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Given that traffic congestion is a type of shortage (a shortage of available space on a road at a given time of day), and that a shortage happens when when the price of an item is set below the going rate determined by supply and demand, the solution is made obvious: raise the price of freeway access just high enough to eliminate the traffic congestion, but no higher. Then lower the toll when demand is low, to give people the ability to economize. Variable tolls permanently eliminates any need to expand the freeway just to eliminate congestion. There are other ways to justify expanding a freeway, but congestion is no longer one of them.

Efficiently pricing freeway access saves a lot of money that would be spent expanding the freeway. For example, the USA's Congressional Budget Office found that southern California's SR-91 express lanes generate net social benefits of at least $12 million per year, compared with a scenario in which the lanes had been built but drivers did not pay to use them.

Because many if not all states currently fund freeways with general sales tax revenue, As a group low-income residents, on average, pay more out-of-pocket with sales taxes" for freeways than with tolls. Therefore, tolls are less regressive than the alternative.

The free market works remarkably well, when it's allowed to work.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/bx23551862212177/fulltext.pdf">The article you linked to provides some fairly convincing evidence of localized electromagnetic fields affecting bee behavior, as compared with inactive cell phones (in standby mode) to control for the assertion that this is just because scientists are jamming phones into hives and observing the bees get pissed about it.

What I'm not seeing is how this problem should be exclusive to cell phones. The proposed mechanism is strong emf fields, but radios, walkie-talkies, TV transmissions, etc. should also be affecting bees if this were the case. Of course, it's entirely possible that it wasn't until cell phones became commonplace that the effects of emf on bees became noticeable.

With these data, were I a policymaker, I'd be convinced to fund more research in the area, but it doesn't immediately strike me as the smoking gun for "Ah hah! This is the reason bees are dying!"

I'll give you that you finally turned up your claims of additional tests. Now here's what's wrong with them. The Punjab University study (the full, original, published study, not some digested article from the mainstream news) mentions but gives no statistics for its blank group. This is highly suspicious, because it was subjected to all of the physical stress save the EM radiation of the phones. If the EM radiation were so significantly responsible, they would be shouting from the rooftops that even in the colony where they ripped shit up and dumped dead phones in, nothing significant happened. Instead, that they did a blank study is barely mentioned, and all the statistics are compared between the aggregates of the active tests with the absolute control group that had nothing done to it whatsoever. That is bad, bad science. What's the point of having a blank group if you're not going to report your findings? Because that would have undermined their bullshit, as apiologists already know that just sticking things in hives damages them.

The link I provided earlier already debunks the Favre study, so I see no need in rehashing it. The full, original, and published study is here, for those who want to assess it for the lacking elements discussed by Skepchick.

I forget who said it, some professor of a graduate program somewhere I roughly recall, but there is a fitting insight for this contrast. To paraphrase, undergraduate students tend not to question. They do research and when they find information in papers they take it as some kind of divine inspiration handed down from on high. When a person with a PhD does research and finds information in a study, they immediately pick up a hammer and start whacking to see what breaks.

If you want a true scientific perspective, you need to ask questions about what you're being told. If somebody came in here and started saying that bees are absolutely not impacted in any way by EM radiation, I would say that current studies are not conclusive, that there are flaws in their methodology that should be fixed and the studies run again before any verdict can *usefully* be reached. You want to believe that bees are detrimentally impacted because you have a green agenda. I am not arguing for or against an agenda, I am simply pointing at the flaws of these studies. When one is done that is completely transparent, properly controlled and documented included all times and statistics for all groups, then I will be satisfied.

Yeah I keep hearing these same quotes that either ethanol uses more energy to produce or it breaks even. I rarely hear anyone sourcing where this information comes from or a breakdown of these energy costs. Most of the petroleum costs that are quoted refer to fertilizer and tractor fuel, etc and not the actual production of Ethanol. I believe they generally use natural gas in the production.

Most of it sources papers by David Pimentel who seems to have a real axe to grind against ethanol. There are a lot of contradictory studies too.

From an energy standpoint, the problem with ethanol from food crops is that we've reduced the labor to produce food crops by massively increasing the energy costs. That is, as technology drives the cost of energy down and the standard of living up, labor becomes much more expensive than fuel. So food production has been optimized to minimize labor, substituting the burning of more energy instead. Think about it - you can't eat oil. But by mechanized growing of crops, you can turn oil into food. Since food is much more important than oil, it makes economic sense to pump more energy into food's production than you'd get back if you merely burned the food as fuel.

