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How about this article in Science about what "the consensus" means:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/306/ 5702/1686?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT= &author1=oreskes&searchid=1103210845409_5389&store d_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&fdate=10/1/1995&tdate=12/31 /2004

This time when you read Mann et al or the IPCC report (knowing it has the weight of "consensus" and knowing what "consensus" means in this setting) it might have more of an effect on you. Maybe you won't be swayed by the 'balanced' reporting you see in the future. Maybe you'll see the riff on Goofus & Gallant in the humorous context for which it was intended (maybe you didn't know this was a riff; never read Highlights when you were little?). The public opinion on climate change has been bought and sold by lobbyists (that's the joke, Gallant isn't a scientist, he's a lobbyist); I see no problem poking fun at this. It's not about 'religion' or 'zealotry' it's about satire.

Anyway, sorry you had to take some guff from the haters.

Hey, in what sense did ou mean divided?

Divided like 50-50, 60-40, 70-30, 80-20, 90-10, or 99-1?

What's funny here is that other scientists have researched the "consensus" of climate scientists. Either read their analysis or do your own and then get back once you've learned the answer. Then compare your new understanding to your use of the word divided and tell me how it compares to the splits above. You might learn that "A majority of climate scientists argue that global-warming has significant anthropogenic factors".

Semantics is important in this case because one could fairly say that "humanity is still divided on whether the Earth is flat." It is of course intellectually dishonest to frame the debate in such a way.

In summation, use precise language. Otherwise your statement is meaningless and adds nothing. But then again, saying "a minority of climate scientists discount human carbon forcing" (i.e., using a meaningful qualifier) undermines your agenda.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/306/ 5702/1686?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT= &author1=oreskes&searchid=1103210845409_5389&store d_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&fdate=10/1/1995&tdate=12/31 /2004

If you have a valid critique of this majority, feel free to submit it to Science, you might get published!

In return, maybe there is something you can help me with. Whenever these types of stories turn up here, there is a flood of posts from the US saying there is no problem, its all a liberal plot, etc.

Why is this?

You're the one's that get more hurricanes, more desertification, more reliance on oil based propping up of your civilisation. Frankly, why would it matter WHY the average global climate temperature was rising - you're still screwed if you sit around and do nothing.

There has got to be something in the US education system that makes this type of behaviour prevalent - climate change, peak oil, kennedy assassination - you seem to love to ignore common sense and nit pick on some small item of data to try and construct some alternative view of the world which strains credulity?

Why?

We've seen such things before, and we've known that water ice exists at the poles. I'm fairly sure this crater has been the subject of a peer-reviewed paper in the past, but I haven't done a complete search of the literature, and I'm not sure the HRSC people have either. MGS MOC saw this crater as early as 2000 (and possibly early).

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e01_e06/images/E03 /E0302478.html
http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/m19_m23/images/M23 /M2301915.html
http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/m19_m23/images/M20 /M2001204.html
http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e01_e06/images/E02 /E0200677.html
(there are more, but I don't feel like posting all of them. . .)

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bi bcode=1976Sci...194.1341K&db_key=AST&data_type=HTM L&format=
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/1080497v1.pd f
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=water+ice+mart ian+crater&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Search

It's an interesting phrase. Most often, in discussions of economics, the "tragedy" is assumed to be the overuse by one person of a common resource --specifically, the overgrazing of a village's common land because each farmer figures they can add a few more sheep to their flock. This tragedy scenario is used to argue that common resources will be destroyed by use, and therefore must be removed from common ownership and owned by some particular person or organization in order to preserve them.

Except that the whole idea is historically inaccurate. In reality, this scenario was avoided by a complex set of social norms. Everyone in the village had a stake in keeping the commons useful and generally managed to keep it so, despite the theories of economists. This worked until the land was enclosed -- divided up and put under private ownership, less practical on a small scale, and generally forcing small farms out, or forcing them to rent from a few giant landowners. In general, the few large landowners profited, and the many smaller landowners became poorer.

