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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.

Quote

"How is the news being anticipated in the scientific community? 'I honestly think this is an incredible job of marketing,' says paleontologist K. Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has not seen the report but has read the news. He points out that other fossils of similar age from China, Myanmar, and India have also been proposed as some of the earliest anthropoids. 'At this stage, color me skeptical.'"

Well.

CC.

it's just that without Myriad, *no one* would know that having the BRCA1 gene was a precursor to breast cancer.

Really? Then why is there research on the topic that predates the company? Here's a paper from 1994 that includes at least one co-founder of Myriad: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol266/issue5182/index.dtl. Of course, 1994 is after the founding of Myriad in 1991-1992, but you already pointed out that the research takes 5-6 years. Additionally, that paper cites work from http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/250/4988/1684, which was published in 1990 (before Myriad). The title of that article is "Linkage of early-onset familial breast cancer to chromosome 17q21."

My understanding of the history of Myriad is that they are an example of university research commercialization. That is, the company was founded to establish and protect intellectual property based on work that was done by researchers at the University of Utah. A lot of universities are doing this now, where start-up companies are formed to expand on and profit from research. If the start-ups do well, the universities get a share of the profits.

Just one problem... As this was university research, it was almost certainly publically funded through grants from NIH, NSF, etc. Hence, we US taxpayers funded the research, not Myriad. Yes, Myriad continues to do research to further develop their products, but Myriad's flagship is still BRACAnalysis, which is the product of university research.

Furthermore, Myriad aggressively pursues their IP rights. In 2001, they sent cease-and-desist letters to the Canadian government, claiming that ANY BRCA1 or BRCA2 testing method other than BRACAnalysis violates their patents. So, yes, they are claiming ownership of ALL information relating to the genes, and not just the process. Many provinces are fighting back, and the outcome of those legal battles is unclear.

it's just that without Myriad, *no one* would know that having the BRCA1 gene was a precursor to breast cancer.

Really? Then why is there research on the topic that predates the company? Here's a paper from 1994 that includes at least one co-founder of Myriad: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol266/issue5182/index.dtl. Of course, 1994 is after the founding of Myriad in 1991-1992, but you already pointed out that the research takes 5-6 years. Additionally, that paper cites work from http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/250/4988/1684, which was published in 1990 (before Myriad). The title of that article is "Linkage of early-onset familial breast cancer to chromosome 17q21."

My understanding of the history of Myriad is that they are an example of university research commercialization. That is, the company was founded to establish and protect intellectual property based on work that was done by researchers at the University of Utah. A lot of universities are doing this now, where start-up companies are formed to expand on and profit from research. If the start-ups do well, the universities get a share of the profits.

Just one problem... As this was university research, it was almost certainly publically funded through grants from NIH, NSF, etc. Hence, we US taxpayers funded the research, not Myriad. Yes, Myriad continues to do research to further develop their products, but Myriad's flagship is still BRACAnalysis, which is the product of university research.

Furthermore, Myriad aggressively pursues their IP rights. In 2001, they sent cease-and-desist letters to the Canadian government, claiming that ANY BRCA1 or BRCA2 testing method other than BRACAnalysis violates their patents. So, yes, they are claiming ownership of ALL information relating to the genes, and not just the process. Many provinces are fighting back, and the outcome of those legal battles is unclear.

nature reserves mean less food production (especially, again, in Africa)

This is not only wrong, but it is way wrong. The study Economics, Objectives, and Success of Private Nature Reserves in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America shows that private nature reserves can be profitably run. With it's nature reserves Limpopo Province is South Africa's breadbasket.

meaning less population AND THEY ALREADY HAVE OVERPOPULATION (ie food production is insufficient to keep the population alive).

The insufficiency of food in Africa has 2 causes, climate change and politics. Ethiopia has had a food crisis because of a change in their climate. Reduced rainfall has caused "ever more frequent droughts". On the other hand Zimbabwe has turned from the bread basket of Africa into a basketcase. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe ruined Zimbabwe. He kicked all the white farmers, who produced most of the food, off the farms. He then gave those farms to his cronies, who did not know how to farm. Zimbabwe went from being a big exporter of food to needing food donations from other nations. Another cause of lack of food was the economic policies that forced or encouraged small scale farmers to leave those farms. "Africa: Civil Society Blames World Bank, IMF and WTO". However with the new Green Revolution in Africa farmers are starting to grow more food.

