Slashdot Mirror

This news article is in reference to a Science magazine article: (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;31 1/5762/864 "Essential Role of BDNF in the Mesolimbic Dopamine Pathway in Social Defeat Stress").

This study is complicated because it relies on two systems, 1) a molecular learning system; 2) a neural-network-based reward / social-interaction pathway system. Social anxiety appears to rely on an input that creates a state, such as the recipient of repeated agression, and then storing that state. Simply, you have to realize you are the subject of aggression, that has to elevate an internal state and then you have to remember that state.

Memory has many hallmarks, which often include genetic regulation. There term "memory" is somewhat vague in molecular terms, but with a little hand waving, we can just use the common definition. BDNF has long been associated with molecular memory. It is not surprising that BDNF could have an role in learning a behavioral response to repeated aggression that transduces the signal to lasting genetic modifications. This is not to belittle the findings, as it is a great demonstration of the in vivo need for BDNF and confirms many predictions. This was one of the major findings of the study. It seems like the system may be a great model to study learning and memory at the genetic level and perhaps molecular levels as well in vivo.

Anti-depressants similarly would be expected to have a role in the pathway since they can treat the symptoms in humans. The authors themselves state, "The observation that chronic but not acute treatments with antidepressant partly restore social approach behavior in defeated mice further validates this model," which I agree supports the model they are presenting to study a reduced form of social interaction pathologies in humans, since both respond to similar treatment strategies. It is likely that anti-depressants are acting upstream of BDNF by reducing the stress-related or aggression-recepient-related signaling that leads to memory formation, though in my cursory reading of their paper, I did not see if the two phenomena occluded, that is mutually blocked one another, an indication that they are in the same pathway.

Regarding the title of the summary article linked from Slashdot, "Mice Lacking Social Memory Molecule Take Bullying In Stride," I think it is ignorant of the larger picture because mice lacking BDNF will also be essentially retarded, having deficits in memory, learning and the visual system. I guess they will be blissfully happy, but I think paints too rosy of a picture.

Public utilities and common conveniences are VERY different. Try complaining to the Public Utilities Commission that you can't get cable because you're miles out in the boonies. Or how about bitching because your DSL connection has been broken for a month? Now, if your POTS service is gone, the PUC can step in, otherwise they don't care.

If there's a problem, people will stop using Verzion not because of some mysterious snooty preferential treatment, but because their speed sucks.

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

reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations"

Whow... that must be the ugliest link I ever saw!

Anthropogenic Climate Change is an accepted truth.

reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations"


It may delight you to try and slander those who accept ACC as valid. Hell, this "debate" on /. is probably going to become very heated with lots of trolls like yours. There is not a debate in scientific circles.

The ID "situation" on the other hand, is not a debate either. In both cases, the Theocratic and Plutocratic right are sowing FUD to influence the masses and solidify their positions. This idea is probably far outside your worldview, and will cause you to deride and mock me. Im no longer willing to expend the energy to try and convince "your type" nor am I going to apologize for not using language that coddles you.

Here are two facts:
There is no God. Sorry, you'll have to accept death.
Humanity is changing the atmosphere and climate. Sorry, you'll have to accept your actions.

Now, bring on the wacky lunatic insults.

Agreed.

Actually, they've done previous studies on these people to investigate whether they had innate arithmetic abilities by seeing if they could add large numbers, which they could only do approximately. As long as the numbers would fit on two hands, they were exact, but over that, not so much. It seems to me that the large number tests would just be comparing sizes of physical objects rather than actual math. (I don't think they gave them arabic numerals to add, but probably tick marks or other objects. It's just a guess: I don't know their exact methodology.)

What I find most revealing about this is their results on "handedness", which to me would help weed out pattern recognition versus spacial thinking (geometry). According to TFA, only 23% got it right... but 16% would get it right by guessing alone, so it's really not much better. Like the previous study, that seems to conflict with their conclusion rather than support it.

A lot of news agencies are picking up this story. The full text of the article they're using is in the Science "Policy Forum": Risks in Space from Orbiting Debris.

Seeing as how all believers judge a scientist's worth by whether or not he agrees with global warming, you can just go ahead and claim "100% of top scientists". We really don't expect anything better out of your crowd

Ok, how about we define scientists as...

the American Association of State Climatologists
or
the American Meteorological Society
or
the American Geophysical Union
or
the Geological Society of London
or
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
or
the Brazil National Academy of Science
or
the Canada National Academy of Science
or
the China National Academy of Science
or
the France National Academy of Science
or
the Germany National Academy of Science
or
the India National Academy of Science
or
the Italy National Academy of Science
or
the Japan National Academy of Science
or
the Russia National Academy of Science
or
the United Kingdom National Academy of Science
or
the United States National Academy of Science

All of which have stated the scientific consensus on Global Warming. The number of scientists who fundamentally dissagree with the Global Warming consensus is vanishingly small.

