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Another one, perhaps more user friendly: http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/57169/

If Joe puts too many hamburgers in his mouth, it doesn't make his descendants get fat.

Actually, it does. (This is purely on the genetics level, I'm not even going to discuss the family system dynamics issue - you're more than welcome to read Bradshaw, Charles Whitfield, Scott Peck or any of the other experts on that side of things.)

I most certainly was not in my mother's ovaries. Only slightly more than half of my nuclear genetic material was there, and since *I* am defined primarily by my consciousness, there is no way *I* could exist anywhere before the 2nd or 3rd trimester; more likely I began existing sometime after birth, probably between ages 1-3. Mere electrical signals in the brain do not equal consciousness.

Although it still seems accepted that a woman's supply of eggs is in most cases fixed at birth, there's some evidence that under certain unusual conditions new eggs might be able to be formed.

[This is my own original work, FWIW):

The Basic Implications Of E=Total[m(1 + D)]http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/180/122.page#3108
a recapitulation

A. Its essential statement

"Extrapolation of the expansion of the universe backwards in time to the early hot dense "Big Bang" phase, using general relativity, yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. At age 10^-35 seconds the Universe begins with a cataclysm that generates space and time, as well as all the matter and energy the Universe will ever hold."

E = Energy content of the universe
m = mass content of the universe
D = distance, Total = in all spatial directions, from the point of Big-Bang, of singularity's energy-mass superposition

At D=0, E was = m and both E and m were, together, all the energy and matter the Universe will ever hold. Since the onset of the cataclysm, E remains constant and m diminishes as D increases.
The increase of D is the initial inflation, followed by the ongoing expansion, of what became the galactic clusters.

At 10^-35 seconds, D was already a fraction of a second above zero. This is when gravity starts. This is what started gravity. At this instance starts the energetic space texture, starts the straining of the space texture, and starts the space-texture-memory, gravity, that most probably will eventually overcome expansion and initiate re-impansion back to singularity.

B. Some of its further essential implications beyond Einstein-Hubble and re classical-quantum physics

And again and again : "On The Origin Of Origins"
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/160/122.page#2753

1. It promotes commonsensical scientific critical thinking beyond Einstein-Hubble.

The universe is the archetype of quantum within classical physics, which is the fractal oneness of the universe.

Astronomically there are two physics. A classical Newtonian physics behaviour of and between galactic clusters, and a quantum physics behaviour WITHIN the galactic clusters.

The onset of big-bang's inflation, the cataclysmic resolution of the Original Superposition, started gravity, with formation - BY DISPERSION - of galactic clusters that behave as classical Newtonian bodies and continuously reconvert their original pre-inflation masses back to energy, thus fueling the galactic clusters expansion, and with endless quantum-within-classical intertwined evolutions WITHIN the clusters in attempt to delay-resist this reconversion.

2. There is no call, no need, for any dark energy. The energy of the universe is conserved. The mass of the universe is conserved in the form of energy, the energy fueling the clusters expansion. At the next universal singularity, at the next D = 0, there will again be E = m for a small fraction of a second...just wait and see...

Following Newton (1) gravity is decreased when mass is decreased and (2) acceleration of a body is given by dividing the force acting upon it by its mass. By plain common sense the combination of those two 'laws' may explain the accelerating cosmic expansion of galaxy clusters and the laws that drive it, based on the E/ m/ D relationship suggested above..

3. There is no call, no need, for a Higgs Particle.

The resolution of energy-mass superposition is reverted when D = 0. Shockingly sad, but must be soberingly faced rationally.

C. Its implications re the origin and nature of life beyond Darwin, re selection for survival

For Nature, Earth's biosphere is one of the many ways of temporarily constraining an amount of energy within a galaxy within a galactic cluster, for thus avoiding, as long as possible, spending this particularly constrained amount a

[This is my own original work, FWIW):

The Basic Implications Of E=Total[m(1 + D)]http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/180/122.page#3108
a recapitulation

A. Its essential statement

"Extrapolation of the expansion of the universe backwards in time to the early hot dense "Big Bang" phase, using general relativity, yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. At age 10^-35 seconds the Universe begins with a cataclysm that generates space and time, as well as all the matter and energy the Universe will ever hold."