The U.S. produces an excess amount of food (particularly corn) in order to stave off famine should there be another major crop failure like in the early 1930s (this is the primary rationale for farm subsidies). Consequently, we're left wondering what to do with all this excess corn. Some gets donated as foreign aid. Some is converted into high fructose corn syrup. Some is used as cattle feed to lower the price of steaks, since people like steaks. And we still have tons of it left. Someone came up with the bright idea of turning it into ethanol to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. If you add up all the energy used to produce corn ethanol, I'm fairly certain it would cost nearly as much or more energy than the fuel it produces. But that's beside the point because that corn would still be produced regardless of whether or not it's converted into ethanol.

The real problem with turning food crops into ethanol is that there's no market barrier between the two uses. If the price of fuel goes up, more corn gets shifted into ethanol production, meaning less corn for food, meaning food prices go up. If we're going to be turning corn into ethanol, then the farmers (farming corporations really) should be required to specify at planting whether that field's crop is going to be used for food or for fuel. That way the government can still work to ensure there's still an oversupply of food, and farmers aren't tempted to sell their food corn as fuel corn should the price of gas rise.

Honey is not antiseptic due simply to a high sugar rate.

This page says that honey is antiseptic in various ways and that some types of honey are more antiseptic than others. And this research seems to suggest that a part of the antibacterial activity might be of plant origin and the major part of the antibacterial activity of honeydew honey is of bee origin.

Put simply: It's complex, and we don't know it all yet.

Medical grade types of honey are still being discovered. "Medical grade honey"? Yes, this article claims that eight species of problematic wound pathogens, including those with high levels of innate or acquired antibiotic resistance, were killed by 4.0–14.8% honey , meaning that they're effective even when diluted.

It's an intersting read, especially the 1st article.

I think you need some big citation on a claim like that you pile of shit

http://www.springerlink.com/content/70u88404420n2444/

Carbon dioxide does not cause catastrophic runaway global warming. It may cause approx. a degree or so of warming. Any more would require positive feedback and there is no evidence that is happening. We've measured the radiation in at all wavelengths and we've measured the radiation out at all wavelengths. The evidence for positive feedback is just not there.

This is false.

http://www.science20.com/news_account/greenhouse_gases_and_water_vapor_when_positive_feedback_is_a_bad_thing
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010JD014192.shtml
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m2054qq6126802g8/
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL035333.shtml
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2007JCLI2142.1
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL025505.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005.../2005GL023624.shtml
http://www.springerlink.com/content/v164l177374p1445/

Let's just look at one abstract.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/5749/841

Climate models predict that the concentration of water vapor in the upper troposphere could double by the end of the century as a result of increases in greenhouse gases. Such moistening plays a key role in amplifying the rate at which the climate warms in response to anthropogenic activities, but has been difficult to detect because of deficiencies in conventional observing systems. We use satellite measurements to highlight a distinct radiative signature of upper tropospheric moistening over the period 1982 to 2004. The observed moistening is accurately captured by climate model simulations and lends further credence to model projections of future global warming.

Carbon dioxide does not cause catastrophic runaway global warming. It may cause approx. a degree or so of warming. Any more would require positive feedback and there is no evidence that is happening. We've measured the radiation in at all wavelengths and we've measured the radiation out at all wavelengths. The evidence for positive feedback is just not there.

This is false.

http://www.science20.com/news_account/greenhouse_gases_and_water_vapor_when_positive_feedback_is_a_bad_thing
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010JD014192.shtml
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m2054qq6126802g8/
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL035333.shtml
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2007JCLI2142.1
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL025505.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005.../2005GL023624.shtml
http://www.springerlink.com/content/v164l177374p1445/

Let's just look at one abstract.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/5749/841

Climate models predict that the concentration of water vapor in the upper troposphere could double by the end of the century as a result of increases in greenhouse gases. Such moistening plays a key role in amplifying the rate at which the climate warms in response to anthropogenic activities, but has been difficult to detect because of deficiencies in conventional observing systems. We use satellite measurements to highlight a distinct radiative signature of upper tropospheric moistening over the period 1982 to 2004. The observed moistening is accurately captured by climate model simulations and lends further credence to model projections of future global warming.

Anyone who understands logarithmic expansion understands the impact of raising a child successfully will most likely far outweigh anything you will do in your lifetime

What does that even mean? The impact to who? Positive or negative impact? Having a child certainly has a powerful positive impact on that child's life. That doesn't mean it has a positive impact on yours.

Here is the first non-religious result in a google search for Children and happiness http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/11/the_effect_of_c.html (There is a newsweek article there but it has no data).