Falcon

I am not an American but it sure would help if certain American's and their pet lobbyists stopped using psuedo-science and lies to convince small-minded gullible fools that Al Gore has the power and/or charisma to corrupt the members of every major scientific instutution on Earth. I have even had such fools here on slashdot tell me I can't point to the journals Nature or Science when talking about AGW because apparently they too are part of Al Gore's global conspiracy.

Here are some examples of the lies and lobbying I am talking about, Senator Inhofe who's list of desenting scientists, has as much cedibility as the dicovery institute list of scientists that supposedly reject evolution but that has not stopped a large number of slashdotter's from waving it around like a magic wand that somehow makes facts dissapear. Then there is the "Heartland institute" run by one Fred Singer who was also prominent in the tabacco industry's anti-science propoganda. Another site that has raised it's ugly head and that can also be related to the anti-science lobby of the tabacco companies is called IceCap, this site specializes in conflating various regions of ice all over the planet and is incapable of ditingushing the North pole from the south pole. It is run by a guy who is on the payroll at the "Science and Public Policy Institute", who are in turn funded by the "Frontiers of Freedom" which is the lobbting brain fart of yet another (ex) US senator. Wallop and Singer are mates from the tabacco industries anti-science cmapaign, the major contributors to the Frontiers of Freedom include Philip Morris and ExxonMobil.

Yep, these anti-science and anti-environment politicians/CEO's have nothing but good intentions, they publish their propoganda to protect you from "environmental whack jobs" and the scientific community who make ludicrous claims such as smoking causes cancer or that a healthy economy and a healthy environment are not mutually exclusive. They have somehow convinced a large chunk of the US that it's not them who are running scams and lying it's the scientific community under the direction of Al Gore who are the liars and scammers.

"Get real."

How about you get real, pull your head out of the sand and drop the alarmist hyperbole, nobody is putting greenpeace in charge of anything but there is a problem and the anti-enviroment/anti-science rhetoric/popoganda coming from the US over the last decade is what has perverted any attempt at a real solution.

"(Yeah, I know. This will almost certainly get modded down to oblivion by KOSdot mods, probably modded "-1 Troll" but screw it. I've got the karma to burn.)"

I have no idea who KOSdot are and I'm not a fan of greenpeace but I agree that your misguided alarmisim should be moderated into oblivion.

A case study tells you nothing about prevalence in the community.

Your "1/4000" prevalence estimate dates back to 1960. You're going to have to do better than that. Especially because the prevalence of schizophrenia and schizophreniform disease in the community is around 1/100.

Vardy et al say The findings supported a model of LSD psychosis as a drug-induced schizophreniform reaction in persons vulnerable to both substance abuse and psychosis.. That is to say, among a vulnerable segment of the population, with disorders of GABA metabolism, many drugs can induce an above-average pseudo-delerium, and that these delerious states are indistinguishable from each other, and from schizophreniform disorders.

Soyka et al illustrate a high concordance between high dosages of alcohol and schizophrenia. Do we then assume, naively, that alcohol induces schizophrenia?

Soyka et plus al further indicate that schizophrenia and schizphreniform disease is associated with multifactorial drug use. LSD is not a primary or singular etiological agent here.

Goswami et al present a large body of evidence that people with schizophrenia or even family members with latent schizphreniform tendencies self medicate" in a manner usually considered polydrug abuse. Again, do you really think that the polydrugs are causing the GABA disarray in their cortexes?

To date, the only drugs that have been proven to induce schizophrenia in humans, and schizphrenia-like symptoms in lab animals, and to increase the symptoms of schizophrenia in people already afflicted with it are the NMDA receptor antagonists such as ketamine or PCP. These probably induce their chronic effects through an oxidative cascade. No similar mechanism has been presented, much less demonstrated, for any specific, putative effects of LSD on neural development.

Quantum computers are Turing reducible. It doesn't matter if your computer is classical or quantum, they can still only solve the same kinds of problems. This goes for the brain as well. (For the philosophers, this means that we cannot so easily escape from Searle's Chinese room.)

All of this quantum mind nonsense seems to have stared with Roger Penrose and his ridiculous "theory". (Read: Shadows of the mind and The emperors new mind) He not only claims that the brain is a quantum system (possible, but totally unfounded) but also proposes a formula by which we can calculate how conscious something is! (He bites the ol' ontological bullet really hard, and goes on to claim that even an electron can be conscious, but only a little bit and only once in a great while.)