E = Energy content of the universe
m = mass content of the universe
D = distance, Total = in all spatial directions, from the point of Big-Bang, of singularity's energy-mass superposition

At D=0, E was = m and both E and m were, together, all the energy and matter the Universe will ever hold. Since the onset of the cataclysm, E remains constant and m diminishes as D increases.
The increase of D is the initial inflation, followed by the ongoing expansion, of what became the galactic clusters.

At 10^-35 seconds, D was already a fraction of a second above zero. This is when gravity starts. This is what started gravity. At this instance starts the energetic space texture, starts the straining of the space texture, and starts the space-texture-memory, gravity, that most probably will eventually overcome expansion and initiate re-impansion back to singularity.

B. Some of its further essential implications beyond Einstein-Hubble and re classical-quantum physics

And again and again : "On The Origin Of Origins"
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/160/122.page#2753

1. It promotes commonsensical scientific critical thinking beyond Einstein-Hubble.

The universe is the archetype of quantum within classical physics, which is the fractal oneness of the universe.

Astronomically there are two physics. A classical Newtonian physics behaviour of and between galactic clusters, and a quantum physics behaviour WITHIN the galactic clusters.

The onset of big-bang's inflation, the cataclysmic resolution of the Original Superposition, started gravity, with formation - BY DISPERSION - of galactic clusters that behave as classical Newtonian bodies and continuously reconvert their original pre-inflation masses back to energy, thus fueling the galactic clusters expansion, and with endless quantum-within-classical intertwined evolutions WITHIN the clusters in attempt to delay-resist this reconversion.

2. There is no call, no need, for any dark energy. The energy of the universe is conserved. The mass of the universe is conserved in the form of energy, the energy fueling the clusters expansion. At the next universal singularity, at the next D = 0, there will again be E = m for a small fraction of a second...just wait and see...

Following Newton (1) gravity is decreased when mass is decreased and (2) acceleration of a body is given by dividing the force acting upon it by its mass. By plain common sense the combination of those two 'laws' may explain the accelerating cosmic expansion of galaxy clusters and the laws that drive it, based on the E/ m/ D relationship suggested above..

3. There is no call, no need, for a Higgs Particle.

The resolution of energy-mass superposition is reverted when D = 0. Shockingly sad, but must be soberingly faced rationally.

C. Its implications re the origin and nature of life beyond Darwin, re selection for survival

For Nature, Earth's biosphere is one of the many ways of temporarily constraining an amount of energy within a galaxy within a galactic cluster, for thus avoiding, as long as possible, spending this particularly constrained amount a

Didn't you know that companies are currently patenting parts of the human genome/DNA that they don't even know what it does

No they are not.

http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54911/

Yes, because peer reviewed science is so much more trustworthy, isn't it? If you want to challenge his science, challenge it with facts. Don't dismiss it because he's not in the same frat as the rest of the guys you've heard from. Show me how he faked the satellite images of ice coverage, or how the arctic actually warmed up this spring much more than the data sets he presented. Otherwise, your post is nothing but a flamebait and should be modded as such.

Based on the words of my stem cell buddies, making stem cells is relatively easy. The hard part is differentiating them into the tissue that you want -- safely. See if you inject stem cells into an animal (or a person http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55430/) you generally get a tumor. This creates a new paradigm of medicine. To get approved a normal drug goes through three phases of evaluation where phase I is "safety". With Stem cell treatment, Phase I is a very big deal. 537

You might want to actually follow the link to the resources provided. The data is from the algae industry experts themselves, and most was very recent, including data as early as late 2008 and early 2009.

petrosuninc may be operating a plant, sure. Honda is building fuel cell vehicles too... the cars cost OVER $1M without the government subsidies! petrosuninc is using government funds to offset their costs. They're also a research firm. Sure, they're selling fuel, but they're selling it under cost (they do have to do SOMETHING with the gas after its made, and noone's going to pay $14 a gallon. look at the real numbers, not the marketing fluff... In NJ I can get solar panels on my house for a few thousand dollars and pay them off in 6 years. Same solar panels in SC cost 6X the price, and have a 31 year payoff, in a BETTER sun zone. That's due to the subsidies. Those government subsidies are fine when 3,000 people get fuel from it. When 300 million are, who's going to pay for it?

