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Science 30 June 2006:
The Ant Odometer: Stepping on Stilts and Stumps
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/312/5782/1965

And here's the original /. story from 2006
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/30/006245

That is, fish farming uses more fish than it creates, thereby exacerbating the chronic overfishing problems that plague the seas.

Not to mention that fish farming can cause outbreaks of parasites or disease that spread to the wild and therefore do more harm than good when it comes to conserving the wild population. A good example of this is salmon lice from farmed fish killing wild salmon.

I haven't done enough research on Alzheimer's to support the link between the two, but the destruction of dopamine-producing cells in Parkinson's surely has an effect on long-term memory.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5943/1017

A lack of dopamine affects other cognitive functions, so I can imagine seeing similar behavioural effects as one sees in Alzheimer's, but I'm not aware of Alzheimer's characteristic loss of neurons and synapses in Parkinson's disease. So the link between them seems a bit shady to me.

I'm not so sure "neutralizing" this kinase-C will result in any miracle cures, as the protein happens to have a lot of other uses in the body, per wikipedia:

First of all, there isn't just one Protein Kinase C. There are a number of different versions with different jobs. Hence the list of the various isozymes in the article. The one in question is Protein Kinase C delta (PKC), and is NOT covered in the wikipedia article.

PKC mediates apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in certain dopamine producing neurons. By blocking the enzyme, you can prevent the apoptosis. Reading some of Dr. Kanthasamy's papers, it's clear that he's already found some agents that do this in animal models. This is, of course, a long way from human trials (10 years if things go well, I believe is what he said in the article). But this is very promising avenue of research.

What I can't figure out is why this is recent news. Dr. Kanthasamy has clearly been following this line of research for a few years. There's a 2007 paper entitled Neuroprotective Effect of Protein Kinase C{delta} Inhibitor Rottlerin in Cell Culture and Animal Models of Parkinson's Disease, so clearly he had already connected PKC with PD and was already investigating agents to block it.

"The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator."

I've seen this before. On one side we have a huge and expensive piece of machinery, bent on destroying a planet, using a high energy beam. On the other side we have our hero, cleverly dropping his projectile into the right spot, being able to cripple the machine.

Here is the abstract.

If it is not real then there's nothing to debate. So that can not be the real debate. The real debate is what to do, if anything, if it is real.

it seems to be that warmer weather would increase crop yield, right?

Yea, we need more poison ivy. Meanwhile some crop yields are lower with higher levels of CO2.

Falcon

Increasing information is trivially easy. DNA sequence before mutation: AAAAATTTTT but after mutation AAAAATTTTG. Blammo you've increased the information. As for macroevolution it's happened and the evidence that it has happened in the past increases constantly. For instance, the monumental studies on Ardipethecus ramidus that have been in every single news source in the industrialized world recently. The latest discovery in human evolution, joining a huge and growing collection.

I've been reading creationist pamphlets for nearly 20 years--a perverse hobby of mine. Along with tortured logic, profound ignorance of the subject material, quotemining and other intellectual dishonesty, one of the greatest commonalities in creationist writing is projection, vividly demonstrated in your post.

It would be like claiming that the thermostat in your house is slowly increasing the temperature in your room so therefore there's no harm in raising the thermostat further.

But I don't see any harm in that. I may actually like a 1 degree annual average increase. Possibly improve my comfort, and possibly save me some money if spaced correctly (when considering the air conditioning). Thanks for the idea.

Well, AGW is raising sea levels and drying up the Tibetan plateau, which is already causing much hardship in places like Bangladesh. But I understand - they are not Mericans, so they don't count. But why don't you go check out the impact of AGW on forest fires in the western US? It turns out that increases in fires are not just due to bad forest management by the evil guvmint (who ignored what all the nice lumber companies kept telling them) but are also being exacerbated by earlier spring melts

I wish journalists would be more diligent about actually citing the relevant paper from which the news releases are derived. If it is on the web, is it *that* hard for people to stick a link in there?

Anyhow, I haven't read the paper because I can't get the full article yet, but if some of the recovery they are interpreting after the Cretaceous is related to dinoflagellates (which can be detected as dinosteranes in organic geochemistry work), it wouldn't be surprising that they bounced back fairly quickly: A) many of them form highly resistant cysts as part of their life cycle, and those cysts can survive for years before "hatching" and going back to business as usual, B) many dinoflagellates are heterotrophic or mixotrophic -- i.e. they eat things or they eat things at the same time as using photosynthesis. As a result they could probably survive better than many other planktonic "algae" that are exclusively autotrophs (i.e. photosynthetic). This expectation is confirmed to some extent by the observation of relatively few dinoflagellate extinctions across the K/T boundary compared to many other planktonic organisms.

It's. Not. About. British. Racial. Purity. Not all societies are as heterogeneous. This is not a test for "British" ancestry. We're a nation of bastards. Geneticists understand this.