This article:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/287/5454/791?ck=nck
Very clearly outlines the biggest problems for the theory. This is likely where the "Brain is too hot" argument originated. It's a good one, and not likely to go away anytime soon.

More importantly, even if mother nature managed to work around the problem of a hot brain, it still doesn't get us any closer to consciousness. (See my first paragraph above) In the Penrose-Hameroff model, consciousness appears magically during collapse of the wave function. How they came to such a conclusion is beyond reason. That isn't science, it's mysticism.

Hehe, I could answer a few of these questions, but they are the subject of the novel I'm currently writing :)
The 2025 estimate isn't mine, it's Ray Kurzweil's, look him up, he's done a lot more research on it than either of us, including two books on the topic. The estimate is based on the number of neurons in the human brain and a projection of Moore's Law to discover how many transistors & ghz would be needed to approximate the processing power equivalent of the human brain. 2025 is actually the later date, he says 2020 - 2025.

Lastly, brain imaging tools have come a very, very, long way. Did you see a recent article which announced the discovery of a way to increase the sensitivity of micro-MRI machines by over 1,000,000 times?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10141097-76.html

It's hip to be skeptical, and certainly the last 60 years of AI research seem to have gone relatively nowhere, but that was the point of my post: that perception is no longer correct. That ignores the fact, as Kurzweil points out, that progress is not linear but in fact exponential.

As far as modeling the brain, there are researchers which are able to actually trace the circuits in the brain tied to various systems. One example, researchers tied a glowing gene into mice to create glowing brain cells visible in real-time under a microscope. Then they began implanting several different color genes into different parts of the system creating 'rainbow mice' where different parts of the brain glow different colors making it even easier to see all parts of the system:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/300/5616/78

With such mice they've been picking apart the actual circuitry of the brain and getting it working, including building theoretical models of the observed brain-system. When running the model the result is auditory processing as good as the animal produces.

So, perhaps even you are not quite as up to date on the science as you'd thought.

That is not a link to a peer-reviewed article, it is a link to a PNG image. Anyway, it is only for sea ice, which I agree may be growing. What causes ocean levels to rise, however, is glaciers melting and running into the ocean, which has been well-documented. You can look at the paper of Eric Rignot, for example, in Science 2006. The effect from Greenland alone is estimated to contribute 1/4 inch rise in ocean level per decade. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5763/986

Or this for that matter ...

OK, this is big news. A research team has worked out a way to nearly triple the efficiency of the Fischer-Tropsch process.

This means cheap synthetic hydrocarbons from coal are on the horizon. It probably sinks shale oil and biofuels for good - which is a good thing, as biofuel demand has been driving food prices higher. Potentially, it could make the U.S. - which has huge coal reserves - independent of foreign oil sources for the forseeable future.

Now watch for it: I [predict that the so-called "environmental movement" will scream in horror at this prospect, and we will learn yet again that they are mostly about enforcing eco-puritan poverty on us all rather than doing anything actually useful about actual ecological problems.

"Ultracold" here refers to degenerate Fermi gases, not Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC).

Here's a layman article:
A Fermi gas of atoms
Deborah Jin
Physics World, 2002

And the original publication by the Duke group:
Observation of a Strongly Interacting Degenerate Fermi Gas of Atoms
K. M. O'Hara, S. L. Hemmer, M. E. Gehm, S. R. Granade, J. E. Thomas
Science Vol 298, p 2179 - 2182 (2002)

Why would they hire a physicist who dabbles in earthquake detection when they've got seismologists who do this full-time around, who know that radon levels are not an accurate predictor of earthquakes?

Because the many many seismologists who are paid to do their jobs obviously did not.

The earthquake science community looked at it and dismissed it decades ago as insufficiently reliable--some earthquakes aren't preceded by a spike in radon levels, and some spikes aren't followed by an earthquake,/quote> ...yeah, right, because all, these reports are obviously written by sci-fi writers

Have YOU even thought about what you are blabbering?

Well... lets not dignify your question with a response, shall we?

This is cause for alarm if you're concerned about iceberg free shipping lanes, correct?

Considering there's about zero shipping lanes near Antarctica I'd say this doesn't rank up there on the priority list.