It's been noticed by many that the copyright of music and other intellectual "property" is the same kind of enclosure. It takes valuable things -- Beethoven's music, say -- out of common hands and places them into the hands of a few giant corporations. And in the case of the IP commons, we don't even have Hardin's argument for enclosure: no matter how many people listen to a piece of music, or run a piece of software, it's not going to get used up or worn out.

ID does not make any testable predictions (how do you test for a supreme being?) and as a result cannot be considered a theory. In fact, those who support ID go out of their way to show the flaws of Darwins theory but never show why ID is better.

It's not about logic. It's about the scientific process which requires facts to validate or invalidate a theory. No such proof is ever given by the ID side.

This whole argument is useless since Darwins theory has been shown to be the correct one thanks to both horses and birds. In both cases these animals evolved from other animals. In the case of horses the fossil evidence (see, there's that proof I'm talking about) shows that horses were not always horses. They are descended from creatures roughly the size of a large dog and can in no way be considered a horse.

As far as birds are concerned the proof, while not absolute, is all but confirmed especially in light of this article (which was rejected for submission) which describes how the bone of a T. Rex was examined and found to have a similar structure to only one living relative: female birds who had just ovulated.

Combine the above information with the overall skeletal structure of birds with those of T. Rex (and other dinosaurs), throw in archaeopteryx and you have another link in the chain.

Remember, nowhere does Darwin say that all creatures must have evolved from other forms. He only says that creatures may evolve. Since both horses, and to a large extent, birds have been shown to have evolved from other creatures, the theory has been proven to be correct. Even leaving out birds gives one such proof of the theory and one is all you need.

The issue isn't about using logic, it's about people wanting to believe that somehow we're unique. That there is a reason for our existence. The idea that we're born, live and die just like the billions of other creatures on this planet is too much for their egos to take. They need to find a reason for their existence. If that reason is religion, so be it. Just don't try to masquerade religion for science.

The article on why humans have so few genes does some nice hand-waving but fails to answer the core question. Sure, the genome can do some interesting combinatoric stuff to get more out of a given length of DNA, but that does not answer the question -- why should humans have fewer genes than something so simple as a mustard plant or rice?

I suspect the answer is related to human (mammalian) mobility and thermoregulation. If a rice plant gets stuck in a hot place, all it can do is use a different part of its genome to make proteins suited for hotter weather. In contrast, people can move out of the sun while their body basically maintains a constant temperature. Similarly if the plant faces too much cold, too much water, too little water, to much sun, too little sun, too much salt, etc. it can do nothing but sit there and hopefully pull something out of its genome that can cope.

The point is that plants must adapt to whatever their environment gives them much more so than humans. Human mobility and the ability to modify its environment means it is less reliant on gene-based adaptability.

What Can Replace Cheap Oil--and When?

Which begs the question: How does one replace something that does not exist?

Have you a link to a paper in a reputable journal that discusses this finding?

I find the resistance to taking even the slightest measure a little ridiculous. Much like evolution, no one has definitively proved anything. Also like evolution, the basic mechanics are of global warming are understood and the theory has been sitting around 100+ years waiting for someone to poke holes in it (GW was first posulated in 1890). No one has.

In simpliest terms: There is no doubt adding large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will tend to raise temperatures. There is no doubt that we are adding large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. There is no doubt that temperatures are rising. Q.E.D.

Of course some apparently smarter people disagree.

Oh, and from about this time back in 2003:

And New Scientist.com reports that a decade-long storm of galactic dust is entering our Solar System and some scientists worry that it might be thick enough to effect the sun's warming of the Earth. They ask if a storm like this caused the past ice ages and mass extinction.

this isn't a bad read either.