The Summary Report of the World Climate Change Conference reads "An overwhelming majority of the scientific community has accepted its general conclusions that climate change is occurring, is primarily a result of human emissions"

December 2004 issue of Science published an analysis of 928 abstracts of papers from refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, with the keywords "global climate change". 75% were found to either explicitly or implicitly accept the consensus Global Warming position; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate and thus took no position on current anthropogenic climate change; and none of the abstracts disagreed with the consensus position, which the author found to be "remarkable".

There is no dispute that atmospheric CO2 levels have skyrocketed in recent years (here's a good graph). There is no dispute that the surge in CO2 levels is due to the the burning of fossil fuels. There is no dispute that the earth is *currently* heated by 33C (91F) degrees due to *normal* greenhouse levels and effects. There is no dispute that the average earth temperature has increased over the last several decades. There is no dispute that the icecaps and glaciers and ancient permafrost have all been melting at an astounding rate.

The debate has turned strictly to how much human activity has already increased the average temperature, over exactly the other effects are, and attempting to predict what sorts of change changes it will cause in the future, and how big and how disruptive those changes will be.

It is absolutely no way that humans boosting CO2 levels by 50% (and the various other greehouse gasses) could somehow magically not have any effect at all.

If we know that mercury in food causes heath problems, and if we know that we are dumping tons of mercury into the sea at a rapidly increasing rate, and if mercurly levels in the fish we are catching and eating is rapidly skyrocketing to unpercidented levels, the question is no longer whether we are poisoning ourselves. The scientific questions are then how much are we posioning ourselves, how much worse will it get if we keep increasing the rate of mercury dumping into the ocean, and what what other effects it is having. The political questions are then whether it is a enough problem that we should do something about it, and if so what we should do about it.

-

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/575 7/22

It's not quite the first time. Zhang's group in Berkeley published a paper in spring last year (Science 308, 534-537) describing experiments on the silver superlens, which works at optical frequencies. There have been other similar experiments since then.

Yes, since Zonk posted the same story yesterday. That referenced the BBC, this the SMH. A moment's searching brings you to the original story at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Science magazine.

3) Mutations occur but almost always bring harm and NEVER add new information to a genetic chain. New information is required for one species to change or evolve into another and this does not occur in observable nature anywhere. Infact, DNA which was discovered after the evolution theory is a huge slap in the face to evolution and a dramatic proof of intelligent design.

The word information, in this theory, is used in a special sense that must not be confused with its ordinary usage. In particular information must not be confused with meaning.
In fact, two messages, one of which is heavily loaded with meaning and the other of which is pure nonsense, can be exactly equivalent, from the present viewpoint, as regards information.

Did you even read the articles? I highly recommend them - very accessible and good reads. And, BTW, a third of the main 'evolution in action' article is dedicated to HapMap. They make an excellent case for how evolutionary science has had some really big discoveries this year. ID only gets mentioned once, in the weekly editorial. But with things like the comparison between the chimp and human genome and observations of speciation without geographical barriers, it's clear that this wasn't simply a political decision (although it might certainly of played a role). Check it out - it's all accessible without a subscription.

I would be inclined to agree with you. Science (the magazine) is making its stance known in the whole debacle (in case anyone didn't know already). To me the science article here wasn't that convincing. Most of it was genetics anyways - one could argue genetics was the big breakthrough. (personally I'm a fan of runner up #2...)

-everphilski-

You're right, science is not about voting. It's about being right. Now, my question to you, and where I smell the big rat, is why pick that one paper? Why not pick the ones that debunk it? You state that "Repeating the same mistake 10,000 times is repeating the mistake 10,000 times." But how do you know it's a mistake? You redo the expirement, you cross check, you let other people have a crack at it. And if they find the same stuff? Well, it's probably you didn't make a mistake. Note that it doesn't mean that all papers and studies have to agree. Nor that it becomes "truth". It simply means that it looks like your model is able to accurately predict future developments.

Here's where you are dishonest: Popper and his philosophy of science is about empirical falsifiability. This does not mean that all it takes is one person to state something for a theory to come crumbling down. And research papers are exactly that: one person presenting a theory, providing evidence that is claimed to support the theory and inviting others to check it. Simply publishing a paper means nothing in and of itself. Got that? It's still an opinion. Just a well-supported one - or so you hope. How do you distinguish the cranks from the good stuff? If you don't know climatology, you go by where the consensus is pointing. Judging from your arguments, which all reference arguments (instead of argumenting on your own and citing data sets for support), you'd be better off going with the consensus.

