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"If he wants to address diversity in our field, he needs to look at those entering the program. If he wants more people in the job, help give them the proper educational background and other certifications required to enter the field. "

The affirmative action policies Jackson supports actually reduces the number of blacks who end up with engineering degrees.

Even when black students are interested in STEM careers, affirmative action puts them in a position where their white and Asian classmates are much better prepared and capable to handle difficult STEM classes. As a result they get poor grades, feel demoralized, and transfer to easier majors. This is called the "mismatch problem."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03...

Recently, economists from Duke studied the effects of Prop 209, comparing undergraduate graduation rates for blacks, Hispanics and American Indians before and after the ban. In a paper being considered for publication by The Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Duke economists conclude that mismatch effects are strongest for students in so-called STEM majors — science, technology, engineering and math. These subjects proceed in a more regimented way than the humanities, with each topic and class building on what came before. If you don’t properly learn one concept, it’s easier to get knocked off track.

The Duke economists say that lower-ranked schools in the University of California system are better at graduating minority students in STEM majors. For example, they conclude that had the bottom third of minority students at Berkeley who hoped to graduate with a STEM major gone to Santa Cruz instead, they would have been almost twice as likely to earn such a degree.

and

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sc...

More Evidence that Admissions Preferences Discourage Minority Students from Majoring in STEM

Recently Science Careers commented on Mismatch, a provocative and persuasive new book that examines the effects of giving large admissions preferences to minority college students. One of the unintended consequences of such measures, write authors Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., is to steer minority students away from majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This happens, they argue, because large preferences encourage students to attend colleges where their academic credentials place them toward the bottom of their college classes. Science majors, however, overwhelmingly come from the upper end of their college classes, regardless of where they go to college. Students admitted with large preferences--as many African American and Hispanic students are--are therefore deprived of the realistic opportunity to earn STEM degrees.

"The problem with affirmative action is it assumes that a given percent of every race is interested in x career or y school, but that just doesn't reflect reality one bit. "

It's not just this. Even when black students are interested in STEM careers, affirmative action puts them in a position where their white and Asian classmates are much better prepared and capable to handle difficult STEM classes. As a result they get poor grades, feel demoralized, and transfer to easier majors. This is called the "mismatch problem."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03...

Recently, economists from Duke studied the effects of Prop 209, comparing undergraduate graduation rates for blacks, Hispanics and American Indians before and after the ban. In a paper being considered for publication by The Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Duke economists conclude that mismatch effects are strongest for students in so-called STEM majors — science, technology, engineering and math. These subjects proceed in a more regimented way than the humanities, with each topic and class building on what came before. If you don’t properly learn one concept, it’s easier to get knocked off track.

The Duke economists say that lower-ranked schools in the University of California system are better at graduating minority students in STEM majors. For example, they conclude that had the bottom third of minority students at Berkeley who hoped to graduate with a STEM major gone to Santa Cruz instead, they would have been almost twice as likely to earn such a degree.

and

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/sc...

More Evidence that Admissions Preferences Discourage Minority Students from Majoring in STEM

Recently Science Careers commented on Mismatch, a provocative and persuasive new book that examines the effects of giving large admissions preferences to minority college students. One of the unintended consequences of such measures, write authors Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., is to steer minority students away from majoring in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This happens, they argue, because large preferences encourage students to attend colleges where their academic credentials place them toward the bottom of their college classes. Science majors, however, overwhelmingly come from the upper end of their college classes, regardless of where they go to college. Students admitted with large preferences--as many African American and Hispanic students are--are therefore deprived of the realistic opportunity to earn STEM degrees.

This was the old news...

Basically sifting through information gathered from older CMB detectors, they discovered a statistical B-mode in the data that could have come from gravitational wave that occurred during inflation, but the data was really too noisy to be sure.

The new news is they used a new detectors which are capable of making cleaner measurements to convince themselves that the detected B-mode was unlikely to come from gravitational lensing after the big-bang. The current evidence apparently is consistent with the B-mode coming from a gravitational waves that are predicted to occur during the inflationary period of the universe.

Vision works in the following. Take a stereoscopic picture. The two images give you depth information. You can use edge detection algorithms to determine what pixels belong together as an object (segmentation) and reconstruct a cardboard cutout view of the world. From each 2D cutout figure, the brain finds the closest matching known 3D object and constructs an internal 3D representation of the scene with information consisting of two things; the object and it's orientation relative to the person (distance, scale, rotation).

I get that, I work with 3D point clouds and stereo and RGBD sensors every day.

Now, you could replace the stereoscopic picture with the sound input. Then brain makes a closest match between the type of sound and known objects. Another method is to place an electrode grid on the tongue and a similar form of vision becomes possible.

I get that too. That is the idea and the claim, anyway. The point of my post was: The video posted with the ScienceMag article does not prove that this is what happens! The task shown could have been accomplished by memorizing the sounds and the descriptions given by the interviewer. That's still fairly impressive. But from the video, we do not know whether the participant actually does what the authors, and you, say he does – namely, actually recognizing and understanding the picture. As I said, the video is worthless.

In different terms, what the video shows is that the participant reproduces the classification on the training data. What's missing is the test data that the participant didn't use during training.

As I don't have access to the full article, I would like to know if anyone could tell us about whether the conclusion is at least supported from the actual data presented in the paper. It definitely is not supported from the video.