The article has been already published by scientific periodicals- see SCIENCE Vol. 308, issue 5721, pq. 518 for the full article on mice hibernation, and SCIENTIFIC AMERICA June 2005 for a useful overview of the entire subject.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/308/572 1/518 (requires account)

Simply, when oxygen levels are really low, cells shut down. When there is not enough O2 to live, but just enough for the body cells to detect, cells start producing lactic acid, free radicals, and other nasty stuff that eventually kills off your cells, usually 36 hours after you yourself have died. (Rigor mortis is when the muscles tense up because of lactic acid, like cramps after a hard run. When the cells die, they muscles relax.) If you just got the cells to shut down, the human is clinically 'dead' as in they are not breathing, but the cells are, if belonging to a dead person, not dying.

Basically, while you are 'dead', your individual cells are still alive, but they lack the oxygen they need for their metabolisms (because your not breathing). The cells keep trying to use oxygen-dependent methods of living because there still is a residue of oxygen in your blood, but not enough to sustain them. It's like running. When your heart can't supply enough oxygen to your legs, the muscles use another way of making energy that doesn't use oxygen, but produced lactic acid (the burning sensation in overworked muscles). The buildup of lactic acid eventually helps to kill the cells later as waste products build up.

But if you told all the cells to shut down everything, the cells would not be sucking desperately for oxygen, harming themselves, but simply doing nothing. You can do that by blocking oxygen receptors in the body. CO2 kills because it 1.) can't be used the way O2 is used, and 2.) takes up slots in hemoglobin that normally is taken up by O2, pushing out the good O2.

If that explanation was as bad as I thought, tell me to do it again and I will.

I'm guessing these are the same hibernation experiments that Science reported on earlier this year:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308 /5721/518?rbfvrToken=62e863f05a35e285b63621e07f2b5 bf569fec959
In the print article the researches indicated they had performed similar tests on dogs and other animals. In many cases they replaced the animals blood, and then resupplied them with blood after a period of time.

Mod parent up. Very good point...

You can never un-invent weapons. There are somethings that should not be created. Look at atomic bombs. They were created, used, and now for the rest of our existence we have to deal with the repercussions. Knowing that a war could easily level most of the civilized world, or that a single weapon in the hands of the wrong people could kill millions. This is discussed in great detail in The Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin, 1968). If you haven't read it, then do.

What machine learning algorithms attempt to 'emulate the brain'? No one I know of in machine learning does *anything* with the explicity intention of 'emulating the brain'.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/550 4/599

Non-local is not the same thing as long range or 'top-down' which is the issue you are addressing with your reference to the LGN so it seems you have your concepts muddled.

I guess by your def I am muddled. There are network supervisors in the brain in the form of neuromodulatory nuclei. These nuclei contain neurons with response properties that encode reinforcement, and they act as plasticizing agents. You can't cut up a brain and still keep these in a slice.....

In any case, the point was that Markram's work is very localized spatially, and not relevant to learning, and I think we can all agree learning is a key component you want to capture in an emulated brain. You cannot study learning without a behavior, and Markram doesn't study behavior. Nor, for that matter, does Mu-Ming Poo. You have to study behavior and relate it to neural change. It is simply inadequate to study neural change in isolation of behavior. It does make completing studies a lot easier, though.

Prof. Church synthesizes long DNA sequences with remarkable fidelity by using parallel synthesis and amplification on a gene chip (ordered array of shorter DNA sequences). Paper.

Remember last year when researchers created polio virus from scratch? Paper. It took 3 years to make the 7500 bp genome -- this new technology would make this kind of project easier.

The rupture spread from south to north, resulting in a Doppler effect in instruments measuring it. Seismometers in Russia recorded the quake at a higher frequency because it was moving toward them, while those in Australia measured a lower frequency as it moved away.

I was wondering about this: Depending where you are measuring the signal, you should observe different frequencies. Science paper doesn't give too much details about this though.

Link to the Science article. Article has some interesting numbers as well:

It released 4.3 x 1018 J, equivalent to a 100-gigaton bomb, or about as much energy as is used in the United States in 6 months. Shifts in the sea floor displaced more than 30 km3 of seawater, generating a tsunami that traveled to the Antarctic, the east and west coasts of the Americas, and (with lessening amplitudes) the Arctic Ocean.