Oh, and just because I can, here's the latest say on the satellite anomaly, curtesy of 15 minutes on Google: it's the orbital decay, stupid.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by your insistence to rely on a few flawed papers instead of listening to what people say. Apparently, it's now a proven fact that people tend to discard information if it contradicts their pre-existing beliefs. Even in that information is overwhelming and the pre-existing belief random. I'd say you're exhibit A for that behavior.

Who else do you know who has given half their disposable income? Let's compare Gates giving with some other billionaires who aren't so unpopular on slashdot. Larry Ellison: According to this thru Ellison Medical Foundation, Larry is giving $100 million over 5 years for research on aging. That's pocket change for a guy worth $17 billion. Warren Buffet, weighing in at $40 billion, gives away $12 million per year, according to BusinessWeek. Again, pocket change, though Buffet says he plans to eventually give 99% of his money to his foundation.

Here's an old story from 2001 about silicon valley philanthropy. According to it, only David Packard (foundation gives $500m/year) is in the same class as Gates.

At the bottom of this you'll find a Nov 2005 table listing 18 Americans worth over $10 billion. Have any of them given as large a percentage as Gates? I can't find any evidence if they have. My conclusion: compared to billionaires or to ordinary folks, Gates have given away an extrordinary proportion of his net worth.

By the way, for those of you unfamiliar with entities like the Gates, Ellison, and Packard foundations, it works like this. You can give away whatever amount of your wealth you want in any given year, and that amount will be deducted from the income on which you are taxed. One way to give it away is to establish a 501C(3) charity, such as these foundations, and endow it with a big chunk of cash. The foundation is required by law to give away at least 5% of its net worth per year. It also needs to be independent of its endower, so it can't be used as a vehicle to manipulate or control e.g. Microsoft. The Gates foundation got a $20 billion block of Microsoft stock from Gates in the late '90s and immediately sold the MS stock for more conservative investments. I assume it continues to invest its endowment and to give away the requisite 5%, which this year tops $1.1 billion. I believe Gates' father directs the foundation. From what I have seen, the foundation has a special interest in eradicating diseases in the developing world; hence their interest in tuberculosis and malaria. But heck, why listen to me when you cand surf the foundation and read about its priorities.

Gee, look at that - get a couple of ground weather station in the artic, look at the local surface temperature and conclude that there is no global warming effect. If only one of those scientists who spend every day studying this had actually had such a good idea. But just the someone might wonder - what is the connection between the ground temperature at these places and the extent of sea ice? Well, it seems that sea ice has been decreasing over the last 40 years: see http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/286/544 6/1934 [science] But, by looking at those two temperature time series you probably wouldnt guesss it. The primary claim here is that polar bears are dying because artic sea ice is retreating to a greater than normal extent. This tallies with predictions that climate change science makes.

Anyone interested on reading the official Science description of what has happened/is happening can read their press release here.

http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/hwang2005/science _statement_v2.pdf

The info here should be updated regularly.

I read this in the Science magazine site http://sciencemag.org/. Here's the link to the news http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/575 4/1595/.

I read this in the Science magazine site http://sciencemag.org/. Here's the link to the news http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/575 4/1595/.

Anyway, the point is that the paper (link for those with access) claimed to have produced 11 different clones, with DNA fingerprinting and photos of their morphology. Whether through error or fraud, and it looks more and more like fraud, both of those lines of evidence seem to be badly screwed up.

By the way -- anyone still believing that ridiculous claim from a few weeks ago about the Korean team curing spinal cord breakage with stem cells...?

and yet the Antarctic ice sheets are colder than ever and getting bigger and thicker.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/295 /5554/476

It's not that bad. The only more conclusive fossil evidence for eating something is if you find stomach contents inside a skeleton, so the general interpretation is reasonable, even if the suggestion of full-time grass grazing isn't.

Regardless of whether you think the assignment of these coprolites to dinosaurs is correct, even the discovery that grasses were present in the Cretaceous is a huge discovery, because, until this paper, it was thought grasses did not show up until after the dinosaurs were extinct. Their pollen is not known until well into the Cenozoic Era.

Other articles:
National Geographic, with picture
BBC

The original article in Science (but you need a subscription to view the full article): Prasad et al. 2005

Apparently the grass is only a small component of the plant debris in the coprolite, so, even though it appears to be there, it was apparently a minor part of the diet. I also worry a little about the possibility of contamination with modern grass phytoliths (mineral structures produced within the vascular tissues of the grasses), but I assume the reviewers would have scrutinized that possibility very carefully.