Except the shipping lanes which service people in Antarctica.

This is cause for alarm if you're concerned about iceberg free shipping lanes, correct?

Considering there's about zero shipping lanes near Antarctica I'd say this doesn't rank up there on the priority list.

An error margin greater than 50%? Presuming that this is based on a typical 3 standard deviations...

Actually, reading the paper, it looks to me that 80 km^3 is just 1 standard deviation. (They say the GRACE errors were calculated as 1-sigma, and the ice volume error is obtained by sum-of-squared GRACE errors, so it too is presumably 1-sigma.) If so, a 95% interval includes the possibility of zero volume change (but barely).

I don't see any statistics experts mentioned in that link, so I gotta assume that we cannot expect a normally distributed error, that in fact they have no idea what the distribution might be.

Ah, the old "I don't like Mike Mann, therefore nobody in the world except a professional statistician knows what a normal distribution is" argument. Very compelling.

Anyway, if you want to know about the distribution of the errors, read this. They find that the aggregate residuals are normal, but the RMS errors — after standardizing against the spatial and time dependence of the residuals — are non-normal. They discuss the consequences of making a normal approximation. The normal approximation is what they used in the above Science paper.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/299/5613/1728 unfortunately I can't find a free fulltext version of it for you but I'd be interested if you can find one. It mentions the relevant information in the abstract though.

My bet is that it is cerenkov radiaton as a high speed charged particle breaks the speed of light in the fluid in the eyeball.

Indeed, these flashes have pretty much already been identified as the result of Cerenkov radiation.

The majority of scientists (in this field) believe that the evidence supports the idea of anthropogenic global warming. This isn't science vs. the people.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686#

Obviously "more study is needed". It's happening as we speak. But the reality is that no matter how good your figures are, the politicians will twist it around. But at least for me, I'd rather listen to what the actual scientists are saying. And what they're saying is that an alternative hypothesis that fits better with the data doesn't exist. Many have been tried, of course.

Note that Dyson does not have any data here, he is whining about not being taken seriously by the scientific mainstream, vaguely criticizing the methods of a generation of scientists, and basically making the assumption that because he's the underdog, he's at least "useful" if not correct.

But the nice thing about science is that the evidence decides if you're correct. Clarke's law is, of course, not an actual "law" of physics but the observations of a (granted, brilliant) science fiction author. It is too general to help us here.

Here is one discussing the difficulty of interpreting what the data actually means
Here is one suggesting that wind, not global warming, is to blame for the recent ice loss in Greenland and the west Antarctic.

It's not my fault if no one else in the thread knows how to do research. Go to your favorite scientific journal that has anything to do with global warming and you will find similar. If you want to actually read these articles, most libraries have subscriptions to Science, you can go check them out. Or pay for your own subscription.

I'm not trying to 'deny' global warming or anything, just saying that the issue is a lot more complicated than it appears on the surface. Here is another comment I wrote that is more to the point.

Here is one discussing the difficulty of interpreting what the data actually means
Here is one suggesting that wind, not global warming, is to blame for the recent ice loss in Greenland and the west Antarctic.

It's not my fault if no one else in the thread knows how to do research. Go to your favorite scientific journal that has anything to do with global warming and you will find similar. If you want to actually read these articles, most libraries have subscriptions to Science, you can go check them out. Or pay for your own subscription.

I'm not trying to 'deny' global warming or anything, just saying that the issue is a lot more complicated than it appears on the surface. Here is another comment I wrote that is more to the point.

Scientific consensus is not evidence of anything. Whenever anyone says, "you should believe this because there is consensus!" you know immediately that there's some bad science going on. Not even the paper you link to draws that conclusion, because, well, it's not a valid conclusion.

A few years ago I entered into a correspondence with a researching psychologist. He told me explicitly that he had stopped doing research in a certain area because of what other people thought; it was too politically charged of a research area, so he stopped researching it. He didn't want to risk his career on that point, when there are other interesting things to research.

As far as papers that go against the standard idea of global warming, they do exist. Here is an article, and here is a non-paid summary of the article. Notice that the natural conclusion is that global warming is more related to aerosols than CO2. However, the author doesn't make that point, he instead says, "This will add more fuel to the debate as to what's causing the increase in sea surface temperature." He would have fallen into the neutral territory.

Global Warming is an area that is charged politically right now. Any careful scientist will be wary of making a strong statement either way, and will instead present the evidence, and let you draw your own conclusion.