And the related science paper from last year.

Professor Woo Suk Hwang and his colleagues also successfully cloned human embryos last year.

Flash! - Kansas secedes from the Union, becomes a theocracy - then dies due to insufficient gene pool - oops, you morons dont believe in genes, either... Please secede. Please - I'm a 3rd yr trying to become a scientist. If any of you fools actually understand science, please read the recent paper on the EVOLUTION of Caenorhabditis Elegans (a lowly flatworm). This is only one paper among thousands that conclusively proves the Evolution model: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/289/548 8/2342

I'm not sure that's the case here. To quote the summary: "the points he make had been 'widely dispersed on the internet.'".

Well, that is exactly what Science has a policy against. See also here: Science faq. You can submit your paper to an online archive after publication, but not before (and I have even heard of this been disallowed). I think the policy stinks, and think researchers should thus not submit to Science, but it is certainly a well known policy, not something that was cooked up to silence someone.

Note that we only have this guy's word for why he was rejected.

For what it's worth, in my experience hovering around the edge of this field, the consensus is in line with the IPCC report, which is not surprising, since the IPCC's task is to report the opinion of the relevant sciences.

While I strongly disagree with the journal Science's policy of rejecting articles which have been made public, it is a consistent and well known policy -- not some conspiracy against Dr Peiser's global warming paper. See their faqThey want the scoop, and often don't even allow you to post the articles on preprint servers (which is why many scientists refuse to submit their articles to Science). They allow you to present your work at conferences, but are well known to be jerks about it. The journal Nature used to have such a policy, but now allow you to submit your paper to a preprint archive, as long as you don't announce your result to the media. A lot of this came about because of the cold fusion fiasco, but many find it an over-reaction. The policy should be, don't talk to media, but go ahead and talk to fellow scientists. I guess the internet really blurs these things.

The article and research paper note that they placed the mice in the hibernation state for six hours, without any long-term effects. Unfortunately, I can't find in either the article or paper if they tried longer hibernation periods. If they haven't, I suppose that's the next logical thing to try. Looking at their figures, it seems that the 6 hour mark is about when the body temperature finally finishes asymptoting down to the ambient temperature.

Anyways, here's the research abstract from Science:

H2S Induces a Suspended Animation-Like State in Mice

Eric Blackstone, Mike Morrison, Mark B. Roth

Mammals normally maintain their core body temperature (CBT) despite changes in environmental temperature. Exceptions to this norm include suspended animation-like states such as hibernation, torpor, and estivation. These states are all characterized by marked decreases in metabolic rate, followed by a loss of homeothermic control in which the animal's CBT approaches that of the environment. We report that hydrogen sulfide can induce a suspended animation-like state in a nonhibernating species, the house mouse (Mus musculus). This state is readily reversible and does not appear to harm the animal. This suggests the possibility of inducing suspended animation-like states for medical applications.

Here

The present cost of electricity from PV installations

is generally (except in remote areas)
about an order of magnitude higher than the
current commercial prices of electricity generated
by hydraulic power and nuclear and fossil
fuels. Because of physical reasons, it appears at
present to be very difficult to substantially increase
the energy conversion efficiency of lowcost
PV modules over 15%....
Although solar cells and PV installations
do not generate any CO2 during their operation,
they do, however, consume considerable
amounts of energy and cause the generation
of CO2 and certain pollutants during their
manufacture. The energy payback time and
the ecological balance sheet of solar modules
and PV installations are, therefore, important
issues to be considered when choosing a future
technology.