The importance of amateurs to science: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/284/541 1/55

Also, you seem to have no clue if such experiments were ever carried out by a reputable research laboratory. We don't normally look to grade-school hobbyists as the front line of cold, hard, scientific fact.

Any ideas, or do you get all your scientific facts out of Popular Science?

You must be right up there with the "Intelligent Design" people. The Amateur Scientist column was from Scientific American - but hey, its not my fault if you're so backwoods as to not recognize the title.

They also had columns on how to make your own x-ray machine for $10 (it would be several hundred bucks today), using copper tubing and lots of wire to make an oudin coil, and how to make the vacuum tube, etc., including the safety prcautions to take when testing it. Another article detailed how to use off-the-shelf parts (compressors run in reverse, substituting a silicon-based oil for their regular lube) to make a high-vaccuum chamber to look for cosmic radiation.

Now on to the rest:

You've just answered the question "what was the radiation type?". The question I asked was "what was the radiation source?" Please tell me more about your superior education.

Also, you seem to have no clue if such experiments were ever carried out by a reputable research laboratory. We don't normally look to grade-school hobbyists as the front line of cold, hard, scientific fact.

Again, the articles were designed to stimulate people, and get them to do their own experiments. But I guess you don't realize that science has ALWAYS depended on amateurs for a large part of the discoveries. Astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics - a lot of the important discoveries were by non-professionals. We can't afford to just junk all the stuff that was ever produced by people when they were not "working as scientists". Case in point - arguably the greatest discovery of the last century - was produced by some dude working as a patent clerk.

You come across as a pompous buffoon. But that's okay, because this way everyone can see that what you post is pure uninformed drivel.

It amazes me how people can post while being ignorant of the actual debate.

Well, to quote from actual Science (well, at least the magazine):

The relatively modest increase in carbon export does not appear to be large enough to make iron fertilization a viable method for sequestering anthropogenic CO2, however.

This Week in Science

The full paper reference is:

Robotic Observations of Enhanced Carbon Biomass and Export at 55S During SOFeX
James K. B. Bishop, Todd J. Wood, Russ E. Davis, Jeffrey T. Sherman
Science, Vol 304, Issue 5669, 417-420 , 16 April 2004

Also, less in magnitude is hard to say since Wilma set a record for the lowest pressure reading ever recorded in an Atlantic hurricane at 882mb (record lowest world wide belongs to Typhoon Tip in the northwest Pacific at 870mb).

there is no Pandemic. It too is a fiction. Bird Flu is indegenous to the Americas. It in no way fits the profile of a "Pandemic." It is too lethal to be a viable pathogen. It kills itself off.

That logic is simply ridiculous, with the high population densities of cities and the speed and frequency with which people travel. You're seriously suggesting that a human-transmissible bird flu wouldn't be a "viable pathogen" because it would kill everyone in Taiwan too quickly to spread? Even if that were true, which is isn't, wouldn't you expect the Taiwanese to be concerned about that?

The idea that a human-transmissible bird flu would be dangerous has already been demonstrated by the 1918 flu epidemic that killed 20-50 million people. The 1918 virus was recently reconstructed, and it was found to be very similar to the bird flu viruses that are around in Asia today. The actual scientific paper, available here states:

"Until now, the exceptional virulence of the 1918 pandemic influenza virus has been a question of historical curiosity. Herein, we demonstrate the successful reconstruction of the 1918 pandemic virus in order to understand more fully the virulence of this virus and possibly of other human influenza pandemic viruses. Because the emergence of another pandemic virus is considered likely, if not inevitable (25), characterization of the 1918 virus may enable us to recognize the potential threat posed by new influenza virus strains, and it will shed light on the prophylactic and therapeutic countermeasures that will be needed to control pandemic viruses."

Tamiflu, assuming Bird Flu were to mutate into a dangerous flu "Pandemic", would be of no value. The disease kills in about 9 days. It is symptomatic only 2 of those days. By the time a person knew they were getting sick, getting a prescription would not save them. Its value is probably null anyway as it appears it is ineffective against the disease. Its only value would be prophalaxis and that is questionable.

A scientific paper demonstrating Tamiflu's effectiveness against the H5N1 virus is here .

A paper demonstrating Tamiflu's effectiveness against the 1918 flu virus (which is similar to the virus we fear will emerge) is here.

There are a bunch of beautiful visualizations at this site http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/vis2005/show/ssin tro.dtl

>> Slab oceans are not used in state-of-the-art climate models.