It mentioned in the sublinked article that PETA had actually provided for a research fellowship. That involves actually giving out money to promote research. A two pronged approach seems reasonable in theory: give money directly to research, but dangle a prize out there to attract attention to the goal and attract more money than you would have directly.

Lets be honest, if there's one thing PETA is very effective at, it's PR. If there's another thing PETA is good at, it's getting more money flowing.

Excuse for being anal, but - an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot who thinks he knows everything about fossilised poop? Something's wrong here.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://rspb.royalsocietypublis...

Just to be pedant, but hydrocodone (the active ingredient in The Fine Drug) is similar, but different from oxycodone, the active ingredient in Oxycontin, the long acting formulation.

The Big Deal about TFD is that it is the first pure hydrocodone product available (in the US at least). All other hydrocodone containing medications have been mixed with acetaminophen (paracetamol to you people that insist on driving on the wrong side of the road) or ibuprofen. The theory is that adding another drug with different analgesic properties increases the analgesic effect (true) and that 'adulterating' the opiate with another drug makes it harder to abuse since you will, at some point or another, die of liver failure (acetaminophen) or a GI bleed (ibuprofen) - which isn't true.

So, unleashing this drug, free from contaminating tylenol, will cause a massive uptick in hydrocodone addicts.

Which is probably not true. However, the need for long acting hydrocodone is limited at best. While there are people that can take hydrocodone and not oxycodone, you have several other long drugs in long acting formulations for chronic pain (fentanyl, morphine).

The drug WILL be popular among the abuser community because there are some people who want to keep their livers intact.

As has been described here, the current War on Drugs (TM, patent pending US Drug Enforcement Administration) is a total failure and a more rational approach to drug use is needed. But what do you expect from a country that has a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as well as a Drug Enforcement Administration. If you were naive to the US you might think these federal agencies were promoting these issues. Double plusungood.

For folks with access to Science, there is a timely article on this subject.

Standard policy. Nature have been doing this for some time. They state: authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers without undue qualifications. So have Cell Press and Science. I stopped searching at this point, but I'm sure other major journals do the same thing.

Thinkprogress points to a 0.79 degree increase in temperature

"average temperatures in and around the North Atlantic rose or fell by 10C or more in the course of a decade or two—a pattern that lasted for 70,000 years."

http://news.sciencemag.org/ear...

Just saying, that makes um the thinkprogress 0.79 degrees seem like nada.

The proposed law does not say WHO reproduces it, merely that someone MUST be able to reproduce the results. If the EPA can point to another, independent, study which reproduces the results of the first study, it meets those qualifications.

Indeed, most studies that can be reproduced can be reproduced from the published papers. It's just hard work and expensive, which is why it's rarely done. Demanding reproducibility is fine, but demanding actual reproduction (as proof of reproducibility) would kill most science-based initiatives cold. Note, in particular, another law proposed by Lamar Smith that would allow NSF funding only for research that is "not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal science agencies". Take the two together, and you have a requirement for reproduction, but deny funding to do the reproduction. Ooops - how convenient.

Since the NSF would be precluded from redoing the research, it would fall to private companies to do it. How very convenient indeed. You, sir, have just found the gator in the swamp. My hat is off to you.

The proposed law does not say WHO reproduces it, merely that someone MUST be able to reproduce the results. If the EPA can point to another, independent, study which reproduces the results of the first study, it meets those qualifications.

Scientific studies often cost significant amounts of money to produce - at least, they cost significant amounts of researcher time. Unless a study is extremely controversial or you expect to get very different results, few scientists will spend the time. There is minimal new knowledge to be gained, most journals rarely publish papers on successful reproductions, and a CV that says "I did the same as Williams, the same as Jones, and the same as Mayer, and got the same results in each case" is not a career starter for a scientist, either.

Indeed, most studies that can be reproduced can be reproduced from the published papers. It's just hard work and expensive, which is why it's rarely done. Demanding reproducibility is fine, but demanding actual reproduction (as proof of reproducibility) would kill most science-based initiatives cold. Note, in particular, another law proposed by Lamar Smith that would allow NSF funding only for research that is "not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal science agencies". Take the two together, and you have a requirement for reproduction, but deny funding to do the reproduction. Ooops - how convenient.

http://www.sciencemag.org/

Okay, so you're obviously not capable of agreeing that this evidence exists.

Thus, I think it is foolish to claim that this input and its effects can be determined completely merely by estimating the concentration of CO2 before the Great Dying and the concentration after the Great Dying, and drawing a line through those two points.

Only someone who's "deliberately ignorant" could think scientists were doing that after looking at the more than a dozen points in the carbon isotope excursion in Fig. 2 of Payne et al. 2010. I've already pointed out that Shen et al. 2011 resolved two distinct carbon isotope excursions, but there's no point in repeating this because people who are "deliberately ignorant" aren't even capable of agreeing that this evidence exists. To them there will only ever be just two points and a foolish line drawn between them, because there's no need or want to look any closer than this superficial analysis.

You may be interested to know that pale skin genes appeared in the European genome only as recently as 6000-12000 years ago. Or maybe not, as it seems you do not want your opinions messed with by fact.

Interestingly, as Homo sapiens appeared in Europe 40 000 years ago or longer, the thinking is that pale skin should have evolved much sooner to enable vitamin D synthesis from the lower UV levels found there.