Which is all pretty obvious stuff. And quoting from John A. Turner, Science 30 July 1999; 285: 687-689 [DOI: 10.1126/science.285.5428.687]:

A persistent belief is that renewable resources

require more energy in their manufacture than
they produce in their lifetime; however, actual
calculations show a very rapid payback. For
example, the energy payback for current PV
systems has been calculated to range from 3 to
4 years, depending on the type of PV panel
(thin-film technology or multicrystalline silicon,
respectively). This energy payback time
includes the energy costs for processing the
semiconductor and assembling a module,
frame, and support structure (5-8) and is expected
to be reduced to 1 to 2 years as manufacturing
techniques improve. Wind energy
has an even faster payback of 3 to 4 months
(9). During their lifetime (30 years for PV
and 20 years for wind), these technologies
not only pay back the original energy investment,
but also the emissions produced
from their own manufacture.

For those interested, the quoted references are:

5. E. Alsema, Report BNL-52557 (Brookhaven National

Laboratory, Upton, NY, 1998).
6. K. Kato, A. Murata, K. Sakuta, Report No. 97072
(Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands, 1977), appendix
B-8.
7. R. Dones and R. Frischknecht, ibid., appendix B-9.
8. W. Palz and H. Zibetta, Int. J. Sol. Energy 10, 211
(1991).
9. See P. Gipe, Wind Energy Wkly. No. 521

The present cost of electricity from PV installations

is generally (except in remote areas)
about an order of magnitude higher than the
current commercial prices of electricity generated
by hydraulic power and nuclear and fossil
fuels. Because of physical reasons, it appears at
present to be very difficult to substantially increase
the energy conversion efficiency of lowcost
PV modules over 15%....
Although solar cells and PV installations
do not generate any CO2 during their operation,
they do, however, consume considerable
amounts of energy and cause the generation
of CO2 and certain pollutants during their
manufacture. The energy payback time and
the ecological balance sheet of solar modules
and PV installations are, therefore, important
issues to be considered when choosing a future
technology.

Which is all pretty obvious stuff. And quoting from John A. Turner, Science 30 July 1999; 285: 687-689 [DOI: 10.1126/science.285.5428.687]:

A persistent belief is that renewable resources

require more energy in their manufacture than
they produce in their lifetime; however, actual
calculations show a very rapid payback. For
example, the energy payback for current PV
systems has been calculated to range from 3 to
4 years, depending on the type of PV panel
(thin-film technology or multicrystalline silicon,
respectively). This energy payback time
includes the energy costs for processing the
semiconductor and assembling a module,
frame, and support structure (5-8) and is expected
to be reduced to 1 to 2 years as manufacturing
techniques improve. Wind energy
has an even faster payback of 3 to 4 months
(9). During their lifetime (30 years for PV
and 20 years for wind), these technologies
not only pay back the original energy investment,
but also the emissions produced
from their own manufacture.

For those interested, the quoted references are:

5. E. Alsema, Report BNL-52557 (Brookhaven National

Laboratory, Upton, NY, 1998).
6. K. Kato, A. Murata, K. Sakuta, Report No. 97072
(Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands, 1977), appendix
B-8.
7. R. Dones and R. Frischknecht, ibid., appendix B-9.
8. W. Palz and H. Zibetta, Int. J. Sol. Energy 10, 211
(1991).
9. See P. Gipe, Wind Energy Wkly. No. 521

When I saw this I'd just finished reading an article in Science (18 Feb 05) entitled
Efficient Bipedal Robots Based on Passive-Dynamic Walkers (subscription required). Contrary to the "mainstream" approach of actuating every joint with a complex control system, the authors describe three robots that achieve very natural human-like gaits using far fewer actuators and much simpler control principles (one of them using adaptive learning). Not only are these robots far simpler to control, but they typically require only about a tenth of the energy of designs that attempt to actuate every joint (e.g., knees). I'll speculate that this passive/dynamic approach is going to dominate in the future.

When I saw this I'd just finished reading an article in Science (18 Feb 05) entitled (subscription required). Contrary to the "mainstream" approach of actuating every joint with a complex control system, the authors describe three robots that achieve very natural human-like gaits using far fewer actuators and much simpler control principles (one of them using adaptive learning). Not only are these robots far simpler to control, but they typically require only about a tenth of the energy of designs that attempt to actuate every joint (e.g., knees). I'll speculate that this passive/dynamic approach is going to dominate in the future.