This study has been retracted. You can read the erratum. I'll paste it here for convenience:

After publication of the paper âoeChildren and Life Satisfactionâ I have uncovered an important coding mistake in the dataset. Several observations of the life satisfaction measure were unintentionally assigned the wrong value in the construction of the panel.

After correcting the problem, the main results of the paper no longer hold. The effect of children on the life satisfaction of married individuals is small, often negative, and never statistically significant. I ask all readers to disregard the results of this paper and deeply apologize for this unfortunate mistake. I have asked the journal to withdraw the paper but, being too late for that, an erratum was the only alternative.

If you really need references, go through the references that Angeles claimed to disprove. They are right.

Some people are excessively self centered, having children exposes that self centered nature. For the folk that already understand that they aren't the center of the universe, parenting is a joy.

Or some people are so self centered that they believe the world really needs another little them. Those of us who aren't self-centered are happy to see our genes die with us.

evolutionarily speaking we have had a couple million years to have it hardwired into ourselves to procreate. This alone suggests that deep happiness should be found in successfully parenting progeny..

Actually, it suggests that deep happiness should be found in having lots of sex. This is one of the reasons that actually having children tends to decrease happiness.

Might you have a better citation for that?
I want to check out the paper.

unfortunatly I can find nothing except hundreds and hundreds of sites parroting effectively your link over and over and over.

I did find one which actually gave a citation but it was for this:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/6566j50u18936604/fulltext.pdf
which is just a paper about ectopia in hamsters.
(that one is also the source for some of the images thrown into your link and the source of a number of partial quotes)

I simply cannot find any paper for the source of this:
All the earlier mentioned hundreds of articles appear to be based on some email exchange with Alexey V. Surov.

To quote one such page:

"The study, jointly conducted by Surovâ(TM)s Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the National Association for Gene Security, is expected to be published in three months (July 2010)â"so the technical details will have to wait."

yet I can't find anything published in the last year that matches.
It's hard to examine papers which can't be found.

Er, you're quite wrong. In fact, there is some evidence that viewing child porn reduces related crimes. Here's a couple of sources for you: http://www.springerlink.com/content/v046j3g178147772/fulltext.pdf http://human-stupidity.com/stupid-dogma/child-porn-witch-hunt/legal-child-pornography-reduces-child-sex-crimes-milton-diamond-hawaii

Worth mentioning in Android's case is only used for caching so the data gets overwritten every so often. Unlike iPhone's

Well, accessing it every time an app run should be enough to get a nice movement profile about you anyway, all without the need to ask you if you want that. But it can only be accessed when you got root access, right? http://www.springerlink.com/content/d275570090ng72jt/

Chernobyl did not have a "small nuclear explosion". Period.

RBMKs (as configured at the time) had a very large positive void coefficient; after the steam explosion depressurized the vessel, the coolant was boiling like mad with essentially no liquid water inside the fuel assemblies. Combined with all the extra graphite from the control rod tips which were in exactly the wrong place, a prompt criticality was very possible as things were settling inside.

"A second, more powerful explosion occurred about two or three seconds after the first; evidence indicates that the second explosion resulted from a nuclear excursion." The citation is over here.

Since the assembly was slow (compared to a weapon) the criticality ended quickly as it blew itself apart. The yield was on the order of 10t (not low Kt, as expected in an unboosted uranium weapon). There are other theories for the second explosion, but this one has the best case made for it.

Anyway, I wasn't suggesting that it was the explosion itself that carried particles long distances (though it did make quite a mess locally); it just blew the thing wide open so when the fires started the only thing covering them was the blue sky.

In fairness, the seawater injection didn't begin until the reactors were already well off anybody's operating manual. In fact, the seawater injection was reported as the best option available at the time by world international experts.

Confusing things there were two injections of seawater: the injection into the pressure vessel was a likely a good move under the circumstances; the part I'm questioning is flooding the containment vessel, which is highly unusual. Why is that second move, which puts the system in a state it wasn't designed for, a better idea than following the documented plan: let the core dump, then optionally spray (but not flood) it with water?

It may be a good idea - but if so, why wasn't it part of the normal emergency procedures? I'm concerned that the answer may be that it was considered and rejected because of the risk of losing control of large volumes of contaminated water, or that an explosion inside the filled containment would be more likely to cause a breach due to hydraulic shock.

One of the big reasons why water is constantly re-applied to the reactors in Japan is because water does wonders to keep particulates out of the air.

So does a containment vessel. They were largely intact (as evidenced by high pressure) until the explosion inside the wetwell of #2. The others are still good to go.