It's an estimate with order of magnitude error right there in time and another significant error in CO2 quantity (with a ceiling of 2 PgC incidentally rather than the 1 PgC claimed in the article).

The quote from that review paper is a summary of references 54-56 which are Payne et al. 2010, Wignall 2011 and Shen et al. 2011. The quantities of carbon come from Fig. 3 in Payne et al. 2010, but the 20kyr timespan comes from Shen et al. 2011 where it only refers to the second carbon isotope excursion. The PgC/year range is a summary of all those references' PgC/year estimates, but with each using their own quantities and their own timespans to avoid mixing apples and oranges.

We also don't have a good idea what else was released, which might have been more lethal than the CO2 (for example, sulfates or fluorides).

A few sentences down in Honisch et al. 2012:

"Knoll et al.(59) inferred the preferential survival of taxa with anatomical and physiological features that should confer resilience to reduced carbonate saturation state and hypercapnia (high CO2 in blood) and preferential extinction of taxa that lacked these traits, such as reef builders (32)."

To be consistent with the fossil evidence in Knoll et al. 2007 (PDF), your "more lethal" extinction mechanism would have to have the same marine extinction pattern as that expected from a massive release of CO2. Also, the PETM doesn't have an obvious volcanic culprit but does have a carbon isotope excursion, rapid warming, and a similar (albeit smaller) marine extinction pattern.

Finally, it's worth noting that even if your assertion is complete and accurate, it would take at minimum a millennium for current rates of CO2 production and 13,000 PgC (the lower bound) to put enough CO2 in the atmosphere to match the impact of this extinction event. The upper bound increases that to over four millennia. We should be able to figure things out long before that happens.

Species adapt to climate change by migration and/or evolution, both of which have rate limits past which extinctions become more likely. In light of this, why should the total be more important than the rate?

What is the hurry? Sure, we don't want to run the situation out for a few millennia until we end up in a huge global extinction event. But we can figure things out in far less time than that.

Just suppose the national academies are right to say that we should try to limit global warming to "only" 2C. All else being equal, warming is proportional to cumulative CO2 emissions. Here are three different ways to achieve that. Notice that the longer we wait to address the CO2 problem, the steeper our emissions cuts will have to be.

http://news.sciencemag.org/arc...

Which is irrelevant to the argument we were making. Speleothems do not measure mean global temperature.

Just like a single fossil isn't sufficient support for evolution, global estimates require measurements at different locations.

Volcanos release a lot of other chemicals, some which are far nastier than CO2 and it may be those other chemicals which triggered the dire effects of the Permian-Triassic extinction event.

In both the end-Permian and PETM, increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide preceded rapid warming, which preceded extinctions. Volcanos release CO2 which warms the long term global climate and a lot of other chemicals which tend to cool the short-term climate.

This assertion is not based on evidence. Nobody was around during the end of the Permian to measure this and compare it to today. And I find it interesting how you prove my point by posting something so hysterical and unsubstantiated. Are you shilling for the Koch brothers?

You'll probably find some reason to dismiss page 1061 of Honisch et al. 2012, but my assertion is based on evidence. It's just based on evidence you don't like.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sit...

Who says he let his hair and beard grow long? What evidence from the skeleton would have led to this conclusion?

They found a selfie on a nearby fossilized cellphone.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sit...

Who says he let his hair and beard grow long? What evidence from the skeleton would have led to this conclusion?

Look, they found him with a "Cobal Programming in UNIX for Dummies" book. What more evidence do you need?

http://news.sciencemag.org/sit...

Who says he let his hair and beard grow long? What evidence from the skeleton would have led to this conclusion?

Good ol' science, the kind where we immediately imagine things in our own image (he types as he strokes his luxuriant beard.)

http://news.sciencemag.org/sit...

Who says he let his hair and beard grow long? What evidence from the skeleton would have led to this conclusion?

Can we skip the name calling in favor of some references, please?

So what do you want the deniers to be called? Gotta have some reference name.

Mann's initial investigation was regarding the infamous Hockey stick diagram.

There was broad and general support by the science community in the year's since. I'll include some citations of freely available work:

Really long url, so I provided a tinyurl

Stalagmite records http://tinyurl.com/m2yhtgl

Reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the last 11,300 years. http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...

Millenial Temperature Reconstruction. http://www.clim-past.net/3/591...

Borehole heat flux data. http://www.earth.lsa.umich.edu...

There is a lot more, but you might be able to do a little research after digesting this initial stuff.

After hackers stole the emails with the University of East Anglia, Penn State made two investigations of Mann. They cleared him of misconduct, but criticized him for sharing unpublished manuscripts.

Virginia Attorney Ken Cuccinelli, then Attorney General of Virginia (before this gets too contentious, yes, the Ken Cuccinelli that wants to make oral sex illegal) demanded that the University of Virginia release documentation of Mann's work via a Civill Investigation Demand.

The first demand was overruled by a judge. Cuccinelli revised his subpoena, and appealed to the State Supreme court. He lost there also, with the judgement that he had no authority to demand the work.

Note that Mann aided in the subsequent election efforts of Terry McCauliff, who was running against Cuccinelli in the 2013 Gubernatorial election.