And I for one welcome our new mollusk overlords.

Octopus are spooky smart. They are pretty good problem solvers, they have excellent vision and a bizarre sense of curiosity. They will explore just about everything they can access, and have distinct personalities. They are in all likelihood the smartest organisms in the sea second to cetaceans. I wrote in a previous discussion on Slashdot about my pet octopus, Cephus (short for cephalopod), but that was only one instance of amazing behaviors I had witnessed. I have also dived off the Pacific Northwest with giant pacific red octopus (Octopus dofleini) and found them to be quite curious and for the most part docile (this is in contrast to squid which are truly ruthless aliens that would kill you if given the slightest chance) unless you piss em off and which point they usually simply want to get away. However, I have seen them steal items from divers and swim off with them as well.

The interesting thing about robotics and control of complex systems like this is the computational control required of such structures. Octopus can almost seemingly turn themselves to liquid and fit through the most amazingly small spaces, yet their strength would amaze (and I suspect scare) you. Even my pet octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) who was about a foot long could generate incredible forces from very muscular arms. The giant octopus would be so strong, they could likely (literally) tear you apart if they were not so docile. Here is the deal though: They need an aqueous environment to move effectively. I suspect that for robotics teams, some combination of hydrostatic muscles and exoskeletons would be necessary, which now that I am thinking about it could be huge for artificial limbs for amputees. Right now the most advanced artificial limbs have internally driven servos that have limits on torque that are quite low. This technology could open the door for more capable artificial limbs and exoskeletons to enhance human movement as well as robotics.

Oh, other links of interest to the original Science paper are here, but you need a subscription to see the full text article. The movies linked there though are free.

Here's the original Science paper, with lots of details:
Original Paper

Note that the samples were hydrated (and demineralized, etc). LOTS of data there.

If you have access to science magazine, the original article is already up on their website. There are some amazing pictures.

Article: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/571 7/1952

Commentary: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/571 7/1852b

If you have access to science magazine, the original article is already up on their website. There are some amazing pictures.

Article: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/571 7/1952

Commentary: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/571 7/1852b

"Even looking early in the Cambrian period, fossils of the major groups of invertebrates appear in an explosion of living things, unconnected to any evolutionary ancestors."

Bilateran fossils discovered from 40-55 million years before the Cambrian.

History of the search for precambrian life

'Science' is not just a "magazine." It is a peer-reviewed journal, and one of the most prestigious in the natural sciences. And when I mentioned "cosmology" I am referring to what Nobel prize-winning astrophysicists mean when they say cosmology.

If I go to major research universities and see faculty publishing articles in major peer-reviewed journals, presenting at major conferences of scientific societies, and they call themselves scientists, and other people in related fields call them scientists, its pretty clear to me that there is a very good chance they are doing science, whether they qualify or not in your oh-so-enlightened opinion.

Because they put the word 'reveal' in a title doesn't somehow banish them from the realm of science. Nor does the presence of a certain number of crackpots on the fringes demote a field: after all, the crackpots are almost always attracted to the most substantial fields. All sorts of crazy folks want to pull down Einstein and square the circle, not because he was wrong but because he was right.

So, IEEE is big for /., yes. But this debate has been going on in most clinical science fields for a decade at least! Just the idea of paying (through tax dollars) to fund the research and then paying again to be able to read the results of something I already paid for is ridiculous!!! . . . and that's just an abbreviated cycle.

If you work at a university and have ever talked to your librarian, you know that the university is paying SEVERAL MORE TIMES in that process! For those of us who publish, talk to a librarian before you consider publishing in a particular journal. Ask about cost per page data, cost per use data and the publisher's copyright practices (just to name a few things), before you just select the journal with the highest impact!

Look at Science http://www.sciencemag.org/ or Nature http://www.nature.com/. There are targeted advertisements towards the scientific professions. It's certainly feasible to do something similar here.

