasm causes men to feel sleepy.

(Side note: prolactin also explains why men are sleepier after intercourse than after masturbation. For unknown reasons, intercourse orgasms release four times more prolactin than masturbatory orgasms, according to a recent study.)

Oxytocin and vasopressin, two other chemicals released during orgasm, are also associated with sleep. Their release frequently accompanies that of melatonin, the primary hormone that regulates our body clocks. Oxytocin is also thought to reduce stress levels, which again could lead to relaxation and sleepiness