I don;t care WHERE you grow tha algae... you still have billions of metric tons of waste to deal with... only 34% of the mass is oil, and it;s DIRTY oil that requires expensive processing to be used in cars and creas tons of highly dangerous byproducts.

The DOA also said we could get H2 for $3 per gallon equivalent by 2010 too... They also said we'd not go over $2 a gallon for gas before 2018. They also said fuel cells would be economical by 2009. The technology HAS improved since the DOE made it's statement, but it's imporved marginally, not by the 2 orders of magnitude required to meet the $3/gallon line. Also, other costs have spiraled upwards.

Before you debunk my data, I suggest you read the sources I referenced you to. Since you;re too laze to click 1 link and ready the article I suggested, here's it's own sources for you:

Biodeisel from Algae at $33/gallon, Feb 2009:http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/algae-biodiesel-its-33-a-gallon-5652/

Article by Bob Grant, chief scientist working on het fuels under AirForce grants, and one of the leading scientists in the entire Algae Oils field:
http://www.the-scientist.com/2009/02/1/36/1/

Keynote Address Photosynthetic Biohydrogen, Paul D. Frymier, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Tennessee:
http://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2008/techprogram/P134919.HTM

GreenFuel Technologies: A Case Study for Industrial Photosynthetic Energy Capture
Krassen: March 2007 http://www.nanostring.net/Algae/CaseStudy.pdf

Carbon Recycling Forum, Department of Energy: Sept 2008: http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/08/H2/index.html

A history of the US DOE's Algae Research, publiched by NREL: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf

There are more citations available on dotyenergy.com. They all back up the extreme costs and failed research and failed promises. Considder the source man, the DOE has continually lied and lied and overpromised. THEY'RE A BUNCH OF BIG OIL NUTJOBS ON BIG OIL PAYROLLS!!!

"Both of these papers show things that could not have evolved or been a plastic response within our own species," George Washington University paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood told The Scientist. Wood, who was not involved with either study, added that the papers raise important questions regarding the evolutionary origins of H. floresiensis that only further research can answer.

While they certainly agree with the diminuative size being related to reduced energy needs they suggest that it is not just a reduced example of homo erectus.

In the other Nature paper, William Jungers, a paleoanthropologist at Stony Brook University in New York, and his coauthors compared the Hobbit foot to the few existing feet in the fossil record. "You just don't see complete feet until you get into Neanderthal," Jungers told The Scientist. "The fossil record of feet is surprisingly meager." If H. floresiensis was in fact a dwarfed H. erectus, the species would have had to amass primitive features after its ancestor had already evolved more modern skeletal characteristics. "It's asking a lot for evolution to backtrack like that," Jungers said. "Is it possible? I guess, but there's no precedent.".

Of course all of this analysis is very subjective. Morphological studies have created a number of strange controversies over the years in evolution. One really hotly contested area was the differences between Bat speicies the larger "flying fox" type that eat fruit and the smaller insect eating bat were throught to have evolved separately at one point and thought to be an example of convergent evolution (this ended up to be wrong). The real answer to this question would need to be settled using DNA mutation rate and genetics. if you want a firm answer everything else is just conjecture, even if it is well informed conjecture.

This is also good: The Scientist. It has some interesting research stories and is very scientist focussed and by that aspect is very political. It is not a journal but does have thorough articles about specific projects and the research challenges and questions therein from the perspective of leading scientists. Very insightful for those interested in becoming (life) scientists.