What is this global warming?
So 100 studies say there are no problems. And 100 say there are problems.

Well, it's not exactly like global warming. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/570 2/1686 Between 1993 and 2003, there were 928 peer reviewed articles on climate change. 75% explicitly or implicitly supported the model that global warming is real. 25% made no conclusion on whether or not global warming is real. The model that we aren't experiencing global warming was supported by 0%. Let me type that again in all caps: ZERO PERCENT.

The controversy over the existance of global warming is a political construct. There is a word for people who believe this is still under scientific debate. That word is "chump".

Efforts to defend the US against bioterrorists - by throwing money at research - are backfiring, says a 750-strong group of top scientists.

Real scientific results are reported in scientific venues like professional conferences and peer-reviewed journals.

You mean, this might be a real scientific result if it were, say, an article called Learned Predictions of Error Likelihood in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Science Magazine, a peer-reviewed journal? (No, that link won't take you directly to the article - you have to buy access or join the American Association for the Advancement of Science to get access.)

Real scientific results are reported in scientific venues like professional conferences and peer-reviewed journals.

You mean, this might be a real scientific result if it were, say, an article called Learned Predictions of Error Likelihood in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Science Magazine, a peer-reviewed journal? (No, that link won't take you directly to the article - you have to buy access or join the American Association for the Advancement of Science to get access.)

For those of you looking for more details, here's the research paper published in Science (may need institutional subscription) and videos of all three robots.

Here's the abstract text:

Efficient Bipedal Robots Based on Passive-Dynamic Walkers
Steve Collins, Andy Ruina, Russ Tedrake, Martijn Wisse

Passive-dynamic walkers are simple mechanical devices, composed of solid parts connected by joints, that walk stably down a slope. They have no motors or controllers, yet can have remarkably humanlike motions. This suggests that these machines are useful models of human locomotion; however, they cannot walk on level ground. Here we present three robots based on passive-dynamics, with small active power sources substituted for gravity, which can walk on level ground. These robots use less control and less energy than other powered robots, yet walk more naturally, further suggesting the importance of passive-dynamics in human locomotion.

For those of you looking for more details, here's the research paper published in Science (may need institutional subscription) and videos of all three robots.

Here's the abstract text:

Efficient Bipedal Robots Based on Passive-Dynamic Walkers
Steve Collins, Andy Ruina, Russ Tedrake, Martijn Wisse

Passive-dynamic walkers are simple mechanical devices, composed of solid parts connected by joints, that walk stably down a slope. They have no motors or controllers, yet can have remarkably humanlike motions. This suggests that these machines are useful models of human locomotion; however, they cannot walk on level ground. Here we present three robots based on passive-dynamics, with small active power sources substituted for gravity, which can walk on level ground. These robots use less control and less energy than other powered robots, yet walk more naturally, further suggesting the importance of passive-dynamics in human locomotion.

Gates is providing a valid reason for patenting as much as possible since innovation is grinding to a halt because of patenting. So, he is saying the patent system is bad, but that MS needs to patent as a result.

Stallman is pointing out that innovation is grinding to halt because of patents. So he is saying the patent system is bad, and hence patents are bad.

So they both actually agree that patents are bad, and they are both acting according to their principles in this bad system.

This is a the tragedy of the commons situation, where the intellectual "property" commons is being fenced off by people now standing on the shoulders of giants of the past. The people fencing off the property are preventing others from wandering into what used to be an open knowledge commons, a commons which in the past used to be shared. Because the resources of this commons are inexhaustible, there is no fundamental reason to restrict it. There is no fundamental reason to have a system of patents that make human knowledge subject to a land run.

That is why intellectual "property" is intellectual theft when you actually start examining the premises.

Gate's intellectual landgrab is quite legal, and hence not regarded as theft. Indeed, he is doing absolutely and clearly the right and sensible thing in the current system.

The way to fix the problem would actually be to do away with the patent system.

Even if global warming were true for example (which it's not)
The concensus amoungst scientists say you are wrong.