This is a test so that when some dark avised Johnny Foreigner gets scraped off the bottom of a lorry and claims to be a political refugee from Outer Warzoneistan, the border gestapo can test them and say "Funny - you seem to be of Inner Spongistanian ancestry. Want to change your story?"

Ah, I see. It's not about assuming British racial purity, that's silly and ridiculous because geneticists say it is. It's about assuming racial purity of other nations, because that's not silly or ridiculous, even though geneticists say it.

Yes thank you, you made it very easy to understand how stupid this is.

It seems that the normal state of affairs for our planet is an ice age.

Normal over the last few million years (modulo some brief interglacials like we're in now). It has had greenhouse periods in the past, too (e.g. here).

The increase in our greenhouse gases has REVERSED a centuries long cooling trend that over the centuries forced the vikings to abandon greenland, which 1000 years ago was warmer than it is today.

Greenhouse gases didn't end the Little Ice Age. That was mostly due to other natural effects, such as multi-century changes in solar output and volcanic activity, although greenhouse gases could have contributed a bit to the tail end of that. Atmospheric CO2 has been increasing since about 1850 or so, but didn't really become a major climate driver until around the mid-20th century.

Has anyone considered the idea that the greenhouse effect may help us avoid the next ice age?

Yes, but it takes many thousands of years to descend into a glacial period. If you're really concerned about preventing that, you'd want us to save our fossil fuels for later, when we need them, instead of using them all up now, when we don't. We're emitting them at a far greater rate than is necessary to stave off the next glacial period, even if one were due now, which it may well not be.

Global warming will open up vast areas of canada, siberia, and perhaps antarctica for human settlement.

It will also make a lot of areas less habitable. And just because more areas become habitable doesn't mean it's feasible to settle them. The people who are going to need to move the most will probably be in tropical developing countries. Is Russia going to allow them to resettle into new barely-habitable frozen Siberia, will they want to go, will they be able to afford to go, and can the land support them? Former permafrost doesn't make great agricultural soil.

This larger temperate area would greatly offset the loss of land area due to rising sea waters.

Many of the world's great cities are on the coast. I don't know that rebuilding New York City in Siberia would be an even trade. (Ok, slightly hyperbolic here, but you get the point.)

Technology and advances in water purification may allow areas affected by desertification to be reclaimed.

I think it would be quite expensive to expect "water purification" to compensate for global changes in precipitation patterns.

Climate change is coming, our earth has never had and never will have a stable climate. The quest is what type of climate change do we want?

Not too much, and not too fast.

Why is this modded up? It's not accurate. The highest concentration they've found so far is at most 1000 ppm. That's the *highest* they've found, and that's toward the poles. Now, they're *speculating* that it might be accumulating in deposits in polar craters, but they have found no such deposits yet (and previous attempts to find such deposits have failed).

Nice selective quote, the sentance that precedes it was "...it's a political thing on both sides, the left have their 'truthers' and the right have their 'birthers' both as equally bat-shit crazy".

Presumably for your own political reasons you chose to ignore that and start into a rant about how the right are acting rationally and the left are bat-shit crazy. Then you go on to dissmiss Hansen because you don't trust him. That right there my friend is called arguing from authority and is no different to the creationist habit of calling people "Darwinists" in an effort to make the argument about choosing between God's authority and Darwin's authority (neither of which actually exist in any tangible form).

Besides, if Hansen is a liar and a cheat, how do you explain "alarmist" articles such as this one in Nature or this list of similar articles in Science, are they all part of the left-wing "cosensus" conspiracy? Do you really belive that they all respect Hansen because he is the second in command behind Gore in their conspiracy, or is it because your politics won't allow to consider that they might actually respect him because his predictions have been remarkably **accurate?

"...it is HONEST to disregard the word of someone who's been caught altering data to suit his conclusions time and again".

Yes, lying is dishonest, so why are you clinging on to your beliefs by inventing/repeating lies about Hansen? And why do lie to yourself by ignoring the mountain of data, observations, experiments, and predictions that do not suit your conclusions? Are you paid to make such "grassroot" comments? Or are you really gullible enough to fall for the anti-science conspiracy theories of less rationalright wing think tankslobbyists?

**A selction of Hansens accurate predictions, I belive the first four were made in his now famous 1988(?) testimony to the senate...
# - Cooling stratosphere. - observed by sattelite and used by (amoung others) Bob Carter to confuse people.
# - More warming over land and ice - observed
# - More warming over poles - observed, the phenomena is now known as Polar Amplification .
# - More warming in the winter - observed (IPCC 2007).
# - Rapid disintergration of Artic sea ice - observed (NSIDC,WMO,NOAA,ect).