> Climateprediction.net uses a slab model of the ocean

climateprediction.net is a desktop model, not state of the art. I qualified it deliberately. Simpler models have their uses, but if you are focused on models

>> Arrhenius was wrong

While I appreciate your reference's using our U of C gateway, I think his calculation is nonsense. He obtains an emissivity using a fixed temperature profile, then feeds that back into the Arrhenius equation. But, of course that is the wrong temperature profile.

Nobody says Arrhenius was quantitatively right. He was conceptually right and in the right ballpark. A model which didn't have any CO2 sensitivity would be complete nonsense.

> Credentials battle:

I have a PhD in high performance modeling of ocean dynamics.

> Tell me, what is your knowledge of thermal transfer between discrete interhaline countercurrents?

None whatsoever. Google has none either. "Your search - "interhaline countercurrents" - did not match any documents. " What the hell does "interhaline" mean? Google did turn up one hit on the word. Check it out!

>scorecard

I easily identified several points of misinformation...

> Name the risks

Flooding, storms, droughts, pestilence, famine, massive forced migration...

> petition

The "petition" with 17000 names is old news, and rather controversial news at that:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_ Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine
and
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/280/53 63/509b

> The IPCC is a political group

You really are a piece of work, you know.

Everyone on the scientific working group is a prominent published scientist.

Their position has been reinforced by other "political" groups like the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The National Academy of Science, The American Meteorlogical Society and the Amereican Geophysical Union.

I really don't understand how people can get things so totally backwards. I try to assume that people aren't willing to maliciously damage the entire planet for short term gain, but stuff like the parent posting makes me wonder.

mt

However, in contradiction to many predictions, the intensity of anomalous cosmic ray (ACR) helium did not peak at the shock, indicating that the ACR source is not in the shock region local to Voyager 1.

Wow. Touched a nerve there didn' I? Emotional tirade aside, you were right about one thing, I was in a hurry when I typed that post. I was eating a late lunch after a long day of troubleshooting.

Regardless, I will now take the proper time to address your concerns.

Perhaps I was a bit hasty in attacking your use of the word "proving", but it smacked of the semantic word games played by Humanities students worldwide. The game is to use emotionally laden words to convince people; rather than actual facts or objective science. By using the word "proving" (regardless of colloquial definitions) you introduce an emotional aspect into peoples' cognitive processes as they absorb the sentence (Hrm... well this theory is supported, but he's right, they can't actually *prove* it can they?).

Whether or not it's what you intended (and I don't believe it is what you intended - given that my comments made you so angry), it introduces an element of emotional/mental equivocation in the mind of the reader. I abhor such trickery (had you done it on purpose) and maybe came off a little strong because of it.

As for your claim that distinguishing between evidence and coherence is redundant, might I direct you to the following book by the good Prof. Thagard on the subject. Or you could go straight to his website and read the articles on the subject he has published in peer-reviewed journals.

Evidence and coherence are not the same thing, and distinguishing between them is not redundant. Evidence is (essentially) empirical observations, whereas coherence is a process akin to (but largely superseding) logical deduction by which we arrive at certain conclusions/end states.

Now for the reasons I did not post any references to support my claims, I was (as I mentioned earlier) in a hurry and secondly, there had been an ample amount of supporting references already posted in this very forum. Here's a sample:

The original article from Science:

http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/katrina/#new/

An article from a reputable Japanese project building climate simulations:

http://www.prime-intl.co.jp/kyosei-2nd/PDF/24/11_m urakami.pdf/

Information from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Tempe rature_Comparison.png/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming/

An article from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (which has references to further supporting articles published in such peer-reviewed journals as Science, Climate Dynamics and the Journal of Climate):

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html/

An excellent comment from this discussion itself:

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=162830 &cid=13606953/

So there you have it, references and data supporting the arguments I made in my post. As to addressing the arguments that you made in your original post (in so far as you made any) the above references should suffice. Your numbered list amounts to nothing more than an enumeration of possible alternatives, with no data, evidence or references whatsoever to demonstrate that any of them is more likely than the currently accepted scientific consensus.

Also, you accuse me of not RTFA, well, I did, and by the time I got through with it, I had noticed many of the discrepencies pointed out i

Simply put:

the sea surface temperature in the mid-atlantic is now 1 deg F higher on average than it has ever been since we started measuring it.

Topical Storms derive their energy from the surface waters.

This means that more energy is now available to the storms and any given storm is likely to be larger. Just like a fire, more fuel doesn't always mean a bigger burn, but it lifts a limiting factor.