Mann was investigated by the Office of the Inspector General of the National Science foundation in 2011, and exhonorated Mann of any professional misconduct.

http://www.science20.com/uploa...

At this juncture, I doubt that those who would deny AGW will accept any evidence, and would simply accuse Penn State and the National Science Foundation of corruption or worse. Note that there are many who likewise think of that University as a tool of the energy industry. Some interesting irony there.

Cuccinelli's failure to subpoena University of Virginia's records is probably the groundwork for claims that Mann refuses to share data with others. However, a pretty compelling case can be made that it was blatant politicizing of science.

Furthermore, Mann's campaigning for Cucchinelli no doubt really raised some hackles. Pretty much all out war. I suspect Mann would say he is just fighting back against those who have made it a mission to destroy him.

If you are a skeptic, why would you trust the propaganda source? The relevant search string was included: Pine Island Glacier. I know that I would do my own research if I already suspected a political conspiracy of alarmists misrepresenting actual risks in order to solicit funding and policy changes (see: War on Terror).

Finding this article took me less than five minutes using DuckDuckGo (not even Google).

It literally took me longer to write this comment than to verify the statements from the post you replied to. If you want to be intellectually lazy about your skepticism, then exercise some rigor with that skepticism and be less lazy.

"It's possible that both the AGW deniers and AGW alarmists are wrong. Climate change could be real, but caused by natural factors that are out of our control, the same ones that have caused ice ages and warm periods in the past when carbon outputs were nowhere near as high as they are now."

The problem with this is that it is exactly what many of those so-called AGW "deniers" have been saying all along. [Jane Q. Public]

Exactly what who's been saying all along? Aside from all your short term "cooling/recovery" trends, you've smeared paleoclimate studies while making these uncited claims about the paleoclimate:

NOBODY in their right minds has -- and I certainly have not -- been arguing that the globe has not been getting warmer! That is not the issue and never was. The globe has been trending warmer for the last 6,000 years! The data are clear. Someone would have to be an idiot or totally uninformed to make such a claim. [Jane Q. Public, 2007-10-24]

Not quite 0.74 degrees, but yes it has warmed. So what? The earth has been trending steadily warmer for the last 6,000 years!!! [Jane Q. Public, 2008-06-22]

The trend over 5 or 6 THOUSAND years has been warmer. [Jane Q. Public, 2008-06-22]

I do not disagree that the globe is warming. That would be denying facts... the earth has been trending warmer for over 6,000 years! [Jane Q. Public, 2008-06-22]

Trying to prove to me that the globe is warming was a pretty silly thing to do. I do not dispute that the earth has been getting warmer, and never did! It has been trending warmer for the last 6,000 years! [Jane Q. Public, 2009-04-18]

We know the earth has been warming. It has been doing so for approximately 6,000 years. [Lonny Eachus, 2009-07-02]

Certainly the globe has been warming... it has been trending warmer for thousands of years. [Jane Q. Public, 2010-02-03]

First, people with at least half a brain -- including in the U.S. -- know the climate is getting warmer. It has been trending warmer for roughly 6,000 years, industry or not. [Jane Q. Public, 2011-07-17]

Jane and Lonny Eachus are wrong. According to Marcott et al. 2013 (PDF), the world has actually been cooling for most of the last 6,000 years.

Back when I lived in DC (late 1990s) there were regular reports of exploding manholes ... with the best guess of the cause being a combination of gas leaks and electrical shorts. Of couse, in the report on the problem blamed PEPCO (electrical) not Washington Gas.

About 10 years ago, they had a solution -- install manholes with vent holes in them, so the gas pressure can't build up as easily. Of course, you instead get extra water underground, which can lead to faster corrosion of pipes.

Last year, when the methane levels were first reported, the estimate was 38 exploding manholes per year ... so I'm guessing the vented covers have been less than successful.

"A classic example is the British decision in World War II to allow German spies to continue gathering damaging intelligence for Hitler years after the spies’ identities were discovered" link

There were no spys allowed to freely operate prior to D-Day, they were all captured and utilized to feed the enemy false information. Reason being the British were reading the encrypted communications to the spies from Bletchley Park. link

I did some video analysis code a long time ago to track little beads sprinkled on a single muscle cell surface while and electric probe stimulated it (or caged ATP flashed released energy and it contracted. The beads moved with the surface and internal 'scaffolding' was modeled, etc. (Science publication: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/236/4807/1457.short ) This when Video capture was new and image libraries where (get_pixel_value(address) commands hand coded.) Loved it. But it has military applications..

That's as close as I would allow for moral reasons to military application, but manipulating a laser bean in 3D while tracking .. man, it's just a mater of scale and you have a targeting system and fire control. I'm still a little uncomfortable about it.. not that it would be used.

I considered some sorts of anti-drone device that would be DIY. I figure the right optics lens could allow 'inverted bowl shape' over the device to detect flying objects.. decide when to release a small 'missile' - just a really large 'estee type' rocket with a 'warhead' packed with a charge and ball-barrings or Paint (to cover optics on target,) or both.

Laser track object (find in sky and direct a laser in that direction) and rocket with laser filter quad light sensor to guide it to target. Head contains a 'flux magnetometer' which detects metal near and then detonate. Within the missile head is wrapped with coil for flux-gate, shape and size of coil will determine detonation distance, and add to the shrapnel.