You would think people who call themselves geeks would point out that Hansen made all those predictions using the much maligned computer models rather than poo-pooing the whole idea of models, as is often the case here on slashdot. I have argued with thousands of people like you over the last decade or so, over that time people with your opinion on AGW have shrunk dramatically due solely to the overwhelming weight of the evidence.

"look at a major problem in the medical world today."

Good idea!

I agree some drug companies attempt to abuse the scientific process even going to extremes such as publishing their own journals through front groups. They use the same disinformation methods as the tabacco industry uses for it's propoganda, which also happens to be identical to the disinformation methods that the fossil fuel companies are (successfully) using on you. If you were alive duri

Will it drop a spacecraft in your lap? Heck no! Are these technologies and those of the future likely materially improve the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of manned spacecraft on multiyear (or even multidecadal) missions? Big time.

I think this is at least one of the Science articles to which the post (almost) refers.

That's one, the other is here.

I think this is at least one of the Science articles to which the post (almost) refers.

That's one, the other is here.

From one of the articles:

The spin ice state is argued to be well-described by networks of aligned dipoles resembling solenoidal tubesâ"classical, and observable, versions of a Dirac string. Where these tubes end, the resulting defect looks like a magnetic monopole.

They've managed to create the microscopic equivalent of a long skinny magnet or a long bendy solenoid: a set of dipoles aligned end-to-end, which acts just like a string with two "monopoles" at the ends.

While this is an interesting microscopic state of matter, from the "discovering monopoles" point of view it doesn't seem fundamentally different than the macroscopic description of magnet "poles" that has been well understood for over a century (and observed for a lot longer than that). I call hype.

I think this is at least one of the Science articles to which the post (almost) refers.

I found some linked from this writeup. It's a neat sound, one I'm tempted to sample and throw into music, but then again I say that after hearing almost anything.

For anyone who wants the original paper, published in Science today, it may be found here. The abstract is free.

My argument against AGW "science" is that it is not science for the reason that it makes no attempt to connect the models to reality. That is an argument, and the argument that I made. So I have not and do not claim that I don't have to make any argument against it.

You really think you have some special insight that the entire scientific establishment does not. That sounds quite psychotic.

I have made my argument, and you have yet to refute it.

You have not made an argument at all, but merely asserted that extant science does not meet your personal standards of epistemology - a term of which I suspect you know next to nothing.

Found the article here. 928 peer reviewed articles for AGW, and zero against.

zero is ten less than ten.

There ain't no skeptics who actually engage in the scientific process through peer review journals. Instead they concentrate on the media, and policy makers, in the hope of, and I quote a leeked memo:

"reposition global warming as theory (not fact)."

That's the position you're trying to defend.

A lot of creatures in the ocean do that, usually to startle or distract whatever is chasing them. That wasn't what was so special about it. Most luminous organisms in the ocean glow blue; these glow green, and are rare in that respect (at least in the ocean, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxfire_(bioluminescence) ). The original publication ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5943/964 ) was only claiming that they found several new species in the deep sea that were unrelated to known organisms. Of course, they have this media-friendly property that they release glowing 'bombs'.

Also, yes, whoever sees it first gets to name it - whatever they want. Obviously this can lead to much silliness.

... no model takes clouds into account.

Actually, all models take clouds into account. Which journal article led you to this conclusion? I've discussed this issue in the comments and linked to a new paper describing recent improvements to models of clouds.

I do not have seen any attempt of applying models to past conditions where CO2 concentration was higher than today ... I have read your article, and it is not convincing. Especially, the way you insist that the model should be applyied to recent time only is not sound: a numerical model should be tested in as much conditions as possible, especially for other input that the ones that have been used to calibrate it!!!

Because, as I state in a popup on the words "very slightly" in the third paragraph of the article, there are so many changes to the Earth over such long periods of geological time (you have to go back tens of millions of years to see higher CO2 concentrations) that the dynamical models wouldn't be expected to apply. Plus, proxy data are unreliable at such timescales, so we're stuck with "recent" data like the last 650,000 years from EPICA.

models predictions seems much better in the 1990-2000 region than in 2000-2010, but adjustable parameters were tuned to fit 1990-2000 data...not a good sign for a numerical model...

Huh? You're not under the impression that climate models are empirical models, are you?

... cyclic variation of solar power is taken into account, but other effects on cloud formations are not (not surprising, as cloud are not taken into account anyway). But recent studies suggest that the main effect of solar cycles is linked to magnetic effects, not incoming solar radiation.

That's because those other effects have been shown to be very small. See 7 (b) in the index: "Cosmic rays are responsible for global warming." If you've found evidence contradicting these papers, please let us know.

much more emphasis (as in your article) to positive feedback effects than negative one. In fact, positive feedback is set at the stability limit: a little bit more and the system would be instable and the climate we had before industrialisation would simply not have been possible, you would have had a runaway warming or cooling.