Don't rely on consensus.

I found one. In less than two minutes on the internet, here is your paper. It shows that a lot of the warming in the tropical north atlantic is mainly due to a reduction of atmospheric aerosols, not an increase in carbon dioxide. Here is a summary of that article, in case you don't want to pay the subscription.

Of course it doesn't completely 'disprove' global warming, it would take more than one paper to prove that global warming is happening, it will take more than one paper to show it's not. All this paper is doing is trying to get closer to the truth of what's happening.

I'm wondering if you've ever actually read a peer reviewed scientific journal, and I seriously doubt you've ever done peer review. The reason I doubt this is because in my time, I've stumbled across articles that are opposing the standard view of global warming without even looking.

Note that papers like this come up all the time, they just tend not to make the news.

You got that one right:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

(Peer reviewed science journal Science)

You also seem to be unaware that the internet has sources for every piece of idiocy

No, I am well aware of that

providing sources doesn't settle anything

I disagree with that statement. If the original poster were to actually respond with sources (though I'm not holding my breath), it would show the source of their opinion. Often just seeing the domain of their sources tells a lot; if they cited these idiots or these other idiots as sources then we know they aren't thinking much about the actual science. On the other hand if they cited an academic or scientific source to support their claims, then there would be reason to believe the poster actually does think before spouting off rhetoric.

As it is, the poster is essentially just gossipping. They have provided nothing but noise, and I am asking them to support their statements (if they can).

First off I want to say Freeman Dyson is a brilliant physcist and we should all be grateful for his work in physics, he is not however a climate scientist, climate scientists have a rather different view of the whole thing:

"IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

(Peer reviewed science journal Science)

So do some research about the mainstream of climatology before jumping on the Dyson bandwagon.

And yes Al Gore is often an exaggerated propagandist and he isNOT helpful in this debate, that doesn't however mean that there isn't real climate science out there pointing to the anthropogenic origin of observed climate change.

Cool. Better link:
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sciencenow;2009/326/4

It's really a fish flash mob!

Tom Mitchell et al. have done some work on differentiating memory recall of nouns. Hearing him give a talk on the subject really made me rethink some things. To what extent are different human brains structured similarly? It seems as though two people thinking about a given noun (e.g. a hammer) really have similarities in their fMRI patterns.

Predicting Human Brain Activity Associated with the Meanings of Nouns
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080529141354.htm
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/320/5880/1191

A number of inner-city public schools in Milwaukee that were in trouble have converted to the Montessori method. A study was published in Science magazine and gave promising results.

Maybe not in this century, but there are a number of Montessori schools all over the world, and it's growing.

I just wish it had a different name. Saying 'Montessori' to distinguish it from the traditional 'sit and listen to a lecture' style currently found in most public schools unfortunately makes it sound 'alternative' and not based on the empirical evidence as it is.

What about "Biologically Reversible Exploration"???

"The international Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) has established a "planetary protection" policy that involves not contaminating other worlds in a way that would jeopardize the conduct of future scientific investigations. As a signatory to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the United States is required by article IX to avoid "harmful contamination" of the other worlds of the Solar System. However, further revisions to the policy are needed...

The spacecraft that have landed on Mars have all been surface missions. Contaminants will remain local and static and can be removed without requiring an effort vastly larger than the missions that carried the contamination. Even at the crash sites, debris from Earth extends no more than a few meters into the surface. Reversing the contamination involves recovering the spacecraft parts and exposing any contaminated dirt to the sterilizing ultraviolet (UV) sunlight. However, if, for example, robotic or human explorers drill to investigate a subsurface aquifer, biologically reversible exploration would require rigorous sterilization of any components that go down the drill hole. Similarly, if human explorers establish bases inside caves (12), the naturally sterilizing effect of the surface UV would be lost, and contamination would be persistent.

We should not do anything now that would close off options for the future. I propose that COSPAR, in its upcoming discussions, set a policy that all Mars exploration be biologically reversible and that this policy extend to human exploration as well."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/323/5915/718

What about extremely large debris-covered glaciers? Would that do the trick for you?