This is 'off the shelf' stuff. The optics to cover the bowl above might be the most challenging part, it must be good enough optics to direct a narrow bean over it. I suppose to do it right a feedback system is needed. Mapping for accuracy step needed.

Still. Coding aside, it all stuff you can by or make with a basement shop. And the coding - well, it's the kind of challenge I use to slobber over..

Anyway. There's a DIY project for someone.. well, about 5 actually, but combined - drone defense.

Now, that is a weapon system that might be morally acceptable, except it could be used to take down a plane and would all sit nicely in the back of a pick-up. So even that application could be turned into an amoral killing machine or people. But so can a kitchen knife.

Damn - so interesting as to be a 'Moral Risk'. Stay far away - some battles are won by not doing them.

Oh, cancer is an evolutionary compromise of multi-cellular life? Yeah, right. It's a product of mutation, but it runs counter to reproductive fitness, and it's not like our bodies don't have immune systems which reject other foreign (differently mutated) cells, so, Checkmate, moron.

If cancer is so damn inherent in the very fabric of complex life then we probably wouldn't find any species on the planet that doesn't get cancer... Like Naked Mole Rats. Some studies I've seen suggest cancer has less to do with an evolution-wide compromise, and instead may have something to do with the fact we have live young -- Which isn't intrinsic to complex life. Compared to labor and live delivery this seems a bit of a back-asswards path; Probably a product of having too big of a brain to be as overcome with instinctual drives as is required for protecting a nest, but not a big enough brain to build artificial incubators with automated laser defense systems. Well, that and maybe an advantage to survive in colder climates, or migrate during gestation. Then again isn't there eggs in Antarctica -- Penguins, eh?

So, no. Cancer exists because our immune system isn't picky enough, you dolt. Just like we use gene therapy to cure extreme allergy "bubble boy" types when they're young, we'll likely eventually be able to fix up our immune system with a way to sick our own white blood cells on cancer, or cause our bodies to produce anti-cancer sugar in our cellular matrix like the naked mole-rats do.

So, yeah, it seems this fool is just ignorant of the very field they're researching. That's what happens when you over-specialize: You're likely to think your own studies are so damn important that you develop a penchant for making grandiose claims that seem moronic to everyone else even remotely in the know. When combined with a largely ignorant populace (who specialized in other fields) it's a breeding ground for this sort of stupidity.

The existence of GMOs have NOT boosted production in the slightest.

Tell that to the papaya farmers in Hawaii. Virus resistant GMO papaya saved the industry. Without GMOs, there would be no papayas on the Big Island. How's that for a yield gain?

Second, you completely ignore the also prevalent Bt crops, which while they have not had much of a yield impact in developed countries (which is no surprise since insecticides are readily available there) but have had noticeable impacts in developing countries like India.

Third, why do you pretend this is all about yield? It's not. You criticize herbicide tolerant crops, yet I don't see you proposing a better idea for weed control. Would you like to go back to harsher herbicides? Or maybe tilling the hell out of the soil? Besides economic benefits, there is also the benefits of no-till and replacing harsher herbicides. It is a perfect system? Nope, but I don't hear the anti-GMO crowd volunteering to weed a few million acres by hand.

This herbicide immunity, by the way, is an immunity being acquired by other "pest" plants which were the original target of the herbicide.

The first example of an herbicide resistant weed was in the 70's, so your argument has more to do with over-reliance on a single mode of action herbicide than genetic engineering. Surprise, evolution in the weed population works the same regardless of whether or not a transgene is present. It is telling that one of the best arguments against genetic engineering is 'we might lose some of the benefits it has provided.'

GMOs do not represent a world-saving technology.

No one is saying they are, but to point that out is like saying that vaccines won't cure everything, therefore they are bad. That's an asinine argument. As the case of papaya in Hawai'i and Bt crops in Asia & South America, while they are no panacea they can indeed help.

What they represent is a danger to the world's food supply not only because it comes under control of a small collection of companies,

The consolidation of seed companies has been going on for a very long time. Just because you didn't start paying attention until GMOs showed up doesn't mean GMOs did it. Correlation, not causation.

but because it reduces the varieties of plants available. In the event a disease develops to wipe out these GMOs, there may be extreme starvation and human suffering due to the continual growth of GMO use.

Please explain how the presence of a transgene is reducing the varieties of crops out there. you are confusing the selection of genes, aka conventional breeding, with the insertion of a small number of genes. They are very different. Genetic monoculture is caused by having a lot of similar genetics, not from having a single gene inserted. Now, to be fair, over relying on a single inserted transgene can and has resulting in pests overcoming the resistance, but the same thing has happened in with conventional systems, from hessian fly overcoming the conventionally bred resistance in wheat to late blight overcoming tomato resistance, to the fall of the Gros Michael banana. You are taking a basic agricultural issue completely out of context.

Please shill for Monsanto elsewhere.

Ah, the big shill gambit. Not just for anti-vaxxers anymore!

Probably not. Surveys

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/origins/2009/07/evolution-theory-and-religious.html

say that 73% of adults in SA have not heard of Charles Darwin.

That doesn't mean that they believe in creationism - from the same link: 42% of South Africans "accepted the theory of evolution as scientifically founded". Not bad for a backwards country where 90% of the people believe in the voodoo of witchdoctors.