I've explicitly addressed this point. The point is that feedback effects act on different time scales, and our forcing is geologically very rapid.

And man produced CO2 is just the same as natural CO2, any attempt to spearate the two (one have a greater effect that the other???) is highly suspect.

I didn't mean that man-made CO2 has a greater effect, just that feedback CO2 appears after the temperature rises, not before. Therefore the recent CO2 rise is anthropogenic, and we should expect the natural feedback CO2 (observed in Vostok) to add to it.

In fact, I think many reader objections in your article are valid, and you seem to agree as you do not really debunk the well formulated ones...

For instance? (I've got my own research distracting me, so I don't always have time to answer each and every question, but I've tried really hard to answer all the scientific questions that people have posed. I'd l

We don't know that we should be heading for a long-term cooling now. We could remain in an interglacial for 50,000 years (e.g. here).

The "Incredible Mind" isn't about neuroscience at all. It's about a 50 year old argument between philosophers and AI programers. I think Nagel has always had the best way of describing the problem, here's a quote that the "Incredibe Mind" supports from Nagel, 1993:

"On the other hand the defining features of mental states and events, features like their intentionality, their subjectivity, and their experiential quality, seem not to be comprehensible in terms of the physical operations of the organism. This is not just because we have not accumulated enough empirical evidence: the problem is theoretical."

The quote nicely demonstrates how disconnected the theory of mind is with actual neuroscience. You see there is a large problem with his statement. All three of those 'defining features' have been proven empirically to be caused by physical operations of the brain.

The one we understand the least is the last one mentioned, "experiential quality", however we also have known empirically that it is caused by actions of the brain for the longest time. Basically from the very earliest studies of perception, it has universally been found that changes to the brain cause changes in experience. Stimulate a certain portion of the brain and it will CAUSE a visual experience. Stimulate a different part of the brain and it will CAUSE a auditory experience. Conversely, if we deactivate a portion of cortex, we will PREVENT an experience of the appropriate type. While we do not know the full extent of the mechanism of this experience, it is without doubt able to be substantiated with a purely physical cause.

The other two are a bit trickier to prove, but the sum total of evidence has pointed in this way for a long time. We are lucky that a recent paper shows that "intentionality" and "subjectivity" have physical causes quite neatly. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;324/5928/811 . Basically, stimulation of particular regions of the brain can cause intention, and even the subjective belief of action without the action occurring, while stimulation of other regions can cause the action without intention or subjective belief.

These simple, repeatable, empirical findings demonstrate that philosophy is well behind the actual science. If philosophers want to be part of the discussion, they are going to start taking the basic principle that the mind is what the brain does as a basic starting point. Understanding the details will almost certainly take a revolution in information theory, possibly some revolutions in biology, and almost certainly not a revolution in physics.

Junk DNA = We don't really know what it does

Not so much anymore; these days, it's more like it does not act in the simple, straightforward way that we expect genes to act. But then, genes don't seem to much, either. We're learning more and more about the many ways that "junk" DNA actually does play an active role in shaping human biology. (Original, more technical article.)

I'm sure someone cut open a spleen before and looked at it through a microscope. Wouldn't you see an unusually high concentration of the monocytes?

For one thing, compared to what? As the article points out

Its such a vascularized organ, and the risk of big-time hemorrhaging is so great, that if the spleen ruptures, itâ(TM)s a surgical emergency,â said James N. George, a hematologist with the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

It's full of blood, if you thought you noticed a high amount of monocytes, you'd probably think: they're blood cells and the spleen is full of blood cells. The finding is, as I understand it, that BLOOD from the spleen is higher in monocytes. You'd have to compare blood from the spleen to blood circulating in other organs.

The other issue is that monocytes would be hard to specifically identify, and probably impossible to count in tissue slices. This page has some examples of what monocytes look like when they're specifically stained (with hematoxylin and eosin I think), and what other blood cells look like. That's when they're stained just right and drawn out of an organ. If you're looking at slices of a spleen under a microscope, that's not going to jump out at you even if you were staining with H&E. The article used antibodies to specifically identify only monocytes. Antibodies recognize and can label specific proteins, they chose proteins that would be specific to monocytes. That's not something you do unless you're looking for monocytes specifically.

So you wouldn't notice monocytes unless you stained with antibodies specific to them, and even then, you wouldn't be able to compare them accurately in microscope sections.

  In the real article, the authors seem to have used fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) on spleen isolated blood to compare to circulating blood from other organs.

FACS as I understand it (never done it myself, only heard about, and I'm not reading the real article too closely either) is where isolated cells one at a time are sprayed through a laser. If the cell has a fluroescent tag on it, that makes it deviate from the path it would take if it doesn't. You can collect cells that deviate and cells that don't, the machine counts them, and you can then compare the ratios (easier than counting in a microscope.) So they were able to use that to show it had a higher ratio.