The SHARAD instrument (really cool, 15Mhz radar) has shown conclusive evidence of ice cores in features called lobate debris aprons. These debris-covered features have probably been stable for ~100 Ma.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/322/5905/1235

abstract: Lobate features abutting massifs and escarpments in the middle latitudes of Mars have been recognized in images for decades, but their true nature has been controversial, with hypotheses of origin such as ice-lubricated debris flows or glaciers covered by a layer of surface debris. These models imply an ice content ranging from minor and interstitial to massive and relatively pure. Soundings of these deposits in the eastern Hellas region by the Shallow Radar on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal radar properties entirely consistent with massive water ice, supporting the debris-covered glacier hypothesis. The results imply that these glaciers formed in a previous climate conducive to glaciation at middle latitudes. Such features may collectively represent the most extensive nonpolar ice yet recognized on Mars.

The Tragedy of the Commons is a perfect example of what happens when everyone or no one owns a resource.

Just to be anal, no real village commons suffers from the cited problems, as the community is self-protective and small enough that the violator of the norms gets enough flack that he backs off. The paper is about what happens if you try to create what Hardin considers an unnatural commons, one of unrestricted size and without I usually call "societal norms", which he terms "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon".

See Hardin, Garrett The Tragedy of the Commons.

--dave

In regards to Global Warming, I think we need to look at the ocean floor. Some seashells contain carbon records that are quite contradictory to the ice core measurements Gore hyped up.

Sign of a climate crackpot: he brings Al Gore into the discussion as if he's relevant to the science.

But go ahead, please explain what ocean cores are inconsistent with the ice core record of the glacial-interglacial cycles. (Also explain why ocean cores are more reliable than ice cores, considering that ice cores actually store trapped atmospheric gas.)

There are astronomical functions that researchers are blowing off. The Earth's axis shift (precession), the earth's elliptical degree of orbit, and the sun's position in galactic space all play roles in the climate cycle.

Researchers aren't blowing off orbital factors. The Milankovitch cycles are far too slow to act appreciably on century timescales. As for the Sun's position in galactic space, you're probably referring to the hypothesis of varying cosmic ray flux, except cosmic ray flux hasn't been varying recently.

Also, isn't the human contribution to CO2 only a small fraction of naturally occurring greenhouse gasses?

Yes, but a few-degree contribution to a 30-degree natural greenhouse effect is still climatically significant.

We're overdue for an ice age anyway.

Probably not.

... but peer reviewed science. Read this and learn something. From the peer reviewed science journal, Science:

"Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).

The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

We are release trillions of Tons of CO2 that has not been in the Air for millions of years, and we are releasing millions of years worth of CO2.
This mean there is no naturally mechanism currently in place to deal with the volume of CO2 in the air.

Great! I'm being lectured by a guy who is using his electric powered computer to do it. You know, most electricity comes from coal right? Even if you have solar panels on your ceiling, does you ISP? How about all those routers and switches between your house and the /. servers? So, until you are willing to walk the walk and shut off your computer so you don't pollute the earth, the STFU you hypocrite!

If you are throwing your leftover waste into my yard then I do have a right to stop you.

See above. The CO2 from powering your computer is coming into my yard. I demand that you shut if off now and never turn it back on.

You our completly ignorant of what people are talking about when they say global warming. Is that willful ignorance, or are you just simple?

You are completely ignorant of English grammar. "Are" is the verb you looking for here. "Our" represents shared possession.
You are also completely ignorant of what powers your computer. Again, see the fist paragraph here and tell me again how wrong I am for using electricity. Tell me again that you can tell me what to do if I release CO2 into the atmosphere and then explain to me why your computer is still on since I told you to turn it off.

Do you not see the hypocrisy here?

The issue here is how fast it is increasing, and how much CO2 is in the air. CO2 sampling goes back 750K year, soon to be a million. There is planty of evidence to support that CO2 is causing an unprecedented change in cycle, as well as poisoning the earth.

Actually, it shows that CO2 levels rise AFTER a global warming, by 200-800 years, not before it. Let's see, what happened 200-800 years ago? Not sure, but I heard about Brits walking on the River Thames because it was frozen over. Then it warmed up. Gee, THAT couldn't be the CO2 that's in the air now, could it? But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of your conclusion. Isn't that what these guys did and the whole point of the article? If the facts don't match you conclusion, change the facts!

So is the journal Science too I guess.

That argument fails completely. Six of the top ten evolution believing nations are protestant-majority, according to a study in Science.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/313/5788/765

In that survey, 34 industrialized nations were studied and the US comes on a 33rd place just before Turkey.