To further put things in perspective, note that only 41.7% (wikipedia link) of the South African population has completed high school, but 42% accept the theory of evolution, while in the first world country of the USofA you have 85% of the population who have completed high-school but only 60% accept the theory of evolution. This points to a failing in the latter's educational system and a success in the former's.

IOW, even third-world countries are doing better than the USA when it comes to biology classes, even voodoo believing, uneducated, poor and mostly superstitious folk from Africa have accepted evolution - why is the USA still so behind?

Probably not. Surveys

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/origins/2009/07/evolution-theory-and-religious.html

say that 73% of adults in SA have not heard of Charles Darwin.

But how does that explain the pretty big swings in temperature from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age? A few hundred years separate the two.

It doesn't, but that's because on a global scale there were no big swings in overall global temperature during the medieval warm period. The medieval warm period appears to be, based on the best climate evidence, a period of relatively small warming consistent with a small fluctuation in global temperature that was magnified locally in certain areas such as northern Europe.

The medieval warm period was actually a global event. It was also not just Northern Europe but China as well, and Michael Mann (of hockey-stick fame) confirms it was a global event.

Please read posts you reply to. I specifically state, in the quote above, that best evidence suggests the medieval warming period was global event, but not a large one - its effects were amplified in certain areas such as northern Europe.

Moreover the very paper you link to completely negates your next point:

The point is that rapid changes in climate - over the span of decades or a century or two - have happened in the recent past, and continue to do so. Is our current temperature one of these natural rapid changes, or driven by man? Given that we've seen alternate periods of warming and cooling for several decades each, in the last century, I would suggest that a definitive answer one way or another cannot yet be drawn.

You can't quote the paper above, which provides strong evidence that mid-oceanic warming is fifteen times faster than at any time in the last 10,000 years, to support the notion that the medieval warming period was a global event (which it seems to be, but not a dramatic one) and completely ignore its conclusion that oceanic warming is occurring faster than at any point in the last 10,000 years completely overriding the higher variations in regional surface temperatures and say the jury is still out. That's intellectual dishonesty.

We know the PDO, IPO and NAO, and AMO have cycles on the order of 30 to 60 years, and extrapolating trends from an accurate data set of less than 1 cycle (which is what we are trying to do; we have accurate, satellite based records for just over 35 years [wikipedia.org]) is really not a wise thing to do.

How can you conclude the medieval warming period was a global event, when we only have accurate data for the last 35 years? One of the signs of dishonest skepticism is when it uses a different standard by which to judge contradictory evidence and supporting evidence. If we don't have enough evidence to conclude man-made global warming is occurring, we don't have enough evidence to conclude there was any sort of climatic event during the medieval warm period. It should just be a curious set of uninteresting anecdotes.

You are talking about redirecting amounts of energy in a wall of water than may be 10-20 feet high or more, yet it comes in as a solid wave and the elevation stays at that height causing water to move inland extremely fast for a long time.

It would be easy to calculate what amount of energy that would be in a width of a town: E = .5 * mass x v^2. You are talking about amounts of energy that would dwarf anything a major multi-unit power plant could produce.

Some scientists working with this sort of approach seem to think there is some potential for handling seismic energy.

How to Repel an Earthquake

"It's very cool stuff," says Ulf Leonhardt, a theoretical physicist at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom who was not involved with the study. "It's a step toward manipulating seismic waves and done in a genius way." ...

The scientists created their jumbo-sized metamaterial in August 2012 by drilling holes in a thick bed of silt and clay near the city of Grenoble in the French Alps. The cylindrical holes stretched down about 5 meters into the earth, but were also skinny, only 32 centimeters wide. They were arranged in a rectangular grid of three rows of 10 holes each. The holes changed the density and stiffness of the earth and, thus, the speed and direction of vibrations rippling through the ground, forming a seismic metamaterial. The scientists then shook the earth on one side of the grid using a vibrating soil-compacting machine that they had placed underground. That machine created 50 seismic surface waves per second with a wavelength of 1.56 meters—about the same as the distance between the holes, though shorter than typical wavelengths from earthquakes.

Sensors placed throughout the site showed that the waves couldn't get past the grid of holes, bouncing off of it instead, the researchers report in a paper posted on the arXiv online preprint server. The waves just barely got by the second row of holes and couldn't even touch the third row, leaving the ground on the other side unshaken.

I saw these items that you might find interesting.

How to Repel an Earthquake
How to prevent earthquake damage: make buildings invisible
Seismic Metamaterials Could Cloak Dams and Power Stations

But how does that explain the pretty big swings in temperature from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age? A few hundred years separate the two.

It doesn't, but that's because on a global scale there were no big swings in overall global temperature during the medieval warm period. The medieval warm period appears to be, based on the best climate evidence, a period of relatively small warming consistent with a small fluctuation in global temperature that was magnified locally in certain areas such as northern Europe.

The medieval warm period was actually a global event. It was also not just Northern Europe but China as well, and Michael Mann (of hockey-stick fame) confirms it was a global event.

Its worth noting that even the medieval warming period took place over centuries. There are very few things that can change global temperatures on a timescale of decades.

The change from the medieval warm period to the little ice age occurred over the span of 200 years. The MWP is generally considered as ending in 1250 AD; the Little Ice Age start has been put as early as 1350 AD, just 1 century later.