Now even if you take the number of tropical disturbances in any given year to be constant over time, both the frequency and intensity of hurricanes will increase given higher SST. The frequency increases because what we call a hurricane (64kt sustained) is an arbitrary threshold and if each tropical storm is say 5% more intense, then for any given year more tropical storms will graduate into the "hurricane" class.

This increase in sea surface temperature combined with the fact that sea level on the US east coast has been rising by one foot per century since the end of the last glaciation, due to tectonic tilting of the continental plate, in themselves mean that we are much more vulnerable to catastrophic storm surge events. They don't just have to happen at high-tide anymore, +/-2 hrs from high-tide might do the same damage, and smaller storms (say cat-3) might do the same damage as a historical major storm (say cat-5).

That is already extant hard data, as is the worldwide retreat of land based glaciers and ice caps. (Kilimanjaro's snow cap will be gone for the first time in 11,000 years. The Larsen-B ice shelf which is just as old is now gone too..) This has already happened. Can't argue with that. Less surface ice means a change in the Earth's albedo and further warming at high latitudes. Hard to argue with that one to.

Now if you buy the greenhouse gas / climate change scenario that the vast majority of climatologists are so worried about* (or if you are not so self-delusional to at least consider the precautionary principal) you might want to add future sea level rise into that equation. The models say that in the next 100 years the sea level rise due to the melted ice-water and thermal expansion of a warmer ocean will be between 0.1 and 0.9 meters. So say 1/2 a meter or 1.5 foot on top on the historic rise. Also consider that the gradient on the east coast is about 1 in 30, so a 2.5' rise means the sea now goes 75 foot further inland. Also consider that about 50% of Florida is something like less than 15 feet above sea level and that hurricane storm surges are often on the order of 14 feet above SL.

+_____________

This is something to be worried about.

[*] http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/onpi/webextra.ns f/web/climate
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/570 2/1686

I won't even mention western boundary currents affecting the sea level or the methyl hydrate doomsday scenario (if the deep ocean gets up to 4deg C, an exothermic reaction will take place and we're all fuct)

Most of the Free Republic article was spent summarizing the science article, which concluded as was quoted. The conclusion they reached first mentioned the observed trend from satellite data over the past 30 years: an increasing frequency of intense hurricanes. They also mentioned that this observed trend is consistent with predictions made by an extremely sophicasted simulator, such as this one(from the science article's references). The simulator's function is to provide predictions of hurricane type, location, and frequency based on as wide of a variety of climate conditions as possible, and to provide them as accurately as possible (which is tested by comparison with observations).

So the simulators can accurately predict some trends in hurricane activity. Here that trend was an increasing frequency of intense hurricanes, given an increase in CO2 concentration and an increase in ocean temperatures, which is what has been observed over the last 30 years.

Since the Free Republic author didn't like the conclusion reached by the scientist, he tries to append some non-satellite data to the beginning of the study and make his own new study. Any numbskull would notice that the data he appended is much noiser than the data in the study, and he clearly isn't qualified to attempt such a study (which is why his article wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal like Science).

The best thing to do in these situations is school yourself and then come to your own conclusions on this matter.

Anthropogenic Global warming is a reality.
From The American Association for the Advancement of Science's Journal Science
"Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations"

Global Warming causes sea-surface temperatures to rise.
From NASA:
""There has been a strong warming trend over the past 30 years, a trend that has been shown to be due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere"
Special Multimedia Bonus Goodness!

Sea-surface energy fuel hurricanes
From Nasa:
"Hurricane winds are sustained by the heat energy of the ocean, so the ocean is cooled as the hurricane passes and the energy is extracted to power the winds.

PROFIT!

Sometimes, the big two (N and S) prone to publishing for political (we must suck up to this Author) reasons. New Scientist, by virtue of being a more general - don't need a graduate degree to be able to read a broad range of it's content - publication is more resistant to these kinds of problems

I like New Scientist but put more faith in Nature and Science. There are also some good narrow focus ".org's" out there such as RealClimate

I also like the Gaurdian. From TFA, "What did you think of this article? Mail your responses to life@guardian.co.uk and include your name and address."

I think every slashdotter who agrees with TFA sentiments should take a couple of minutes to write and suggest that they promote the author to "science editor" (if they have one?). Be sure to include any relevant qualifications (eg:B.Sc, Dr, etc) in your title.

We also know that the 17th century observations of the sun showed very few spots, whereas today spots are quite numerous. That's another variability.

Finally, several scientific papers suggest that solar activity variations have a major effect on the climate, much higher than was previously thought. There is a 208-year cycle that generated drought in South America during recent history, and these solar-forced droughts killed the Maya empire among other victims.

References: "A Variable Sun and the Maya Collapse", Kerr, Science, Vol 292, Issue 5520, 1293 , 18 May 2001 and Solar Forcing of Drought Frequency in the Maya Lowlands, Hodell, Science, Vol 292, Issue 5520, 1367-1370 , 18 May 2001.

So the sun most probably holds the key to long-term climate changes. We need more studies, because obviously, after a few decades of space observations, we don't know enough about cycles that last centuries.

We also know that the 17th century observations of the sun showed very few spots, whereas today spots are quite numerous. That's another variability.

Finally, several scientific papers suggest that solar activity variations have a major effect on the climate, much higher than was previously thought. There is a 208-year cycle that generated drought in South America during recent history, and these solar-forced droughts killed the Maya empire among other victims.

References: "A Variable Sun and the Maya Collapse", Kerr, Science, Vol 292, Issue 5520, 1293 , 18 May 2001 and Solar Forcing of Drought Frequency in the Maya Lowlands, Hodell, Science, Vol 292, Issue 5520, 1367-1370 , 18 May 2001.

So the sun most probably holds the key to long-term climate changes. We need more studies, because obviously, after a few decades of space observations, we don't know enough about cycles that last centuries.

Had Taco bothered to post this story which I've had in my Journal since June, this story would have been a nice addition to the historical evolution of dinosaurs to birds. Instead, (some) people are surprised at this finding.

I love how anti-climate change folk, just like creationists, love to pretend that there's not a near scientific consensus on the subject (in this case, anthropogenic climate change). They usually make clear their lack of knowlege on the subject by saying things like:

"determination of how much ozone was in Antarctica's atmosphere prior to the industrial revolution"

CO2 does not destroy ozone. CFCs destroy ozone. They were not developed until 1928, and didn't become widespread until the 1960s. You're confusing ozone studies with temperature and CO2-level studies.

Of course, even in physics, experimentalists are not completely safe from bad statistics.

The proton-boron method using a laser reminds me of colliding beam fusion, which I first heard about in 1997. Interesting thing here is that energy capture occurs electromagnetically using a "decelerator." Read about it at:

http://fusion.ps.uci.edu/beam/introb.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/278/534 2/1419?ijkey=A.zNwOzIwyrKA
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/537 5/307a
http://www.stormingmedia.us/01/0116/A011653.html

The proton-boron method using a laser reminds me of colliding beam fusion, which I first heard about in 1997. Interesting thing here is that energy capture occurs electromagnetically using a "decelerator." Read about it at:

http://fusion.ps.uci.edu/beam/introb.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/278/534 2/1419?ijkey=A.zNwOzIwyrKA
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/537 5/307a
http://www.stormingmedia.us/01/0116/A011653.html

Research abstract: Suppression of Aging in Mice by the Hormone Klotho

A defect in Klotho gene expression in mice accelerates the degeneration of multiple age-sensitive traits. Here we show that overexpression of Klotho in mice extends life span. Klotho protein functions as a circulating hormone that binds to a cell-surface receptor and represses intracellular signals of insulin and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF1), an evolutionarily conserved mechanism for extending life span. Alleviation of aging-like phenotypes in Klotho-deficient mice was observed by perturbing insulin/IGF1 signaling, suggesting that Klotho-mediated inhibition of insulin/IGF1 signaling contributes to its anti-aging properties. Klotho protein may function as an anti-aging hormone in mammals.


News of the Week: Boosting Gene Extends Mouse Life Span

A protein named after the Greek goddess who spins life's thread has joined the short list of ways to extend a mouse's natural life span. Whereas lab mice can live about 2 years, mice engineered to overproduce this protein, called Klotho, have celebrated third birthdays, Makoto Kuro-o of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and his colleagues report online in this week's Science Express (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1112766). The mutant rodents represent a rare case of a single gene substantially influencing life span in mammals.

"I'm not a dreamer; I don't think we're going to find a master control gene for aging," says Harry Dietz, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who studies Klotho's counterpart in humans. But, he says, "this is the next best thing. We have found something that perhaps has the ability to make old age richer."

But Kuro-o, who discovered the gene that encodes Klotho, worries that "too much Klotho might not be very good." The mice he created with extra Klotho look like animals at risk of diabetes. There's also disagreement over how Klotho works.

Mice lacking Klotho die young, after developing arteriosclerosis and other age-related conditions much earlier than normal (Science, 7 November 1997, p. 1013). Still, many doubted that extra Klotho would lengthen life span. With a short-lived mutant, "you always have to worry that it's just sick," says Cynthia Kenyon, who studies aging at the University of California, San Francisco.