If you were smart enough to read, instead of just repeating the left's propaganda, you'd know that no cures for ANYTHING have been found using embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells are now responsible for curing over 100 conditions.

Be careful about using absolutes like "anything" or "nothing", "always", or "never". They frequently come back to bite you. Remember, all of this research is extremely nascent, most results are just getting to the human testing phases. Further, embryonic stem cell research receives far less funding (especially in the United States) and what research does occur here is very limited. Even with one hand tied behind its back though:

• Diabetes
• Cell differentiation (think growing new organs)
• Spinal cord injury
• Brain lesion repair
• Diffuse motor injury

• Ok, I'm tired to cutting and pasting. The list is way too long. And as far as Bush not opposing embryonic stem cell research, your daft if you actually believe otherwise. He's stated as much on many occasions. 8 years ago, embryonic stem cell research was a glint in sciences eye. It's no wonder that funding didn't exist before then.

  That we have received funding despite Bush's efforts is not a sign of his support. Simply compare the funding being provided within the U.S. to that being provided in other countries. It's no wonder the U.S. is lagging far behind the rest of the world. You know what happens when a societies backwards, ignorant beliefs prevent funding into cutting edge technology? The cutting edge sciencists leave.

I was a little shocked to read the parent post, but he's absolutely right. See the story (from December) here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/science/22fermi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

However, I'm not sure I'd characterize the cuts as a "funding SNAFU". According to the NYTimes article, the cuts were "to meet bottom-line spending targets demanded by Mr. Bush, Congress rolled back the planned increases for the Energy Department and other science agencies." If I were more cynical I'd say that money just got funneled into Iraq.

Oh well. Long as we're busy fighting terrorists, who cares if we have a $1T/year deficit, a weakened dollar, one of the civilized world's worst public education systems, an expensive, inefficient healthcare system, AND are cutting out the roots from future scientific progress in the USA. God bless America.

Except that a few years ago, the government doubled funding for the NIH and the number of published articles did not correlate. The grant funding rate that you quote is from the period of rapid budget INCREASES.

Forgive me for being very skeptical of your claims that we need to throw even MORE money at the NIH, since y'all were just as productive when we spent half as much money on you.

I'm not pulling this all out of my ass, either. See here.

Right, but as it isn't a preventative measure, we don't fingerprint everybody that walks down the street. And nobody is under the delusion that fingerprinting makes them safer. They understand it's a post-crime tool.

Earlier this year, The Scientist, Magazine of the Life Sciences conducted a poll asking its mostly-scientist/science field readers what they thought of the Bush and Clinton administrations' science policies. Sorted by voting choices in 2004, and includes whether or not they believe themselves to be influenced by ideology in their science.

Poll: How bad is Bush for science?

This is an old article about global warming, that actually has a very relevant passage.

http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/11344 /

"In a certain sense it's provided more funding, but there's a fear that our science will be driven strictly by political decisions," she says. For instance, political decisions were made on how to deal with sulfur emissions that cause acid rain. The research budget was cut by 40 percent in the fiscal year 1990 budget, the acid rain reductions strategies were embodied in the Clean Air Act passed in 1991, and the issue has been relegated to the back burner, Penner says. She fears a similar fate for global warming research. "People are concerned about the policy going forward without the knowledge base being there. Once a decision is made, the funding base is cut and you never get to know if you made the right choice," she says. "I think it's dangerous to make expensive political decisions now. Later, you'll have more reasons and abilities." For now, she advocates a go-slow approach to policymakers."

There are people who have political motivations on either side of the fence, looking to lock-in final policy on the "Global Warming" issue and move on. This problem is more complex than that. Anyone looking to give you an easy answer on global warming and/or climate change is looking to sell you something.

A link to a free article regarding the lost icecap sensors is at http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23640/ This article has several other FREE links in it.

Understood by whom? And, more to the point, what alternative do they supposedly posit as a replacement?

http://www.the-scientist.com/2003/11/17/14/1/

If you plan to use random drift for that, you'll have a heck of a time explaining why things consistently "randomly drift" in the right direction.