The results from the Science article was also published in NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/08/14/science/sciencespecial2/20050815_EVO_GRAPHIC.html

The reason must be found elsewhere.

We won't have to look at fossil records too much longer:

Speciation Within Anopheles gambiae-- the Glass Is Half Full

They are NOT agreed.

Sure they are, as Oreskes already showed back in 2004. And don't come back with the ridiculous (and unpublished) Peiser study, which even Peiser has eventually conceeded was wrong.

Look dude, now (2009) that even Lindzen has canned the skeptical rhetoric, it can be positively stated that "scientists are agreed that we must cut carbon emissions," without fear of contradiction, at least from anyone even moderately well informed.

If you're right then it boils down to "trust us" which, to me, is not science but rather philosophy.

It is science. You can test it. It just takes a long time before the test can be carried out. The problem is not that the science is untestable, but that we have to make a decision earlier than that. Even 20 years ago, with much cruder models, there were predictions that have been at least approximately borne out (e.g. here). But "unquestionable accuracy" is hard to come by. The fact that science is uncertain doesn't mean that it's not science.

As a strategy for encouraging change the GW debate is fatally flawed.

There isn't any other way to carry out that debate. The fact is that climate change is a slow and largely invisible process. Yes, other kinds of air pollution are visible and immediate. We can act to reduce those kinds of pollution. But that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the serious problem of climate change. Yes, it would be nice to have the luxury of only needing to act on immediate, visible dangers. But some problems simply aren't that easy. With climate change, our decisions now need not cause serious damage for a century. We can't avoid the reality that those decisions, nevertheless, need to weigh the risk of future impacts. Climate change has the potential to significantly alter the Earth system for millennia to come.

are all deadzones acidifying?

Increase in the export of alkalinity from North America's largest river

That report suggest that there's an increase in the export of alkalinity and alkalinity neutralizes acids, it doesn't cause an increase in acidity.

Falcon

Exactly! It's in the key words: "cause" is the underlaying geology/structures/faults/etc that made it possible for this chunk to fail, "trigger" is why it happened at this particular time. If a trigger didn't happen (the dam wasn't built), then something else would act as a trigger later. Yes, the exact nature of the outcome would be different due to the intensity & distribution of the triggering event and other complex interactions blah blah blah, but it still would've been an earthquake. One of the big landslide bloggers posted an informal response to the academic article the news stories are based on. I thought his point about an artificially-triggered earthquake having liability consequences was interesting. I don't know the stats on death & damage for this event, but it'd certainly be enough to bankrupt anyone who was found fully or partially responsible for the disasters. I can see the usual suspects of conspiracy-theorists calling foul if the dam-triggering-earthquake theory is rejected by other scientists. After all, it wouldn't have anything to do with evaluating theories based on observations; the scientists would be protecting the geological engineers/regional planners/etc from bankruptcy, right? ;)

The lowest order state of the vortex has 4 modes because:
A) The demagnetizing field wants to minimize free magnetic poles at the surface of the element. This might be the largest contribution to the vorticity (ie. having all the spins aligned in a vortex minimizes the free poles at the surface).
B) There is a discontinuity at the center of the vortex when you look at in-plane magnetization. The spins at the center are frustrated and are forced out-of-plane.

What do you mean by "folds" on the vortex? Are you talking about impurities that would pin the field?

Don't confuse out-of-plane magnetization ("perpendicular storage") with bubble memory, they are not the same thing. (There's a reason one came much later than the other. I'd like to give you a better explanation than this, but I don't have a good reference handy. Can anyone dig something up?)

The sizes involved are indeed different, see [1] where the diameter of their elements is 700 nm, and contrast with [2] (bubble memory) where a 2x2um cell was used. Perhaps with larger circular elements you won't have a single-domain state (ie. no vortex).

... and please don't misunderstand me, I don't mean to start a flamewar. I wouldn't mind having a definitive answer to these questions too. If you can dig up any relevant papers or sources, I'd be interested to take a look at them. Thanks!

[1] http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APPLAB000079000019003113000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
[2] http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/246/4936/1400

Perhaps those of you in this thread who hate journalists so much should make efforts to give scientists some media training so that when they are interviewed, they speak in clear language, not jargon.

Yes, it's the journalist's job to be clear and accurate, but it's pretty damn difficult when the interview subject spews out line after line of technobabble only meaningful to another scientist.