Mind you, I'm glad to have an extra safety net as long as it's not making things worse. Unfortunately, I've not found any good in-depth analysis of these decisions. I'm sure someone's doing it, but it's not anywhere I can see it.

Evaluation of Physical and Chemical Changes in Pharmaceuticals Flown on Space Missions
Brian Du1, Vernie R. Daniels1, Zalman Vaksman2, Jason L. Boyd3, Camille Crady1 and Lakshmi Putcha4
Abstract
Efficacy and safety of medications used for the treatment of astronauts in space may be compromised by altered stability in space. We compared physical and chemical changes with time in 35 formulations contained in identical pharmaceutical kits stowed on the International Space Station (ISS) and on Earth. Active pharmaceutical content (API) was determined by ultra- and high-performance liquid chromatography after returning to Earth. After stowage for 28 months in space, six medications aboard the ISS and two of matching ground controls exhibited changes in physical variables; nine medications from the ISS and 17 from the ground met the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) acceptance criteria for API content after 28 months of storage. A higher percentage of medications from each flight kit had lower API content than the respective ground controls. The number of medications failing API requirement increased as a function of time in space, independent of expiration date. The rate of degradation was faster in space than on the ground for many of the medications, and most solid dosage forms met USP standard for dissolution after storage in space. Cumulative radiation dose was higher and increased with time in space, whereas temperature and humidity remained similar to those on the ground. Exposure to the chronic low dose of ionizing radiation aboard the spacecraft as well as repackaging of solid dosage forms in flight-specific dispensers may adversely affect stability of pharmaceuticals. Characterization of degradation profiles of unstable formulations and identification of chemical attributes of stability in space analog environments on Earth will facilitate development of space-hardy medications.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/61047706rj720h76/fulltext.html

Can I propose the arbuscular mychorrhizal fungi for protection? Not sure what it is, but it was the first thing to pop up when I typed 'endangered microorganism' in Google.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/cx815t3578004x20/

-- New business idea: endangered species marketing strategy consultant

but, there's a reason why polygraphs aren't admissible in many places in court. It's vague and subjective in a lot of cases.

Not to mention unsupported by actual science, with strong criticism levelled at the methods of most studies that support their validity.

There is even some data against the LNT model - radiological hormesis seems to be in play in Ramsar, Iran.

Probably not - most likely this is just using NAT or whatever which isn't easily detected.

Ha! I wrote a paper on NAT detection and NAT client-counting in grad school. It's really easy.

1) Looks for IP packets with weird TTLs. If any packet originating from a "normal" phone has a TTL of 128 or 64 or whatever, and you see a bunch of packets hitting your gateway with 127 or 63 TTL values, that means there's a network device (your phone's NAT software) between the packet-originator (computer that's tethered) and the network. It's *especially* glaring if you have a mix of TTL values, like 63 & 127, which means there are probably multiple machines behind the NAT (I think Linux/UNIX IP stack uses 128, and Windows uses 64, or maybe the reverse. But they're different).

2) IP packets have a header field called "IP ID" that is optional and the OS can do pretty much whatever it wants with it, *and* most NAT routers leave the field untouched (don't rewrite it). A lot of OSes use is as a universal packet-counter (every time a packet goes out, it increments the field by one), or some OSes increment the field every time a new source port is used to send a packet (which makes it much harder to count clients). If you see a pattern like this in the IP ID field of packets inbound to your network:

465,466,467,128,129,468,130,131,469,470,471,132

it's pretty obvious there are 2 computers talking through the NAT, one numbering 465-471, the other 128-132.

So yeah, it can be done, REALLY easily. Of course, you could easily write a stealth NAT routing algorithm that replaces all TTL values with 128 or 64, or re-writes the IP ID field to make it look like one machine, but as far as I know normal commercial products don't do that. Maybe the PDANet authors were smart enough to do that. But the things I outlined let you do it without deep packet inspection, you can just check the headers.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/u055738wk18835l0/

Posting anon so you can't link my real identity (Kenneth Straka) to my Slashdot ID. :)

Reservoir sites usually contain lots of vegetation, and once underwater, the plants naturally decompose and release methane (a greenhouse gas). That's why it's considered "dirty." It's considered destructive because of the effect on migratory patterns, currents, and the overall eco-system surrounding the dam. There have also been reports of increased temperature levels around hydroelectric dams which can have a very harmful effect on surrounding wildlife.