The point is that rapid changes in climate - over the span of decades or a century or two - have happened in the recent past, and continue to do so. Is our current temperature one of these natural rapid changes, or driven by man? Given that we've seen alternate periods of warming and cooling for several decades each, in the last century, I would suggest that a definitive answer one way or another cannot yet be drawn. We know the PDO, IPO and NAO, and AMO have cycles on the order of 30 to 60 years, and extrapolating trends from an accurate data set of less than 1 cycle (which is what we are trying to do; we have accurate, satellite based records for just over 35 years) is really not a wise thing to do.

Although there has long been a connection between math and physics, as people dig further into the math they are finding some unexpected things, and ways to better understand, simplify, or extend the equations.

Mathematicians Link Knot Theory to Physics
A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics

There are a number of seemingly promising developments out there that are sharpening the investigative tools as well as providing interesting new lines of investigation, as well as new data to chew on.

Spooky Connection: Wormholes and the Quantum World
Physicists Create Quantum Link Between Photons That Don't Exist at the Same Time
Schrodinger’s ‘Kitten’? Large-Scale Quantum Entanglement Achieved By Two Physics Labs

String theorists squeeze nine dimensions into three
New work gives credence to theory of universe as a hologram

Now we are developing a growing understanding of the interplay between biology and physics.

Quantum biology: Do weird physics effects abound in nature?

Who knows where things may lead next? Of course people should be careful in performing experiments.

Collapse of the universe is closer than ever before

"Common conception" isn't always fact based, either. In fact, that is a primary basis for logical fallacy- ad populem. I'm not sure how you got voted up for invoking one fallacy while using another, but that is how fallacies work in rhetorical discourse. Nice job on the example!

Ron Paul would eliminate NIST. If you don't know how NIST is important to running the Internet, then go look it up on Google- "NIST time servers"- critical to shipping, flying, and not having trains crash into each other. He would also defund NOAA, which means that cities would lose the kind of weather prediction that could result in millions dead without the correct advance warning (Katrina, Sandy, etc). He also would axe NIH, NSF, and NASA. In my opinion, any US citizen who values America's technological edge over the rest of the world should shun Ron Paul.

List of fallacies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies#Faulty_generalizations

For those who don't remember what Ron Paul has promised in the past, from this very site:
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/10/20/1541224/ron-paul-suggests-axing-5-us-federal-departments-and-budgets

For those who are simply going to go to the FTA from /., not read the linked article, and cherry pick the comments:
http://news.sciencemag.org/2011/10/ron-paul-would-erase-billions-research-spending?ref=hp

*List of links for the motivationally challenged

One of the strangest things about the hexagon is that other gas giants don't see to have anything like it. And it rotates with the same period as Saturn's natural radio emissions, which is not the period of rotation of Saturn itself. See http://www.sciencemag.org/content/247/4947/1206. Also, relevant SMBC: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1930.

There's already a good lead that amino acid supplementation may cure a certain rare form of autism, but there are many different causes. It's important to note that the study wasn't done on humans (research ongoing), and the type presents with intellectual disability (retardation) and epilepsy.

So the above doesn't actually treat "autism", it treats certain debilitating aspects of it. The personality nuances may still be intact after treatment, we don't know for sure yet.

In the study we're discussing now, "autism-like" was a good choice of words. We're not actually certain the mice had autism: they simply displayed symptoms that scientists concluded were autistic.

In the end autism isn't studied enough to make any definite conclusions about anything. On a more philosophical note, however, imagine if there were an introvert vaccine that turned introverts into extroverts. Perhaps we're closing in on a point where we can alter people's personalities, which has some wide implications for the penal and mental health systems.

Can we say arsenic in DNA?
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6034/1163

It was only a few years ago, but I guess it has already left the public memory. A group of scientists rush to a hasty conclusion because they want to make a big splash. Science publishes it because they like controversy. A large flurry of criticism from the scientific community, but ultimately a number of papers get published refuting the original findings. We can ask the question...should it have been published? A lot of people think no, but it is an illustration of the scientific process.

Sometimes bad science gets through peer review. Sometimes the science is not particularly bad, but the experimental design was missing something. Maybe they had an impurity in one of their reagents that they weren't looking for. Lots of incomplete or just outright wrong studies pass peer review and get published. But this is something the scientific community accepts as a part of the process. If you strongly disagree or suspect the conclusions of an article, do the experiments and publish a counter-study. Otherwise, you are free to make a lot of noise and be annoying, but then you might go the way of James Watson.

No, you are ignorantly believing headline hype. That "breakeven" event actually was 1.8 MegaJoules of energy causing 1.4 kilojoles of energy to be released. in other words, 0.0077 the energy of input. look it up -> http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2013/10/fusion-breakthrough-nif-uh-not-really-%E2%80%A6

Moreover, also in that article, DT fusion produces alpha particle and neutrons. Only the alpha would be blocked by tinfoil you imagine would shield. the neutron field is quite dangerous. All working fusor types make neutrons, the aneutronic boron-hydrogen or lithium reactor is quite out of reach of current technology

Why yes, neutrinos have been detected. The relevant paper is this: C. L Cowan Jr., F. Reines, F. B. Harrison, H. W. Kruse, A. D McGuire (July 20, 1956). "Detection of the Free Neutrino: a Confirmation". Science 124 (3212): 103â"4. Note the date. Frederick Reines won the 1995 Nobel Prize for these experiments that established the existence of the neutrino.