Also, don't blame journalists for trying (sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing) to spice things up and present scientific stories to a broader audience. Only slashdot readers are going to get excited when they see "We report teleportation of quantum information between atomic quantum memories separated by about 1 meter" and the thrilling "Quantum Teleportation Between Distant Matter Qubits" headline (the word "teleportation" is used in the abstract, so don't blame the journalist.)

At the very least, people interested in the topic can go look up the referenced abstract and read it for themselves. Granted, it requires some critical thinking skills and some initiative to do that, which might be expecting a lot from people. But without the hated journalist's efforts they wouldn't even know about the story.

These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science,[6] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.[7][8][9]

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming)
7) http://royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13619
8) http://royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=20742
9) http://www.pik-potsdam.de/aktuelles/archiv/aktuelle/dateien/G8_Academies%20Declaration.pdf

While a small minority have voiced disagreement with these findings,[10] the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC's main conclusions.[11][12]

10) http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=164002
11) http://royalsociety.org/downloaddoc.asp?id=1630
12) http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

And honestly, I was being lazy and just quoting Wikipedia which hardly took any effort. Now imagine if you weren't being stubbornly predisposed in your opinion how easily you could have affirmed the scientific community's consensus yourself instead of wasting my time.

The best way to realize how strong the consensus is, is by looking at all the peer-reviewed literature published in scientific journals each year and tally up how many are dealing with global warming related studies and how many (if any) are attempting to contest global warming.

Honestly, I know you are wrong.
(yes, I do study environmental science).

Are they positive?

Actually, yes, necessarily: it is ytterbium.

Now that I've been modded interesting: call me captain obvious; but if you didn't read TFA (The Fine Abstract):

A quantum bit stored in a single trapped ytterbium ion (Yb+) is teleported to a second Yb+ atom [...].

I am down with everything you wrote (yes including the 2nd amendment defense) expect lumping in global warming as a non problem. Engaging in global warming denial does nothing to help your case. This is what the peer reviewed journal Science has to say about models predicting anthropogenic climate change:

"IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9)."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

The deniers meanwhile all end being dunded by fossil fuel industry sources:

A study published in the journal Environmental Politics finds that 92 per cent of 141 English-language environmentally âoeskepticalâ books, most published since 1992, are linked to conservative âoethink tanks.â The authors conclude that the environmental skepticism of such organizations âoeis a tactic of an elite-driven counter-movement designed to combat environmentalism, and that the successful use of this tactic has contributed to the weakening of US commitment to environmental protection.â

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/C25/

See also:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_skeptics

We're not a single step closer to creating life. Self-replicating RNA was already created in the lab somewhere in 2001 or possibly even earlier than that:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/292/5520/1319

The only new thing about this research, is that they've proven that self-replicating RNA actually evolves, which is a major step as well, but it doesn't bring us any closer to creating life. Also note that the biggest question of all, is how those RNA molecules would be formed from the primordial soup; so far we've only been able to manufacture them in the lab.

I remember visiting SSRL about five years back as a site user. Protocol at the time was that you pretty much ate, slept, and worked at the beamline you were assigned to in 16-N hour shifts until your time ran out. Consequently there was food trash all over...and a huge ant infestation. Near the end of the time I joked that we ought to put one of the ants in the beam. About a year later, a study came out in Science investigating tracheal respiration in insects using synchrotron radiation.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5910/133

Abstract:

We present single-molecule, real-time sequencing data obtained from a DNA polymerase performing uninterrupted template-directed synthesis using four distinguishable fluorescently labeled deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs). We detected the temporal order of their enzymatic incorporation into a growing DNA strand with zero-mode waveguide nanostructure arrays, which provide optical observation volume confinement and enable parallel, simultaneous detection of thousands of single-molecule sequencing reactions. Conjugation of fluorophores to the terminal phosphate moiety of the dNTPs allows continuous observation of DNA synthesis over thousands of bases without steric hindrance. The data report directly on polymerase dynamics, revealing distinct polymerization states and pause sites corresponding to DNA secondary structure. Sequence data were aligned with the known reference sequence to assay biophysical parameters of polymerization for each template position. Consensus sequences were generated from the single-molecule reads at 15-fold coverage, showing a median accuracy of 99.3%, with no systematic error beyond fluorophore-dependent error rates.