Thermal effects of hydroelectric power stations on the environment

The Environmental Literacy Council - Hydroelectric Power

I was working on an algorithm of supply chain routing (with these guys) about 7 years ago! the idea was to use a combination of Q-routing and ant-routing algorithm with other things. Granted, I was only the guy doing the java implementation (with a nice interface using Netlogo)... but it was quite interesting.

In the world of Multi-Agent Systems, "A-life" and "Individual Based Modelling" the features of ant behaviour have been known for quite some time :)

The initial packet must come from one machine (doesn't have to be your own), and will be sent to machines it has connections to.

And that continues to be the problem, no matter how many times you try to handwave that this critical vulnerability can surely be solved by something else (Tor, whatever).

Rather than trying to make wallets anonymous, how about making transactions anonymous?

Unfortunately, that's what people have been saying for 50 years and it hasn't happened. AI people now talk about the bootstrap fallacy.

I'm assuming the gene doesn't actually make you "religious", it just predisposes you to being suggestible and superstitious, which is pretty much the foundation of any religion.

Actually, according to the article and some related ones, religiosity is highly correlated with conservatism and authoritarianism. This isn't my field, but I think attitudes like Social Dominance Orientation are also related. The basic idea is that people will normally settle on a worldview that fits their personality, right or wrong. Conservatives and authoritarians will naturally gravitate to a stable, hierarchical system, and organized religions (and governments?) frequently embody those characteristics.

Doesn't sound so interdisciplinary, does it?

I actually can't find a single bit of valid, scientific research pointing either way. Your link also doesn't back up that claim, it has one link that returns a 404. So I'm forced to use, admittedly flawed, anecdotal evidence.

Did you try very hard before you gave up and decided to use your anecdotal evidence?

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/springer/vav/1997/00000012/00000002/art00006
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/springer/vav/1994/00000009/00000002/art00002
http://www.springerlink.com/content/f14463456071g744/
http://www.narth.com/docs/domestic.html
http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2037/Spouse-Partner-Abuse-Who-What-When-DOMESTIC-ABUSE-AMONG-SAME-SEX-COUPLES.html

No, you obviously didn't try very hard.

Also, 50% of gay relationships lack men, the chief abusers in relationships.

A lot of abuse is based off of old family paradigms ("I'm the MAN of the house, your the little subservient woman!"

gay people, by their very existence have moved past that, for the most part

Bullshit. More claims with no evidence, only your anecdotal experience.

Nope. Homosexual couples can be just as dysfunctional as heterosexual ones. I don't understand where the "masochist" bit comes in. I've been in a very happy (heterosexual) relationship for years, and there isn't much pain, or suffering in it, neither is there in the most of the other heterosexual couples I know.

Then by your own admission most heterosexual couples you know are, apparently, fine. Sheer volume might account for the fact that "a fair number" of heterosexual couples you've met had issues with domestic violence, and "only one" homosexual couple did. Do you know comparable numbers of gay and straight couples? And might there possibly just be more pressure on homosexual couples to gloss over issues with domestic violence, in the interests of trying to help themselves be perceived as a "normal family"?

Previous studies have tried to link social network size to the size of the neocortex. Through this it was estimated that humans have social networks upwards near 150 people. This was further backed up through other research.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/pphfpu3c39ee9009/

This study, however, doesn't seem to address the neocortex since they only checked for links among different subcortical structures. The journal article itself doesn't even address the neocortex. In fact the article claims to be in accord with the "social brain hypothesis" which was formulated by Dunbar who developed the idea that the neocortex could be linked to social network size, which is in complete contrast to a belief that social network size can be calculated from the amygdala in the limbic system.

A nice study of a follow-up on a few individuals who had sex reassignment surgery Here's another one

Both of these show that the sex reassignment surgery does indeed alleviate the feelings of gender dysphoria. This is not to say that other problems may come as a result (due to aftereffects such as people's reactions to their new gender role, job situations, etc.) but that the gender dysphoria which caused their initial unhappiness and situation is indeed treated by the surgery. It's not a panacea, but it's not this useless and unnecessary operation that you believe it to be. Could you please show me the studies that show the opposite? If you require, I'll find more studies proving my point.

Someone who is unhappy as a result of something outside of their control is never happier after that something is changed, they just start blaming something else for their unhappiness.

Not true. Someone who is unhappy as a result of something outside of their control is indeed happier if that something is changed. If they just start blaming something else for their unhappiness, then it was not actually a result of that original thing which was changed and thus the cause has not been addressed. There is a large amount of counseling and testing that goes into deciding whether someone will have the surgery or not, in order to ensure that only those who actually need it will get it. The first article even goes into various interpretations of the results that could result in a less positive outcome, but dismisses them for many reasons. Thus confirming that the surgery is a good thing that helps these individuals.