That is challenged quite widely. Natural selection is one mechanism for speciation, others like random genetic drift in isolated populations are often viewed to be more important in modern theory.

Great, but if they really want to find signs of life, they need a tricorder. :-)

Or a portable DNA Microarray ... which might be a tad more useful, since they already have a portable assay onboard.

not suprising really with webpages like this
--------

Decoding the Genome Needs Superpower

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is one of the largest genomics data centers in the world. In "The Hum and the Genome," the Scientist writes about the IT infrastructure needed to handle the avalanche of data that researchers have to analyze. With its 2,000 processors and its 300 terabytes of storage, the data center uses today about 0.75 megawatts (MW) of power at a cost of 140,000 per year (about $170K). But the data center will need more than a petabyte of storage within three years, and its yearly electricity bill will reach 500,000 (more than $600K) for about 1.4 MW, enough to power more than a thousand homes. Read more...

Below is a small diagram showing the current IT infrastructure of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, used by the Human Genome Project (Credit: Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute).

The current IT infrastructure of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

Here is a link to a larger version of this chart.

Now, let's look at this IT infrastructure in detail.

* Computers
o Today: The datacenter hosts about 2,000 Alpha processors, originally designed by Digital Equipment (DEC), before its acquisition by Compaq, and later by Hewlett-Packard (HP).
o Tomorrow: The Sanger Institute is looking at cheaper solutions, especially now that HP has officially stopped any development on the Alpha front.
* Storage
o Today: Three different computer rooms have a total capacity of about 300 terabytes.
o Tomorrow: The IT management forecasts about a petabyte within three years -- at least.
* Databases
o Today: There are about 40 different databases, and only two of them are in the 50 terabytes area.
o Tomorrow: One of the databases, the Trace sequence archive currently contains about 700 million entries, and it doubles every 10 months.
* Power bills
o Today: The current equipment needs about 0.75 megawatts for a cost of 140,000 per year (about $170K).
o Tomorrow: The new setup will need about 1.4 megawatts, which will raise the yearly bill to about 500,000 (about $615K today).

The supercomputer vendors can say all they want about diminishing costs. But they almost never talk about the power bills...

Sources: Stuart Blackman, The Scientist, Volume 19, Issue 11, Page 15, June 6, 2005; and various websites

• Migma fusion
• Inertial electrostatic confinement
• Muon-catalyzed fusion
• Antimatter-catalyzed fusion
• Cold fusion

[Maglich]'s grant-proposal was rejected, not on its technical merits, but because ERDA had already made a policy decision that only the Tokamak and Laser-Inertial-Confinement approaches should be funded. Migma was erroneously classified as a magnetic mirror machine, and ERDA had decided to phase out mirrors. When Maglich tried to appeal this decision, the Gov't-convened Robson commission did a railroad-job on him ( twelve tokamak-experts read twelve prepared negative statements, with no opportunity for rebuttal). A colleague of mine let me read copies of the Robson report and FEC's response; the Robson commission's misunderstanding of the principles behind migma was very distressing...)

They are generally located near population centers because that's where the research is being performed - at universities, pharm/biotech companies, and other organizations. It's hard enough to attract top-notch talent to one of these places without having it be in the middle of nowhere. There was a very interesting article in The Scientist last month about working in one of these places. Not so much fun as you'd think.

What I find even more surprising/disturbing is what is being done at www.umi.com. The link is especially pertinent to those of you out there who have written or are going to write a dissertation that is filed away at your University's library. If you have already written a Ph.D. dissertation, go ahead and see if your dissertation is listed. If you've just recently written it and it is listed, most likely it is also available for download at a price! Now, mind you, none of that money goes to YOU the one who researched, wrote, stayed up late hours of the night to ponder and rewrite! Every last dime probably goes to UMI (and their partners). I don't know what sort of questionable business contracts UMI has with your University's library or the Library of Congress, but I know someone out there is profiting from works that others so painstakingly prepared. This racket has yet to be fully scrutinized.