Collecting blood from isolated tissues, prepping it with the antibodies for monocytes, prepping that for FACS and then actually doing FACS is not trivial, you're not going to be doing it unless you're specifically testing a hypothesis like the ones the authors had.

(disclaimer: I'm not an expert in spleens, immunology, or FACS and I didn't read either article in depth.)

link to what I believe is the original article:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5940/612

...needs a Science subscription though :\

It costs about $150/year to join the AAAS and with that you receive an issue of Science magazine weekly. While some of the articles are dense and very domain-specific, many of the others are not and are (I think) quite accessible to most readers - especially if you read it more or less consistently. Climate change has been covered very thoroughly in Science over the years. So, don't go with (in the most general sense) media, go to a source where the research is being covered at first or second hand and read it/evaluate it for yourself.

It is also a great way to give yourself an education in general science. Though it can be a bit intimidating at first and is certainly a bit overwhelming (the magazine arrives relentlessly - if you've read the previous issue(s) or not).

What about stuff like this (subscription required for full article)? It turns out an effect clouds have means all the models so far have been wrong by an average* of about 50% in terms of temperature increase. In this case, the study indicates the temperature will increase more because of this unknown effect, but the point is it just could have easily been the other way around. Either way, all the chicken littles running around saying "the science is settled, we're all doomed" were completely wrong.

*I say average because there is no one model that is right. All of the models are wrong and hugely variant, but we just take the middle and pretend the Earth's climate will do what we say. It's absurd to be basing multi-trillion dollar policy decisions on this garbage.

Actually, they published the work in Science.

I think you can read the abstract there without a subscription. If you can't, you can go to PubMed and search for 18403709 (that's the PMID).

You can't really call publishing in Science not publishing in a real scientific journal.

Therefore, the statement in AR4 that "It is more likely than not (>50%) that there has been some human contribution to the increases in hurricane intensity." is likely an exaggeration, not supported by the actual research.

Months ago, I was careful to say that hurricane intensity can't be linked to climate change, and that a quick look at the IPCC guidance note on uncertainty indicates that this statement is essentially the weakest statement they could make without being utterly silent. (See table 4.) In fact, I later corrected another poster who was under the impression that a clear correlation between hurricanes and climate change was in the data.

If the IPCC report had used any other qualifier from table 4, you might have a more convincing point. Furthermore, another paper in Science says "Results show that the increasing trend in number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes for the period 1970-2004 is directly linked to the trend in SST [sea surface temperature]." Dr. Landsea is a legitimate scientist, but he's not the only one studying hurricanes, and I fail to see how his claims automatically rule out those of other scientists-- especially when they're making such an weak claim given the observed trends.

And, yes, those "natural forcings" include variations in solar output, which can be measured by satellites at L1 so there's no need to search for weak correlations in sunspot data.

Please be specific. "Solar output" can mean many things.

I was quoting Meehl 2004 in that sentence, which itself quotes Meehl 2003 to show that variations in solar luminosity affect the climate. Of course, Meehl 2004 shows that this effect isn't responsible for the warming in the latter half od the century, which is shown to be due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Previously, you cited luminosity data when I had clearly stated that the correlation was with period length, not luminosity.

That's because, as you now seem to agree, other correlations have been disproven by later research. I was just trying to steer you back towards the only correlation that's well-established in the peer-reviewed literature.

But the main problem with this sort of approach is that some kind of mechanism other than variations in luminosity would be needed to support your thesis. For example, in this post you claim "The sunspot activity tends to blow away the solar winds, allowing more radiation to get through to Earth's surface."

This is indeed a claim made in a real journal. But it's far more controversial than you're implying. The maximum impact of this mechanism has been estimated to be responsible for no more than 23% of the 11-year cyclical variation of cloud cover. Furthermore, there's no long term trend in Svensmark's data, which would be necessary to explain the long-term warming trend that's been observed. For more information, see chapter 7.10 of

The "Pew Research Center" canvassed the membership of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The AAAS publishes the Science journal which has a distinctly liberal bias.

Note carefully: I'm not saying that's a bad thing. However, it means that the sample is biased. I'm actually surprised that as many as 6% of respondents identified themselves as Republicans.

What has politics/liberality got to do with Science (journal). It's a peer reviewed scientific journal, its sole goal is to publish research papers from a broad range of disciplines in science.

While some people find some topics in science (global warming, evolution, othodox medicine, etc.) to be controversial or even incorrect/false, scientific journals publish scientific results not political discussions.

To quote from their site:

Today, a century and a quarter after its founding, Science continues to publish the very best in scientific research, news, and opinion. Whether you're concerned with AIDS, SARS, genomic medicine, Mars, or global warming, or just want to keep abreast of where the scientific world is and where it's going, you will find something worthwhile in Science.