One thing that should be pointed out is that this article is in the January 2010 issue, and was initially published online in September 2009, so this isn't breaking news, though it looks like research may have continued in the same lab following this paper- there's no reference t paraquat in the paper, for instance. Another, which is touched on in the news article is that the scientists involved do not dispute that reactive oxygen species can have deleterious effects on living organisms- just that aging is not a process of mitochondria being injured by ROS. Their conclusion spells it out:

It is difficult to doubt that mitochondria play a key role in the aging process [67, 68]. However, although it is well documented that irreversible oxidative damage accumulates during aging [69], it seems that the MFRTA’s core statement that postulates that aging is triggered by the detrimental action of ROS produced during normal metabolism is simply wrong. It is not yet clear whether aging has a single cause or whether such a notion is misguided. In any case, the correlation between the presence of oxidative damage and the aged phenotype simply does not imply causation. Oxidative stress might be the consequence of aging, if aging indeed has some discrete cause, or causes, distinct from oxidative stress [40]. Alternatively, oxidative stress might result from the failure of one particular maintenance system of the organism and thus participate in causing aging, but no more, as is often proposed in multicausal or unifying theories of aging [3–6]. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that it could not be beneficial to health to counteract the deleterious effects induced by ROS, at least in pathological situations. However, any intervention will nonetheless have to be very critically evaluated as clearly revealed by the antioxidant supplementation trials and in light of the increasing number of studies showing the crucial roles of ROS in cellular signaling.

I'm not aware of any quantum solution to breaking any modern popular symmetric algorithms.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/u4877618u916720g/

3DES is still quite popular, you know.

From the original paper:

The xanthopterin pigment found within the cuticle has been proven to be a suitable absorber of light for the harvesting of solar energy by a demonstration of its use in an organic solar cell, with a conversion efficiency of 0.335%.

I assume this was just a "proof of concept" organic solar cell, so the efficiency could probably be increased, but 0.335% doesn't sound like much!

Until now, insects were thought to perform metabolism in an organ known as the fat body, which performs a similar function to the human liver.
Most of the fat body is in an insect's abdomen surrounding the gut, where it can quickly take up absorbed nutrients, though some is scattered elsewhere.
"We have found that the main metabolic activity in the Oriental hornet is actually in the yellow pigment layer," says Dr Plotkin.

The full-text article, makes no mention of the "fat body" and doesn't get a hint by what reasoning this conclusion is to be derived? The correlation between sunny conditions and hornet's digging activity is not quite a strong indication to me - I mean: ants are most active when the weather is hot, yet they apparently don't relly on capturing the solar radiation.

New materials? The full text version of the article (posted by someone above), mentions a measured the conversion efficiency of a xanthopterin-sensitized TiO2 solar cell to 0.335% - clearly some more work needs to be done (e.g. other substate to senzitize?).

It's unfortunately paywalled, but in case anyone has access to a library with a subscription, the journal article this news article is about is:

Plotkin et al. (2010). Solar energy harvesting in the epicuticle of the oriental hornet (Vespa orientalis). Naturwissenschaften 97(12): 1067-1076.

The full text works for me and I'm not in a library or anywhere else with a journal subscription.

Here you go. Appears to be free.

  http://www.springerlink.com/content/w657861740333733/

  http://www.springerlink.com/content/w657861740333733/fulltext.pdf

Go ahead and tear away at it. I know you want to.

Here you go. Appears to be free.

  http://www.springerlink.com/content/w657861740333733/

  http://www.springerlink.com/content/w657861740333733/fulltext.pdf

Go ahead and tear away at it. I know you want to.

It's unfortunately paywalled, but in case anyone has access to a library with a subscription, the journal article this news article is about is:

Plotkin et al. (2010). Solar energy harvesting in the epicuticle of the oriental hornet (Vespa orientalis). Naturwissenschaften 97(12): 1067-1076.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/r26726612j2r8336/fulltext.html

The actual article talks about how gold nanoparticles are often made with super-strong reducing agents like sodium borohydride and how this is awesomely bad for the environment.

What the article doesn't mention is who made the very first gold nanoparticles, or how they were made.

It was Michael Faraday (yes, that Faraday), who made them using a reducing agent called. . . phosphorus. Horribly toxic, world-destroying . . . Oh, wait, it's safe. Never mind.

There are 80 thousand ways to make AuNPs, the reason the strong reducing agents are usually used is because it's simply a quicker reaction, or because you want them there to activate something else you are sticking to the surface of the nanoparticle.