Lets make no mistake of it. The SIIA is as bad if not worse than MPAA, RIAA, and Microsoft who are using bullying tactics to maintain their monopolistic grasp on a niche (but very important for the advancement of humankind) market. The information published by the scientific community wants to be free--why else would researchers write and publish THEIR work? The cost is now so restrictive, that those of us who should be benefiting and learning from the information (the lowly students) cannot afford to do so!

Graduate students make somewhere between $15,000 to $22,000 a year. Bear in mind that most journals cost somewhere from $100 to $200 (or more) a year to subscribe. And for me, a grad student in the biomedical sciences, I scan somewhere around two dozen different journals. If I had to pay for access for all of these journals, I'd have to shell out somewhere between $2400 to $4800 a year--a good 10-25% of my salary!

I'm glad /. put this article on the frontpage because it outlines how dire the situation truly is. Forget about music and movies, this directly pertains to a lot of livelihoods and careers of /. readers--their bread-n-butter. At least ponder this: at a time when technology can easily publish scientific material, why are we allowing these large publishers to hoard and monopolize OUR own work and making it difficult for us to access that material at the same time? (This is a rhetorical question, obviously; and I'm sure you have lots to say why we allow it. But really, the answer appears to be so simple, but so out of reach.)

The leading cause of death on the planet today is good ol' malaria. Mosquito control with DDT could solve that problem - and no, it wouldn't require spraying massive amounts of tens of millions of pounds on food crops, just a few hundred thousand pounds a year.

"B-b-b-ut DDT is bad! The enviros said so!" - really? The evidence for that is highly questionable.

DDT also help with another up-and-coming disease, too.

> In my opinion listening to the environmentalists causes no harm; but if they are right we're fucked. So whether or not I agree with them or with you - I'm going to modify my behaviour based on what they tell me. I'll buy a more efficient car, I'll steer clear of GM foods, and I'll try to avoid creating vast quantities of waste. And where I can I'll also support them in their efforts.

Dude - WTF kind of logic is that? Believing the earth is flat is also harmless. (And if the earth is flat, we're fucked because someday someone's gonna sail off the edge! ) So even if I don't agree with flat-earthers, I'll avoid cruise ships and support the flat-earthers in their efforts.

How about trying something revolutionary, like the idea that "the d00d who makes the statement has the burden of proof". If the enviros make a claim, it's up to them to prove their case to you.

If, after listening to their argument, you still agree with them, modify your behavior. But if you don't agree with them, don't modify your behavior.

Avoiding GM foods because there's no harm there? You mean, like rice that could provide folks with beta-carotene and vitamin A, preventing millions of cases of blindness and about two million deaths every year? Yeah, no harm there.

Now I dig that we might not need the carotene-advanced rice, and as such, we're quite free to stick with regular rice if we so choose. But to support the environmentalist agenda to deny everyone access to this technology is going too far. So I choose to support GM foods (and most genetic engineering in general), and I'll eat the GM foods if they taste good.

And sometimes the enviro arguments do make sense. F'rinstance, I choose efficient cars because, umm, well, they're more efficient. Unless I'm hauling freight (which I ain't), I'm interested in getting from "A" to "B" in a reasonable timeframe, preferably with a minimum of expense. Hmm, the econobox costs $10K and $0.10 per mile, and the SUV costs $30K and $0.20 per mile, and the hybrid $20K and $0.05 per mile.

If I expect to keep a car for 10 years and I drive 5000 miles a year, I buy the $10K car. (I could save $2500 by spending an extra $10000 for the hybrid, losing $7500 - almost enough to buy another car!) If I drive 20000 miles per year, I save $7500 out of $10000 and hybrid starts to look pretty good - assuming I can get 10 years out of the batteries. The SUV sux azz and isn't in contention for me. But even though I think they're a poor choice, I wouldn't deny someone else the right to buy one. They may simply have different transportation needs than I do.

> And when the oil runs out and you're left with a rusting pile of useless metal on your drive remember to blame the government because "they should have done something".