Apparently you think *I* am an idiot. Try reading the goddamned thread. ... If you really don't want to be perceived as a "brainwashed idiot", maybe you could bother to figure out what the argument is about before you put in your irrelevant 2 cents. ... As for the rest, you are one of those lazy asses I mentioned. ... But you are too damned lazy to look any of them up? ... And yes, that to me means "brainwashed idiot". ... get off your lazy ass and LOOK IT UP YOURSELF!!! ... since you insist on being spoon-fed ... There are many more, very easily found, but I am not going to do your homework for you. Now go away. You disgust me.

There's really no need to be so uncivilized. I'm just saying that all your posts on this subject clearly imply that scientists are either so stupid that they overlook trivially obvious "problems" with their own research, or are willing members in a global conspiracy. Based on your (mistaken) assumption that I haven't read this thread, I don't have to guess which of these alternatives you've chosen in my case. Pity. I bet conspirators get jetpacks!

And I most certainly do not think you're an idiot. At worst, I think you're making mistakes while talking about a highly advanced subject that lies far outside of your own professional experience. Everyone does that. It'd be a different story if I was saying that you were pathetically wrong about your own life's work... the subject that you've studied since childhood with the passionate intensity of a monk. I'd never insult you like that; at most I'd simply ask polite questions to try to understand your subject of expertise better.

First, the Petition Project is a legitimate collection of scientists.

I asked for peer-reviewed references, not a list of people with PhDs. There's a difference. A list of PhDs is an argument from authority. A peer-reviewed article is evidence of a very specific claim, along with equations and links to data that I could use to verify that claim. It's the product of the scientific process, which is given weight by the confrontational nature of the review process in addition to the fact that everyone involved has a PhD in that specific field. Like other people who take your position, you appear to think that science is democratic-- that scientific decisions are made by comparing the number of people on each side. It's not. It's about evidence.

Energy & Environment (an appropriately peer-reviwed journal) in 2006. You asked for one, you got it.

My apologies. I wasn't nearly specific enough in my original request. Scientific journals are rather specialized, and we're discussing a very specialized hard science topic. It wouldn't be appropriate to reference an article from a social science journal (which is what "Energy and Environment" is). The reason is that the referees need to be experts in their field in order to properly vet the paper. Journals I'd suggest reading are Science, Nature, Journal of Geophysical Research, Geophysical Research Letters, Physical Review, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, etc.

I'm sorry for not making that caveat more explicit, but I figured it was an assumption that all scientists would make...

But I'll make it up to you. Here's an article by Friis-Christensen and K. Lassen, published in Science in 1991. This would have been a legitimate example of a peer-reviewed journal article supporting your claim.

Of course, it's incorrect. You can find out how-- if you're interested-- by following its citations

A single particle of Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus has a mass of about 1.5 femtograms, and its genome is 128 kilobases. If my calucaltions are right, you could store 1PB in 100 milligrams of virus particles. This was the only virus I've managed to find both figures for, so this result can probably be improved. For what I know, viruses can survive pretty harsh conditions, and this is a DNA virus, and DNA has two strands, so you're basically getting a RAID1. And it's the most popular data storage format on this planet.

Here you go.

Definitely an interesting result. The original article is published in Science. A free abstract can be found here.

there was NO period in which the CO2 has increased without an increase of global temperature. In other words, every time there was an increase of CO2, there was also an increase of global temperatures, but the inverse is not true.

Here's the research proving my point (oh and I was wrong, CO2 change lags temperature change by 1000 years, not 200,000):

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1143791

As for your assertion that CO2 has never increased without an increase in global temperature, firstly as I mentioned before you have the causal relationship backwards: it's been shown that temperature increases first, then CO2 increases 1000 years later (same for decreases of both).

Also, how about this:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0oNRupXJ4-A/SANF6KvP1sI/AAAAAAAAATQ/FP8y3DPkssY/s1600-h/image277.gif

I see CO2 changes without corresponding temperature changes happening many times there.

1) show me a correlation between solar activity and temperature

The causal correlation actually appears to be with cycle length, not activity directly. You really should be able to google the various relevant theories on your own, but start here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/254/5032/698

Or, just watch the news. As Solar Cycle 24 is being kind enough to help us out by being unprecedentedly long to get started, and temperatures are declining exactly as predicted, you are SITTING IN THE MIDDLE of the correlation right now -- it's the graph I originally posted! And concomitantly, if temperatures turn up again before sunspots do, well then I'll take that as quite sufficient disproof. If I was you I wouldn't put any money on that actually happening, but we'll see, won't we?

2) propose a plausible theory of why past temperature correlates so closely with CO2 excursions, but why this CO2 excursion won't in turn cause a large temperature excursion.