It's hard to say that they're indirect detections. How do we even detect something like an electron? By the fundamental forces like electromagnetism, which is no different in principle from the methods used to detect neutrinos, which work by weak nuclear force interactions. The trouble is that neutrinos are affected only by gravity and the weak nuclear force (making them an example of a dark matter WIMP), so detecting them is rather hard, given that the forces involved are so weak.

I can indeed. Though gas lagged wind last year. The point is that wind and solar are in the running, nuclear and coal are not. What do you suppose happens to natural gas infrastructure when solar panels come in a $0.15/Watt? http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2013/09/flat-out-major-advance-emerging-solar-cell-technology

Methane produced from hydrolysis and the Sabatier reaction will be cheaper than gas from the ground. The infrastructure will be re-purposed to renewable energy.

This is sort of amusing since PopSci decided to stop having comments. They did so because of evidence that comments really are a net negative. See http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6115/40.summary?sid=9b37fd35-5bb4-4bbe-89e7-b1054f5ecdd1 and http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/popular-science-ends-reader-comments--says-practice-is-bad-for-science-002245622.html.

Ok.

First of all: it's been debunked:

http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/section-1/1-2-gm-tomatoes-proven-safe/

1. No real differences were seen between groups of animals in the study. Contrary to Smith’s claims, expert pathologists stated that mild gastric erosions were seen at similar levels in both GM and non-GM fed rats (European Commission 2000, FDA 1994).

2. There is no evidence of animal deaths. The numbers and details given by Smith about rats fatalities appear to be factually incorrect, Smith may have confused the words necrosis and dead cells with animal deaths. Careful reading reveals that the regulatory record does not mention any animal deaths which surely would have been of concern had they occurred.*

Second of all: there's nothing about feeding pigs GM food in that paper.

Finally, the publisher of that article (Bentham Open) is on Beall's list of predatory publishers which charge authors to publish their papers without actually conducting any peer review to speak of. If you heard about the recent sting on predatory journals the other week*, the Open Neutraceutical Journal's sister publication, The Open Bioactive Compounds Journal, was quite willing to publish an utterly bogus cancer article, one constructed to be obviously fake to anyone with experience in the field.

With sections titles that say "GENETICALLYY MODIFIED ANIMALS AND HUMAN NUTRITION" I don't think they spend anything on copy editing either.

*Who's Afraid of Peer Review?

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full

What a load of utter tripe. Antarctic ice sheet gains exceed losses

That was a workshop based on preliminary results, here's the final research paper from the same scientist:

We combined an ensemble of satellite altimetry, interferometry, and gravimetry data sets using common geographical regions, time intervals, and models of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment to estimate the mass balance of Earth’s polar ice sheets. We find that there is good agreement between different satellite methods—especially in Greenland and West Antarctica—and that combining satellite data sets leads to greater certainty. Between 1992 and 2011, the ice sheets of Greenland, East Antarctica, West Antarctica, and the Antarctic Peninsula changed in mass by –142 ± 49, +14 ± 43, –65 ± 26, and –20 ± 14 gigatonnes year1, respectively. Since 1992, the polar ice sheets have contributed, on average, 0.59 ± 0.20 millimeter year1 to the rate of global sea-level rise.

Note the total is -213 ± 142.

Listen, here's the deal: You lost. Your narrative of catastrophic climate change due to man emitting Co2 into the atmosphere is a busted flush.

I wish it were that easy.

One of the papers referenced by Joanne Nova (the Zwally) was actually just a workshop presentation of some preliminary results. Zwally went on to co-author a paper "A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance" which indicated that Antarctica is most likely losing mass.

In my experience, Skeptical Science has some experts on there who are willing to discuss the science in detail with sceptics as long as they avoid politics and sloganeering. I am not familiar with Joanne Nova but she appears to have no relevant experience in climatology. I am not sure why your link is supposed to be better than the Skeptical Science one.

Science and AAAS (of which I'm presently ashamed to be a member) should be blasted for publishing this tripe. It needs to be retracted, immediately. If they want to have the slightest shred of credibility here, they should at least conduct scientifically rigorous stings.

I also doubt that they adhered to their own guidelines for Human research studies:

Informed consent must be obtained for studies on humans after the nature and possible consequences of the studies were explained. All research on humans must have IRB approval.

Check out Dr. Takahashi's work at UT-Austin; a good one behind a paywall is Temperature as a Universal Resetting Cue for Mammalian Circadian Oscillators. Among other things, his group has investigated a variety of timing-dependent tissues(liver cells, neurons, stomach cells) and whether or not temperature could serve as a temporal resetting cue(the answer in many cases is yes).

From TFA:"Two papers published today present the first evidence for clocks independent of the circadian one:"

Plenty of people have been doing non-circadian clock work for years; I briefly worked in such a lab that had been investigating food- and sex-based timing mechanisms, but the non-circadian clock idea is at least as old as the seventies.[1][2]

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/197/4301/398?ijkey=759219d8ce9c087620c8d8237098ff5956eeb489&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
[2] http://jbr.sagepub.com/content/17/4/284?ijkey=4a9dd94e238a2aa60198739e7ea26d75ecdd3b5c&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha