I take your point that the editors make a journal. Perhaps there is too lax a policy because many of the topics are quite speculative, but I would agree that political statements and poor reasoning are bad signs. However 'Cosmology' is necessarily an interdisciplinary subject - theoretically all disciplines; that doesn't mean the editors shouldn't have expertise in some subject, but is there such a person as a 'Cosmologist'?
Geology is the restraint on the organic chemistry...
A nice way of putting it, and I absolutely agree! Unfortunately, I would understand it differently..
...Without that chemical background you have no idea what is possible.
...Alternatively, 'without the geological background, there is no organic chemistry'. What I mean is this : the geology is the crucible in which the first complex self-sustaining chemical reactions were formed. (See long rant in reply to MightyMartian). Once geochemistry gave way to biochemistry, life started to set its own limits on what was possible.
Finally, I also look with suspicion on ad hominem attacks in what is meant to be a serious science journal. Perhaps you are right that bad apples like this indicate the whole thing is spoiled. I am slightly more optimistic, but I agree in principle
The site is a scam, the model is you pay $35 to have your article submitted, then pay even more, $150, when it publishes.
Hmm. Okay, I didn't realise this. However, many journals have a pay-to-publish sca... er.. model. Then university libraries pay them again in subscriptions. It's an interesting business really.
You've got a degree in biochemistry and you think abiogenesis has more to do with geology?
I call bullshit.
My point was actually that "I a have a degree in X" is argument from authority - much as I dislike the formal argument..er.. memes, tropes, whatever.
I'll expand on my point a little:
Firstly, life is a complex system which continually repairs itself, and maintains a boundary separating itself from the environment. Alternatively, it is a series of positive feedbacks (explosions) controlled by negative feedback (death). Whatever definition is used, there is a clear principle that life comes from life - cells reproduce to make other cells; viruses hijack cellular machinery to make copies of themselves; etc. See Steven Rose on 'Lifelines' where he argues that the cell, not the gene is the fundamental unit of selection
So, clearly, some system nearly as complex as a living one was needed to 'initiate' life. The only possibility is a geological system. Now Graham Cairns-Smith (oddly enough, also at Glasgow) considered clays to be the template for ribozyme synthesis, with selection on those RNA molecules that stabilised or protected efficient clay replicators. He came up with the metaphor of a rope to illustrate the transition from system to system - clay to RNA to DNA to cell. In this metaphor, no 'strand' (system) stretches from one end of the rope to the other (which is an axis of time) but 'hands off' to the next system.
In Russell's theory, inorganic minerals form the boundary of proto-cells, and carry out primitive metabolism. Various iron/nickel sulphur minerals could have preformed the necessary redox reactions and proton gradients necessary for the energetic systems. Cooperation with short peptides in an autocatalytic cycle that generated longer protein-like catalysts was a possible method for bootstrapping enzymes. Personally, I don't see that there is a problem of which out of RNA and protein came first - perhaps both evolved at the same time and cross-catalysed each others autocatalysis.
In summary, the interface between life and non-life must necessarily involve a lot of geochemistry and geology. That's not to say that understanding of biochemistry is unneeded : many redox enzymes contain what are essentially nanocrystals of between 4 and 10 atoms that carry out essential parts of the reaction. Further, there is a PhD student in my lab who works on coenzymes (vitamins, essentially) who has done interesting work on the conservation of these coenzymes in evolution - perhaps there are some clues there as to the first mechanisms to arise to do things like C-C bond formation or peptide hydrolysis.
The Journal of Cosmology does have an amateur feel about it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all articles in it are junk. My former supervisor published a paper there with a member of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Mike Russell) as co-author on the origin of life.
As a biochemist, I've done extremely thorough research into the abiogenic origin of life.
Really? I have a degree in biochemistry, yet I wouldn't say that necessarily gave me any special insight into abiogenesis. It's closer to geology than biology, I would think.
Since I liked it very much, I'll mention again on./ the talk given by Nick Lane on the origin of life and the origin of multicellularity. Although his expertise is in mitochondrial energetics, he gave a nice summary of recent research (including Russell's work). Although most schemes are quite speculative, the one he outlined involved the common mineral serpentine acting as a kind of reaction chamber for primitive metabolism involving proton gradients and methanogenesis.
So, although conditions on the early Earth may have made chemical life inevitable, that doesn't mean this paper is nonsense, nor is this journal worthless just because of some slightly odd papers published in it.
Gold is not non-reactive - you can dissolve it in aqua regia to form chloroauric acid.
You're right. I don't know how I got that impression. In fact this page : Organogold chemistry has tons of interesting compounds. I probably should have said Neon instead.
Articles on his blog (which sometimes reads more like a scientific journal) show that...
Like a scientific journal is not quite the same as an actual scientific journal. There may be problems with peer-review, but at least the papers Watts is criticising have been through that.
My take is that Anthony Watts wants to present the objective truth - whatever that may be - and to discredit bad science and politically driven science.
This can only be a good thing. If anything, there needs to be some check on the sort of "The Day After Tomorrow" style catastrophism that some indulge in. If AGW is a problem, it's a problem - there's no need to hype it.
It seems like scientists in this one field get angry if you challenge their conclusions. I'm not sure why they've adopted an Imperial "you dare challenge us, mortal?" attitude over this. I always assumed the more people who ask questions, the better chance you have of finding out problems.
Well, a couple of reasons.
Firstly, there aren't many areas of Science where so many people make so many objections. There are relatively few Geocentrics around nowadays, for example. One area that does have this is Evolution, and I can think of a few people *cough*dawkins*cough* who get unreasonably put out by critics. Granted, creationists can be annoying; but a very small subset of their arguments can be at least thought provoking (like "why is this not true?").
Secondly : politics. I'm sure you know what I mean.
Third is possibly that the scientists involved think that it is quite important to get it right. I know there are those that don't believe this, but I'm fairly certain that most climate scientists want to get the correct answer - whatever that is - not the answer they would prefer (see : politics). Questions that lead to a more accurate answer are always welcome; questions based on politics, fear, or anger generally are not so welcome
Oxygen is also toxic to humans at high partial pressures.
True, but I once thought that oxygen was the world's first pollutant (I even wrote a node to that effect). However, I went to a talk this week by Nick Lane about the origin of life - and he says that it is not oxygen as such, but oxygen radicals. The context was that he was talking about why mitochondria evolved, and that it probably wasn't to protect organisms from the increase in oxygen concentrations caused by the invention of photosynthesis. Indeed, it is the mitochondria that make most of the oxygen radicals.
Anyway, the point still holds that even though a molecule (like O2) can be beneficial in some concentrations, it can be harmful at others. In the same way that you can die from drinking too much water, or eating too much salt. There do exist compounds that are toxic at all concentrations, but they are as rare as completely non-reactive substances (like gold).
Yeah, I'm not in favour of putting AIs out of easy reach of their off-switches...
Next step will be hooking them up to the powergrid/nuclear weapons silos/rocket launches, and then equipping them with orbital lasers. Hell, lets just shave our heads and paint bullseyes on them now, to save the mechanical sky-gods the trouble
Even worse is when they have a generic IT-related article, an put an image of a keyboard next to the story. The BBC does this a lot - I know that getting stock photos (that are not copyright) is a pain, but really... a keyboard?
Your comment will lead to some militrary contractor getting the opportunity to sell gigantic fans for $500 million each to the white house. within two weeks you'll notice that the flags around the white house will always point in a offset from the actual wind direction.
Hmmm. Perhaps a mechanical flag would be better, with thin metal supports in the cloth controlled by a mechanism running down to pole. That way, a central controller could track the wind and wave a little 'off'.
Or perhaps some 3D hologram system (giant octagonal bodies and highway ramps for arms!)...
They have found that when people camp out at a table or booth for hours working on their laptop or reading a kindle, they don't get much revenue.
Exactly. This is why many coffee shops that start out with friendly living room furnishings - like low comfy sofas - end up with tall hard stools at a counter. I go to a lot of coffee shops where students sit for hours with their one drink. I think its rude, frankly - it's a business, not your house.
However, I often use a laptop in these places, and I don't think its unreasonable so long as I only stay for the time it takes to eat my food and drink. Of course, with more people imagining they are 'digital nomads' or some such nonsense, there will be some who sit there all day.
Car security systems use 'progressive backoff' - which means that each retry is allowed in, say, twice the time that the previous one was. So 5 mins for the first attempt, 10 for the second, 20 for the third etc.
We see no measurable sample deterioration. With the X-ray pulses used in this study, the explosion of micrometre-sized objects is hydrodynamic and the sample burns from the outside inwards, rarefying and destroying outer contours first. Trapped electrons move inwards to neutralize an increasingly positive core, and leave behind a positively charged outer layer, which then peels off over some picoseconds.
First of all, the picture of the mimivirus, this huge honking virus, is a black dot surrounded by a psychedelic laser field herngh gnarly. But that's the best picture they can get of the largest virus known to mankind? A Grateful Dead poster?
That's the diffraction pattern. The paper has more meaningful images after "iterative phase retrieval with the Hawk software package". Hawk is open source, apparently:
All that proves is that idiots can get degrees too. Even PhDs. Also, homeopathy is definitely the bathwater, not the baby. Luckily, the baby pissed in the bathwater, and the diluted baby piss can be had on these sugar pills for only $100 - guaranteed to cure!
Crap...publish how to do it...and I will spend some time scratching numbers for an extra $600 a day or so....
RTFA. He did. Of course, the lottey company pulled their cards immediately.
Read more (and more - it's a long article). Srivastava's insight is not just a single 'hack' for one lottery ticket scheme, but that potentially all such schemes must suffer from similar flaws.
The idea is that you can't just put completely random numbers on the ticket without risking either huge payouts or no wins at all. As the article puts it:
"In reality, everything about the game has been carefully designed to control payouts and entice the consumer." Of course, these elaborate design elements mean that the ticket can be undesigned, that the algorithm can be reverse-engineered. The veneer of chance can be peeled away.
All scams are essentially the same, regardless of how they are delivered.
Filtering them is a life skill.
True, but the scammers on gumtree (at least) that target flat adverts seem more sophisticated than the usual "DEAR BLESSED SIR..." 419 email scams.
I've now learned some simple - possibly obvious - indicators:
Flat available from today (or yesterday in a few cases).
Very low rent for the location, considering 'all bills included' and the amenites.
A quite specific one, but strange phrases like "Take care of the flat as it is" (translation quirk perhaps?) or 'sumptuous'
Of course, the clincher was when they replied to my query with a request for a £500 ($810) a deposit by Western Union before seeing the flat. The excuse was "people waste my time by arranging viewings without the money to pay the rent" which is absolute bullshit - there's no way I would ask someone for a deposit without providing something (like house keys) in exchange. A quick google found the same MO in other people's warnings on forums
Less sophisticated, however, was the pair of posts that used the same image for the flat, but in different places in the city. Not suspicious at all, oh no.
I have futures in all kinds of elements, from molybdenum to iridium....I don't think you're even close enough to having the relevant experience to be able to talk, sir. Come back when you're actually fabricating semiconductors, okay?
Because buying futures in metals is exactly the same as being a chip manufacturer....
Although unfair comment, you are the guy that claimed to need a more precise quadratic equation in order to make your LED lights for growing pot, so I'm not particularly sorry.
Oh man! (Or should I say "Oh, Jesus?") - even better is :
http://www.conservapedia.com/Evolution_syndrome
"Sufferers of evolution syndrome tend to be college students or graduates who wanted to excel in math or physics, but lacked the ability or work ethic to do so."
Are some of these articles written by trolls?
At least one "educator" has a beef with relativity, citing that Jesus acted faster than the speed of light in performing miracles.
Wow! A place better even than "Talk" page on wikipedia! Eg: "Theories [like relativity] that don't produce anything useful are often a waste of time, or simply false. I realize that liberals tend to downplay accountability -- a conservative insight, but theories should be accountable by what value they yield, particularly when taxpayer dollars are spent (wasted) on the theory." What a class-A moron!
Slashdot Mirror
I take your point that the editors make a journal. Perhaps there is too lax a policy because many of the topics are quite speculative, but I would agree that political statements and poor reasoning are bad signs. However 'Cosmology' is necessarily an interdisciplinary subject - theoretically all disciplines; that doesn't mean the editors shouldn't have expertise in some subject, but is there such a person as a 'Cosmologist'?
Geology is the restraint on the organic chemistry...
A nice way of putting it, and I absolutely agree! Unfortunately, I would understand it differently..
...Without that chemical background you have no idea what is possible.
...Alternatively, 'without the geological background, there is no organic chemistry'. What I mean is this : the geology is the crucible in which the first complex self-sustaining chemical reactions were formed. (See long rant in reply to MightyMartian). Once geochemistry gave way to biochemistry, life started to set its own limits on what was possible.
Finally, I also look with suspicion on ad hominem attacks in what is meant to be a serious science journal. Perhaps you are right that bad apples like this indicate the whole thing is spoiled. I am slightly more optimistic, but I agree in principle
.
The site is a scam, the model is you pay $35 to have your article submitted, then pay even more, $150, when it publishes.
Hmm. Okay, I didn't realise this. However, many journals have a pay-to-publish sca... er.. model. Then university libraries pay them again in subscriptions. It's an interesting business really.
You've got a degree in biochemistry and you think abiogenesis has more to do with geology?
I call bullshit.
My point was actually that "I a have a degree in X" is argument from authority - much as I dislike the formal argument ..er.. memes, tropes, whatever.
I'll expand on my point a little:
Firstly, life is a complex system which continually repairs itself, and maintains a boundary separating itself from the environment. Alternatively, it is a series of positive feedbacks (explosions) controlled by negative feedback (death). Whatever definition is used, there is a clear principle that life comes from life - cells reproduce to make other cells; viruses hijack cellular machinery to make copies of themselves; etc. See Steven Rose on 'Lifelines' where he argues that the cell, not the gene is the fundamental unit of selection
So, clearly, some system nearly as complex as a living one was needed to 'initiate' life. The only possibility is a geological system. Now Graham Cairns-Smith (oddly enough, also at Glasgow) considered clays to be the template for ribozyme synthesis, with selection on those RNA molecules that stabilised or protected efficient clay replicators. He came up with the metaphor of a rope to illustrate the transition from system to system - clay to RNA to DNA to cell. In this metaphor, no 'strand' (system) stretches from one end of the rope to the other (which is an axis of time) but 'hands off' to the next system.
In Russell's theory, inorganic minerals form the boundary of proto-cells, and carry out primitive metabolism. Various iron/nickel sulphur minerals could have preformed the necessary redox reactions and proton gradients necessary for the energetic systems. Cooperation with short peptides in an autocatalytic cycle that generated longer protein-like catalysts was a possible method for bootstrapping enzymes. Personally, I don't see that there is a problem of which out of RNA and protein came first - perhaps both evolved at the same time and cross-catalysed each others autocatalysis.
In summary, the interface between life and non-life must necessarily involve a lot of geochemistry and geology. That's not to say that understanding of biochemistry is unneeded : many redox enzymes contain what are essentially nanocrystals of between 4 and 10 atoms that carry out essential parts of the reaction. Further, there is a PhD student in my lab who works on coenzymes (vitamins, essentially) who has done interesting work on the conservation of these coenzymes in evolution - perhaps there are some clues there as to the first mechanisms to arise to do things like C-C bond formation or peptide hydrolysis.
The Journal of Cosmology does have an amateur feel about it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all articles in it are junk. My former supervisor published a paper there with a member of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Mike Russell) as co-author on the origin of life.
As a biochemist, I've done extremely thorough research into the abiogenic origin of life.
Really? I have a degree in biochemistry, yet I wouldn't say that necessarily gave me any special insight into abiogenesis. It's closer to geology than biology, I would think.
Since I liked it very much, I'll mention again on ./ the talk given by Nick Lane on the origin of life and the origin of multicellularity. Although his expertise is in mitochondrial energetics, he gave a nice summary of recent research (including Russell's work). Although most schemes are quite speculative, the one he outlined involved the common mineral serpentine acting as a kind of reaction chamber for primitive metabolism involving proton gradients and methanogenesis.
So, although conditions on the early Earth may have made chemical life inevitable, that doesn't mean this paper is nonsense, nor is this journal worthless just because of some slightly odd papers published in it.
dare i say he's having...Grand delusions?
*groan* I hope that you at least put on some sunglasses after typing that, then played the correct Who track...
That's pretty funny, but a better use might be something like molecule manipulation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrldmaF4rtU using Jmol
Gold is not non-reactive - you can dissolve it in aqua regia to form chloroauric acid.
You're right. I don't know how I got that impression. In fact this page : Organogold chemistry has tons of interesting compounds. I probably should have said Neon instead.