Because C02 levels track the temperature, not lead it, by an 800-odd year margin. Unless you believe causation follows effect, there is nothing more to discuss here, is there? I would hope I could presume that you have at least enough knowledge of the subject to realize that's uncontested peer-reviewed science, but just in case you're actually that ignorant here's a quick starter for you.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/09/end-of-last-ice-age-co2-innocent.html

that would require you to show that CO2 is instead increased by temperature,

Which is quite easily showable, as water absorbs C02 proportionally to temperature -- you've noticed the recent spate of articles about "ocean acidification" yes? -- and therefore your graph is the expected consequence of oceanic temperature rise. Which I currently feel the best explanation for is lowered cloud cover as described by Svensmark et al., but I'm perfectly willing to change my opinions based on the results of the CERN CLOUD experiments and whatever other actual evidence turns up. As a secondary effect, higher temperatures mean more rotting plant material, that's the thawing of the permafrost and all you've no doubt heard of, but I'm pretty certain that'll turn out a bagatelle next to the oceanic effects.

or that CO2 and temperature increases have typically had a common cause.

Nope; the only primary driver of C02 fluctuations is oceanic temperatures, that's where I'll put my bet. With a tiny hedge for the biosphere carbon cycle perhaps turning out more important than is apparent right now, but that seems vanishingly unlikely to be important over any longish term.

it'll be hard to show that CO2 increases don't cause temperature changes: the physics of the CO2's heat-trapping effects and

Actually, it's not that hard, because artificially raised C02 environments do not show significantly raised heat retention. This indicates that there's much less energy actually available for absorption by C02 to make any difference in the real atmosphere as opposed to idealized physics models. But I won't bother googling anything on the subject, since we already noted above that for C02 to be a significant driver of climate it would have to work backwards in time, which certainly would be a fascinating trick indeed but sane people deem unlikely.

the feedback effect of increased water vapor are well-understood.

Which brings us back to the oceans as mentioned above. To sum up the progression:

1) Solar magnetic flows vary, which is apparently correlated to cycle length;

2) GCRs penetrate the earth's magnetic field in proportion to solar flows;

3) Cloud formation, especially over oceans, is directly and markedly proportional to GCRs. (We await the above-mentioned CERN CLOUD experiments and more years of satellite data for incontrovertibl

I call bad math. You need to calculate number of infected who died over number of infected who recovered or died, excluding people infected who have not yet recovered. Dividing by the number of infected deflates the death rate, which appears to be about 0.4%. Higher than the 0.1% for your standard flu.

Citation: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1176062v2.pdf

Now the aporkalypse is if this flu does spread to about 1 billion people (not unrealistic for this kind of flu), you're looking at 4 million dead. That's fairly serious stuff. Enough reason to be concerned. Never a reason to panic.

Wash your hands, people.

I can't believe it when I see articles debating the purpose of fingerprints. They are mechanical amplifiers for vibration in the skin, thus enhancing touch perception; it's been known for 50-70 years that the ridges form a specific arrangement with the sensory fibre endings. In fact the ridges are CREATED by interactions between the developing skin and the nerve fibres which innervate it to provide touch sensation - this is why some nervous system defects result in abnormal fingerprints (e.g. Down syndrome). The only "Scientists [who] Wonder What Fingerprints Are For" are those unaware of the basic literature in the field. Here's a starting point: http://stke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;323/5920/1503 Hope that helps.

I'm sorrowful. Sorrowful because of earlier comments. Is it really big achievement to read short paper and then write review of "Brief Report"?

Actually ./ readers don't know each other so nobody gives a shit about other user's personal feelings unless they're expressed in an amusing way. Try to comment on the very gist of discussion and not on the people unless you want to be on the fast track to flamewarz.

he idea is quite old. Thomson et.al. described this idea in this paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5858/1917 [sciencemag.org] . There are earlier, but this one is good one and representative too.

The idea is old and everybody who read paper cited in the story knows that, but here reprogramming is epigenetically-triggered, i.e., there's transduction of proteins, not genetic material by viral vectors.

We are commenting on brief review because of it's briefness. Remember that you have only ~20 minutes for writing significant contribution, after then your post will be placed in the tail of the discussion, chances for never being moderated. Thus, comprehensive posts can be written if someone's already expert in the field, no time for quick literature search.

I suppose that questions about possible mechanism come from ignorance and laziness. Partially answer can be found here :http://images.cell.com/images/Edimages/Cell/IEPs/3661.pdf

Claims that protocols developed by the authors were suboptimal were based on fact, that they were acting blindfolded -- temporal pattern for exposition of the cells on this permeable protein was set by trial and error, so by no means was the transport of proteins into the cells designed in rational way.

The best mixture we get (if our criterion is simplicity of mixture), when we find proteins in bijection relation with DNA vectors.

As is stated in one of the publications you gave link to, the set of four proteins is sufficient and in sense of search procedure involved, minimal. Moreover, if you consider the mechanism of fibroblast->hPS transformation by use of the four delivered proteins, you've probably got bijection between biological function (transcription factor, histone acetylation/methylation pattern modification) and proteins delivered.

I'm sorrowful. Sorrowful because of earlier comments. Is it really big achievement to read short paper and then write review of "Brief Report"? Nevertheless slashPOTTERS! The idea is quite old. Thomson et.al. described this idea in this paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5858/1917 . There are earlier, but this one is good one and representative too.

I suppose that questions about possible mechanism come from ignorance and laziness. Partially answer can be found here :http://images.cell.com/images/Edimages/Cell/IEPs/3661.pdf

Besides, I think that questions about capabilities of lay out the mixture of proteins can be answer in following way. If we try to analyze how DNA vectors work into cells, we can conclude, that they impact on some part of biochemical pathways. They of course don't impact directly but through interactions with some others molecules e.g: proteins. Because this relation is injection (in mathematical sense ) so we can conclude, that deep analysis of DNA role in generating iPSCs can deliver us hints which proteins should we use. The best mixture we get (if our criterion is simplicity of mixture), when we find proteins in bijection relation with DNA vectors. Of course it is not simple task, but without analysis of genetic process in generating iPSCs we will able only to shoot wild.

If someone is interested about this subject I recommend this papers:
+ http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/retrieve/pii/S1934590908005250
+ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17554338

I wrote about this in my cancer blog a few months back:

I lost some feeling in my hands and feet due to the various chemotherapy drugs I've taken over the past five years. I also lost my fingerprints thanks to Xeloda, which irritates the palms and soles in a reaction called hand-foot syndrome.

When I went to Disney World in 2007 I found that the entry gates use fingerprint scanners to ensure that the person using an electronic ticket is the same one who registered it. The scanner choked when I tried to register and an attendant had to override it. I bet that enough of the population has similar issues that it's in their training manual. I suppose it also means that people like me are a headache for anyone else trying to use fingerprints for identification.

Some of the numbness is nerve damage, particularly from the platinum-based drugs. The nerves do slowly heal, so I am getting some feeling back. In fact, now that I've been off of systemic chemo for four months I have enough feeling to realize that I lost more than I appreciated. Except for a period after a massive dose in 2005, the numbness hasn't been enough to interfere with tasks like holding a pen or buttoning a shirt. It's just been a dullness of sensation.

Today I learned that there's another explanation. According to research published in Science, fingerprints enhance the sense of touch. The ridges vibrate as they encounter bumps on a surface and transmit stronger signals to the nerve endings. So part of my numbness to texture is not just the nerve damage but the lack of fingerprints. I wonder if they, too, will regrow over time.

The metal americium becomes superconducting at temperatures as high as 0.79 K ...
Submitted on February 13, 1978

Superconductivity of Americium

Dogs are potentially the first animal to be domesticated, over 15,000 years ago. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/298/5598/1610.pdf

When you adjust for inflation, during Bush's second term the NIH budget shrank. It actually got smaller. You can find the change rates as published in the New England Journal of Medicine http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/16/1665/F1 [nejm.org]

The same chart shows that Bush raised the NIH budget by almost 15% for each of his first four years. This is after adjusting for inflation. In fact, we can find some more direct evidence:

The ASM has endorsed a $2.7 billion increase for the NIH in FY 2001, a 15 percent increase in funding which would bring the NIH budget to a level of $20.6 billion.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/291/5509/1677b?ck=nck

"President George W. Bush said last week that he will request a record $2.8 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health in his 2002 budget proposal. But some biomedical science groups say that the figure--a 13.8% boost, to $23.1 billion--is only a starting point for their campaign to win a $3.4 billion boost."

And, finally:

http://officeofbudget.od.nih.gov/ui/2008/Summary%20of%20FY%202009%20Budget-Press%20Release.pdf

"The FY 2009 Discretionary Budget Authority request for the NIH is $29,230 million"

So, over the course of his entire term, Bush boosted funding for NIH from 20 billion to 30 billion. The bulk of the increases came during his first term. Note that despite having spent 200 billion dollars over the last 8 years, there have no cures for cancer, the flu, or the cold. So, not only did this olive branch of increased federal spending completely fail the Republicans politically, if we go by the left's yardstick of missile defense, the scientists doing all this research actually accomplished nothing.

Yes, I know DNA from something this old is practically impossible.

Actually that request is nowhere near as tall an order today as it was just a few years ago. You likely know that we have already partially reconstructed the Woolly Mammoth genome and are working with DNA from the (extinct) Tasmanian Tiger as well.

Our techniques have even allowed us to extract proteins from Tyrannosaurus Rex as well as a Hadrosaur for proteomics approaches to analyzing extinct species.