I am tired of Flat-Earth global-warming deniers. Your government is wrong on this. Humans *are* affecting the environment. While I agree that the earth is fairly resilient, I think you greatly understimate the damage we are doing. The incidents and scale of our environmental transgressions are too vast to state. If you think we are going to be able to 'keep this course' for many hundreds or thousands of years, you are sadly mistaken.

Right now, the West consumes most the planet's resources -- what resources are there for emerging consumer communities? Answer: Little. We are going to kill most all life on the planet, pump out the gas and make the environment highly toxic in the next few centuries if we dont adjust our course now.

Your equilibrium fantasy is just that -- fiction.

What is more likely to happen is the patent quagmire analogy. In this analogy, you have dinosaurs and mammals of all sizes struggling in a muddy pit courtesy of the legal system. The larger the animal is and the more teeth and claws it has, the more likely it is to submerge its rivals. If it sees another animal in the quagmire has enough teeth and claws itself, there is a stand-off - no point in attacking another if you are likely to get counter-attacked. MS is like the T-rex in this. Sun is maybe an allosaurus, OSX a velociraptor, BSD a stegosaurus. Linux, um, was like a brontosaurus, being eyed up by the rest of the slavering predators for slaughter - but it has now been pretty much armor-plated by IBM's patenting marvel-comics-blast of gamma-radiation and it is now mutating into a cute sabre-toothed tiger ready for total world domination.

Or something like that.

Anyway, the point I really wanted to make before I got caught up in my maniacal metaphor was that patent portfolios create a Mexican standoff between the bigger outfits, but mean that the smaller outfits cannot innovate without getting swallowed by the bigger outfits in today's world. So the pace of innovation is going to grind to a halt unless the patents system is scrapped.

I can't see any way that a force to scrap the system is going to emerge, because the timescale over which innovation is being killed off is too large for people to notice, and the trend is not easy to quantify anyway. Even if it were demonstrated to be true, there is still the problem of how to fix it when the most powerful lobbying for patents is actually by the companies that have the patent portfolios.

See Hardin's the tragedy of the commons paper for further details about the class of problem this comes under, and how it gets solved. In short - the problem is that of the over-exploitation of common property at the cost of everyone else, and the solution is that of enforcement of rules against this kind of exploitation. Societies which do not do that die off.

I know what you mean and I do take peer review seriously. The fact that this document was written by John Walker is enough for me to believe that there is truth in this. In any case, here is the Science article about it.

Well, there are some non-first-year concepts at work here. From looking at the Science* article (14 Jan 2005 issue, p 231-235), I gather that the aluminum atoms form a small "jellium" cluster. Within a cluster of this type, the electrical potential is relatively uniform, but there are boundary effects at the edge of the cluster.

In the Al13 cluster, the inner electrons are kept in normal ground states, and combined with the atoms' protons, form a net positive charge. The outer (valence) electrons react to this charge by falling into energy states dependent upon the whole Al13 molecule, not the individual atoms. In fact, the molecule's energy states can resemble those of other atoms, and can behave in the same ways that those other atoms do. Al13, for example, resembles a halogen, and so it binds to varying numbers of iodine atoms covalently.

Now, I'm not actually a chemist (I was brought up in electrical engineering and computer science), so my reading of the details might be wrong, but I think that's how it works.

(* You'll either need a Science subscription, or you'll need to access from the domain of an institution that has a site subscription. The vast majority of US universities do.)

Such statements [like yours for instance] suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

So your "we simply do not know" is dead wrong. We've been warned that there's a serious threat here. Do we know absolutely? Of course not. But uncertainty isn't an argument against action - not when the stakes are so high and the measures themselves so doable. (Uncertainty also things could be worse than we thought - which is precisely what this article argues)

Of course real scientists will want to continue studying the phenomena but the consensus in the scientific community is consistent in its support for the existance of global warming and the fact that greenhouse gasses are responsible. This links to a review of scientific literature on this topic.