Now, the part about the cinnamon extracts stabilizing the AuNPs in physiological conditions, that might be more impressive - I'm not familiar with work in that area. But the toxicity part is nothing more than a cry for attention.

And people who were just there at the time who have little to no relationship to the events will suffer. But they're just mushrooms, so who cares?

There is much evidence that contradicts such a belief.

If you actually care, you have more than the necessary resources to look it up yourself. Mine it is not to convince someone against their will that a cherished belief is wrong.

So which is it?

Read again. These statements do not contradict one another.

I happen upon you, who not only talks of evidence but suggests that there is an abundance of it, in favor of censorship

I'm sorry, where do you see support for censorship in my post? You clearly have mastered quotes, please do point it out.

I'd be lucky if I could perform a Google search on the topic without somehow lousing it up

It's called safe-search.

Your claim is fantastic. On par with claiming to have proof of evidence of God.

My claim:

it does appear that you (like many other slashdotters) regard pornography as being harmless. There is much evidence that contradicts such a belief.

A claim that evidence exists of sexually explicit material (mind you, not even having qualified what variety of pornography this would be, such as the forms directly depicting and portraying as pleasurable or erotic the violent beatings of other human beings) being something other than harmless is in your mind equivalently fantastic as the claim of having proof of God's existence? Perhaps you've simply never thought about pornography at all. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here.

Now for some links, which you also seem to enjoy very much.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Cline
2. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED364919&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED364919
3. http://www.springerlink.com/content/nl0u0phwq6727n2t/
4. http://www.strengthenthefamily.net/is_there_proof.php

Feel free to cry about the sources of some of these links. Again, I have already reasoned on the subject and seen enough evidence for me to be convinced in the direction that I am: the consumption of pornography is harmful. I do not need to prove this to myself again and I have no desire to do anything in your regard but to show that I believe what I say and am not making baseless claims, "bad bluffs." Again I will say, if you actually care about the subject there is more than enough material on the internet to show you what the esteemed medical/psychological community has found in their studies regarding pornography. I'm washing my hands of this thread. Good day sir.

This is not like imprinting organisms from conception to adulthood, despite the tone of the summary.

No, for that you need to shoot the embryos with tiny gold pellets loaded with a very specific DNA sequence — 40-50 bp should do it. That's a much more advanced technology that we should have in about, er, -10 years.

Three words: Clean Air Act.

Furthermore, last I checked, rivers haven't caught fire in recent years, something for which you can thank government regulation.

Not that I expect you to understand this... your anti-government blinders have lead you to an erroneously black-and-white view of the role of government in society, and alas, that's unlikely to change simply because you're presented with evidence contrary to your beliefs. As recent studies have shown, evidence will likely just reinforce your already incorrect beliefs.

To back this up a bit, check out this abstract claiming that the rape rate in Sweden is 3x the rest of Europe. At least 2/3s of those people are considered rapists in Sweden, when they would not be in any other country. It sounds like Sweden is going through some sort of moral panic concerning rape. So I'm disinclined to believe any rape claims coming out of Sweden.

So to find what set them off, we have to find out what happened October 10th, 1970.

Well, first link on google says there was a solar flare.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/n82427w5737u51l6/

Either that, or they really disliked it when Fiji declared independence.

DDT

It sounds like you want to create a "media space". This idea has been floating around since around the 1980's at Xerox PARC. See http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=151233.151235 for more details. While this work is quite old, they may have good ideas on how to best integrate persistent video conferencing into a shared/public space. See also: http://www.springerlink.com/content/l17xvjr522l16v62/. Sadly, both links are pay sites, but if you are studying at a university you may have access.

which first caused a steam explosion, then a more powerful nuclear explosion.

It's probably a discussion based entirely on a technicality, but I'm curious if anyone can clarify or expand on this point: I'd been under the assumption that although the 2nd explosion at Chernobyl may have originated with a nuclear excursion, it generally isn't referred to as a "nuclear explosion." Wikipedia's article on the Chernobyl disaster states that "evidence indicates that the second explosion resulted from a nuclear excursion" but doesn't expound on how the excursion turned into an explosion. The reference for the Wikipedia statement is a bit over my head but only seems to explain how the yield of the explosion suggests a nuclear origin and not how the excursion turned into an explosion. Here's what Wikipedia's article on criticality accidents has to say on excursions resulting in explosions:

Although dangerous, the low densities of fissile material and the long insertion time involved in these events limit the fission yield and peak power, preventing them from becoming a large scale nuclear explosion.