So, Kuro-o, his postdoctoral fellows Hiroshi Kurosu and Masaya Yamamoto, and colleagues at universities in the U.S. and Japan created mice overexpressing the gene for Klotho. While Klotho is produced only in the kidney and brain, a fragment of it slips into the blood and may act like a hormone. Males making extra Klotho lived up to 30% longer than normal males, and the mutant females survived 20% longer than normal counterparts. As with lab animals coaxed to have lengthy life spans, the altered rodents had fertility problems. They produced about half the expected number of offspring.

Males appeared more affected by Klotho than females did. Their blood, unlike that of females, contained more insulin than normal mice. This suggested that the male mutants were somewhat resistant to insulin--a symptom, in extreme forms, of diabetes. The Klotho-boosted males and females had normal glucose levels, a surprise because untreated diabetes causes high glucose. These features don't appear in other long-lived mice, which are usually insulin-sensitive and have low glucose.

Klotho's effects on insulin could connect

Research abstract: Suppression of Aging in Mice by the Hormone Klotho

A defect in Klotho gene expression in mice accelerates the degeneration of multiple age-sensitive traits. Here we show that overexpression of Klotho in mice extends life span. Klotho protein functions as a circulating hormone that binds to a cell-surface receptor and represses intracellular signals of insulin and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF1), an evolutionarily conserved mechanism for extending life span. Alleviation of aging-like phenotypes in Klotho-deficient mice was observed by perturbing insulin/IGF1 signaling, suggesting that Klotho-mediated inhibition of insulin/IGF1 signaling contributes to its anti-aging properties. Klotho protein may function as an anti-aging hormone in mammals.


News of the Week: Boosting Gene Extends Mouse Life Span

A protein named after the Greek goddess who spins life's thread has joined the short list of ways to extend a mouse's natural life span. Whereas lab mice can live about 2 years, mice engineered to overproduce this protein, called Klotho, have celebrated third birthdays, Makoto Kuro-o of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and his colleagues report online in this week's Science Express (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1112766). The mutant rodents represent a rare case of a single gene substantially influencing life span in mammals.

"I'm not a dreamer; I don't think we're going to find a master control gene for aging," says Harry Dietz, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who studies Klotho's counterpart in humans. But, he says, "this is the next best thing. We have found something that perhaps has the ability to make old age richer."

But Kuro-o, who discovered the gene that encodes Klotho, worries that "too much Klotho might not be very good." The mice he created with extra Klotho look like animals at risk of diabetes. There's also disagreement over how Klotho works.

Mice lacking Klotho die young, after developing arteriosclerosis and other age-related conditions much earlier than normal (Science, 7 November 1997, p. 1013). Still, many doubted that extra Klotho would lengthen life span. With a short-lived mutant, "you always have to worry that it's just sick," says Cynthia Kenyon, who studies aging at the University of California, San Francisco.

So, Kuro-o, his postdoctoral fellows Hiroshi Kurosu and Masaya Yamamoto, and colleagues at universities in the U.S. and Japan created mice overexpressing the gene for Klotho. While Klotho is produced only in the kidney and brain, a fragment of it slips into the blood and may act like a hormone. Males making extra Klotho lived up to 30% longer than normal males, and the mutant females survived 20% longer than normal counterparts. As with lab animals coaxed to have lengthy life spans, the altered rodents had fertility problems. They produced about half the expected number of offspring.

Males appeared more affected by Klotho than females did. Their blood, unlike that of females, contained more insulin than normal mice. This suggested that the male mutants were somewhat resistant to insulin--a symptom, in extreme forms, of diabetes. The Klotho-boosted males and females had normal glucose levels, a surprise because untreated diabetes causes high glucose. These features don't appear in other long-lived mice, which are usually insulin-sensitive and have low glucose.

Klotho's effects on insulin could connect

According to the Science article(subscription required) abstract a stack of 18 sheets had a strength of 465MPa/(g/cm^3) (high strength steel listed as 125 MPa/(g/cm^3)).

They also built an OLED of 500 cd/m^2 with a onset voltage of 2.4V.

According to the Science article(subscription required) abstract a stack of 18 sheets had a strength of 465MPa/(g/cm^3) (high strength steel listed as 125 MPa/(g/cm^3)).

They also built an OLED of 500 cd/m^2 with a onset voltage of 2.4V.

According to the Science article(subscription required) abstract a stack of 18 sheets had a strength of 465MPa/(g/cm^3) (high strength steel listed as 125 MPa/(g/cm^3)).

They also built an OLED of 500 cd/m^2 with a onset voltage of 2.4V.