Long before the oil runs out, it'll run low. Supply and demand will increase the price of oil. When it's $0.50 per mile for the shitbox, $2.00 per mile for the SUV, and still $0.05 per mile for the electric vehicle, everyone will have an incentive to switch. (...well, assuming we have nuclear power, which is the only way we'll be able to generate enough electricity to power all the cars when the internal combustion engine dies.

(Or would you prefer to burn more coal or natural gas - same amount of CO2 released - to get the electric current to recharge the batteries... or to electrolyze the water for the hydrogen in the fuel cells? Don't forget, you didn't mine the methane hydrates in the eco-sensitive offshore shallows, and you also helped the enviros ban genetic engineering, so you can't grow acres of sugar cane in the desert for ethanol, or genetically-engineer a batch of superbugs to crack water :-)

And of course, the problem with doing that experiment was the even for Millikan's it was only selectively filtered data points that got published.

See this or this.

So there you go, an interesting experiment and insight into fraud when the experimenter knew what the results were supposed to be.

That is more a case of unfamiliarity with the subject. You would think that when you are dealing with a specific news area, the people posting the articles should have the sense to know what is what, or at least the ability to research it.

The idea of colliding beam fusion reactors is not new. In the early 70's Bogden Maglich came of with the idea of using a self-colliding ion beam architecture (based upon his precetron accelerator design which he created to study pion-antipion collisions in the 60's) to trigger aneutronic fusion without the plasma containment instability problems inherent in magnetic confinement fusion reactor designs. The results of his experiments over the years have been very promising, but he has had a great deal of difficulty getting funding for his research since his approach is so far outside of the "orthodox" mainstream fusion being conducted as Princeton and elsewhere. The uninformed also unfortunately tend to lump him in with crackpots such as Cold Fusion researchers and perpetual motion engine designers (and the "free energy" crackpots like to make him out to be one of their own), despite the fact that most experts in the fusion research field acknowledge that his science is sound.

For more info, here are a few links to get started. There was also an interesting article about him in Omni back in the 80's, but I don't recall the issue.

• Letter to The Scientist Magazine from B. Maglich
• The Scientist - "Letter: And Migmatron Facts"
• Phys. Rev. Letters:"Magnetic Fusion with High Energy Self-Colliding Ion Beams"

The idea of colliding beam fusion reactors is not new. In the early 70's Bogden Maglich came of with the idea of using a self-colliding ion beam architecture (based upon his precetron accelerator design which he created to study pion-antipion collisions in the 60's) to trigger aneutronic fusion without the plasma containment instability problems inherent in magnetic confinement fusion reactor designs. The results of his experiments over the years have been very promising, but he has had a great deal of difficulty getting funding for his research since his approach is so far outside of the "orthodox" mainstream fusion being conducted as Princeton and elsewhere. The uninformed also unfortunately tend to lump him in with crackpots such as Cold Fusion researchers and perpetual motion engine designers (and the "free energy" crackpots like to make him out to be one of their own), despite the fact that most experts in the fusion research field acknowledge that his science is sound.

For more info, here are a few links to get started. There was also an interesting article about him in Omni back in the 80's, but I don't recall the issue.

• Letter to The Scientist Magazine from B. Maglich
• The Scientist - "Letter: And Migmatron Facts"
• Phys. Rev. Letters:"Magnetic Fusion with High Energy Self-Colliding Ion Beams"

Another multiple success story is the University of Wisconsin. In the 1920s, it developed a process for irradiating certain foodstuffs with ultraviolet rays to enhance Vitamin D formation--a technology that found its way into virtually every milk bottle. Decades later, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation patented certain derivatives of Vitamin D now used to treat renal osteodystrophy and other bone-related diseases. Gross revenue surpassed $14 million, and the university netted about $8 million.

That works out to *a lot* less than a few cents a gallon. And it would seem those patents would have expired by now.

A similar technique is DNA sequencing using scanning-tunneling microscopes and atomic force microscopes. Here is a Google search, and here is an article from 1992.