I'm aware that excursions have caused explosions in other cases, such as the SL-1 and BORAX 1 incidents, but it seems that care has been taken in all these descriptions to refer to nuclear excursions rather than just saying nuclear explosions. Is it technically correct (albeit less precise) to refer to excursions resulting in explosions simply as "nuclear explosions" or is that phrase generally reserved for intentional nuclear explosions of enormous yield?

To put the received conebeam CT dose in perspective: The biological dose received from on such CT scan is about as high as a few hrs long haul flight (considering the effective dose received per hour as stated by BA).

Oops, strike that. Mixing up the magnitude orders. It should read a few hundred hrs of long haul flight. :blush:

CT scanning is associated with an increased risk of cancer in children. This development will significantly lower that risk.

As a physics engineer experienced in the field of radiotherapy and familiar with the techniques mentioned in the /. article as well as certified in radiation safety I am sorry to say that although the radiation dose is reduced, it is only reduced in very specific cases, where it is actually not a real benefit. This technique is not used for normal CT scanning, used to diagnose in your average hospital.
This technique is used for radiotherapy (and mainly for position verification of the organ to be irradiated). Lowering CT dose in such cases is a benefit, but compared to the amount of radiation the person undergoing the treatment receives, to treat his' or hers cancer, it is finite. Apart from that the dose for a Conebeam CT in general is already lower than the dose received by a diagnostic CT scan.
The benefit to using the GPU to do the reconstruction of the conebeam CT is also in the fact that reconstruction and therefor the assessment of the scan can be done quicker, making it less likely that the patient has moved, making it more likely to treat the correct spot. It also makes it possible to more accurately deliver dose and thus sparing surrounding healthy organs and tissue.
To put the received conebeam CT dose in perspective: The biological dose received from on such CT scan is about as high as a few hrs long haul flight (considering the effective dose received per hour as stated by BA).
Regarding the cited article of increased risk in cancer in children: Every person receiving radiation has a risk of getting cancer in the future added to the normal risks of getting cancer (for instance by aging or cosmic radiation).
For children this is far more important as induced cancer is a late effect that takes years to decades before it kicks in. Since the bulk of cancer patients is of higher age (due to the fact that cancer is a age deficiency, mainly) they will most of the times not live long enough to experience the side effects. Since children have a longer live span in front of them compared to adults, we have to be more careful, as because of the larger number of years to life, inherently means a higher risk of late effects induced by radiation.

Wikipedia is hardly a citation, you could have added before linking! The other is an anti-drug site making unsupported assertions. Hardly an unbiased source.

Here is a study:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/n645363732641104/

Summary, users with no previous usage experience did experience reduced reaction time on the first experience. Afterward they showed no reduction in reaction time. Users with previous experience showed no difference in reaction time whether using marijuana or not.

"(1 bong can intoxicate an individual as much as 100 ml of hard liquor in one go, plus marijuana intoxication is much faster)"

Yeah, but a bong isn't a single dose it is more like 5-10 (sizes aren't standardized). That is why they have one hitters. In an experienced smoker with tolerance a single hitter of even the most potent material isn't enough to feel a buzz.

Even so, I agree there is a smaller 'safe zone.' But the increased intoxication speed (near instant) allows for more easily controlled dosing. You can tell before the next puff how the last puff impacted you. In contrast, if you are doing shots you won't feel shot one until after drinking shot three!

Some more studies:

http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v25/n5/full/1395716a.html

"Although marijuana significantly increased the number of premature responses and the time participants required to complete several tasks, it had no effect on accuracy on measures of cognitive flexibility, mental calculation, and reasoning. Additionally, heart rate and several subjective-effect ratings (e.g., "Good Drug Effect," "High," "Mellow") were significantly increased in a Delta9-THC concentration-dependent manner. These data demonstrate that acute marijuana smoking produced minimal effects on complex cognitive task performance in experienced marijuana users."

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/misc/driving/s1p2.htm

Increased doses cause drivers to sit more upright and caused slightly decreased car following ability. However, in actual road test in a dense urban environment alcohol caused impairment relative to placebo, marijuana cause no impairment... but subjects thought it had.

http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/pot/a/blucsd030628.htm

This article refers to a peer reviewed long term study (sorry don't have the study itself) which finds there is NO permanent brain damage caused by marijuana use.

I don't have a handy study with regard to motor skill, only extensive anecdotal evidence. I've yet to see anyone significantly impaired with alcohol who didn't stumble and sway. I've never seen anyone on any dose of marijuana either sway or stumble. Believe me, I've seen and experienced VERY heavy doses of marijuana.