Articles on his blog (which sometimes reads more like a scientific journal) show that...
Like a scientific journal is not quite the same as an actual scientific journal. There may be problems with peer-review, but at least the papers Watts is criticising have been through that.
My take is that Anthony Watts wants to present the objective truth - whatever that may be - and to discredit bad science and politically driven science.
This can only be a good thing. If anything, there needs to be some check on the sort of "The Day After Tomorrow" style catastrophism that some indulge in. If AGW is a problem, it's a problem - there's no need to hype it.
It seems like scientists in this one field get angry if you challenge their conclusions. I'm not sure why they've adopted an Imperial "you dare challenge us, mortal?" attitude over this. I always assumed the more people who ask questions, the better chance you have of finding out problems.
Well, a couple of reasons.
Firstly, there aren't many areas of Science where so many people make so many objections. There are relatively few Geocentrics around nowadays, for example. One area that does have this is Evolution, and I can think of a few people *cough*dawkins*cough* who get unreasonably put out by critics. Granted, creationists can be annoying; but a very small subset of their arguments can be at least thought provoking (like "why is this not true?").
Secondly : politics. I'm sure you know what I mean.
Third is possibly that the scientists involved think that it is quite important to get it right. I know there are those that don't believe this, but I'm fairly certain that most climate scientists want to get the correct answer - whatever that is - not the answer they would prefer (see : politics). Questions that lead to a more accurate answer are always welcome; questions based on politics, fear, or anger generally are not so welcome
Oxygen is also toxic to humans at high partial pressures.
True, but I once thought that oxygen was the world's first pollutant (I even wrote a node to that effect). However, I went to a talk this week by Nick Lane about the origin of life - and he says that it is not oxygen as such, but oxygen radicals. The context was that he was talking about why mitochondria evolved, and that it probably wasn't to protect organisms from the increase in oxygen concentrations caused by the invention of photosynthesis. Indeed, it is the mitochondria that make most of the oxygen radicals.
Anyway, the point still holds that even though a molecule (like O2) can be beneficial in some concentrations, it can be harmful at others. In the same way that you can die from drinking too much water, or eating too much salt. There do exist compounds that are toxic at all concentrations, but they are as rare as completely non-reactive substances (like gold).
tell application "Orbital Laser" to warmup
repeat with human from 0 to all_humans
tell application "Orbital Laser" to zap human
end repeat
tell application "Orbital Laser" to shutdown
Dammit, who gave the satellite a browser? This is blatant Skynet astroturfing!
Yeah, I'm not in favour of putting AIs out of easy reach of their off-switches...
Next step will be hooking them up to the powergrid/nuclear weapons silos/rocket launches, and then equipping them with orbital lasers. Hell, lets just shave our heads and paint bullseyes on them now, to save the mechanical sky-gods the trouble
Even worse is when they have a generic IT-related article, an put an image of a keyboard next to the story. The BBC does this a lot - I know that getting stock photos (that are not copyright) is a pain, but really ... a keyboard?
Your comment will lead to some militrary contractor getting the opportunity to sell gigantic fans for $500 million each to the white house. within two weeks you'll notice that the flags around the white house will always point in a offset from the actual wind direction.
Hmmm. Perhaps a mechanical flag would be better, with thin metal supports in the cloth controlled by a mechanism running down to pole. That way, a central controller could track the wind and wave a little 'off'. Or perhaps some 3D hologram system (giant octagonal bodies and highway ramps for arms!)...
They have found that when people camp out at a table or booth for hours working on their laptop or reading a kindle, they don't get much revenue.
Exactly. This is why many coffee shops that start out with friendly living room furnishings - like low comfy sofas - end up with tall hard stools at a counter. I go to a lot of coffee shops where students sit for hours with their one drink. I think its rude, frankly - it's a business, not your house.
However, I often use a laptop in these places, and I don't think its unreasonable so long as I only stay for the time it takes to eat my food and drink. Of course, with more people imagining they are 'digital nomads' or some such nonsense, there will be some who sit there all day.
Car security systems use 'progressive backoff' - which means that each retry is allowed in, say, twice the time that the previous one was. So 5 mins for the first attempt, 10 for the second, 20 for the third etc.
Furthermore, from the Nature paper :
We see no measurable sample deterioration. With the X-ray pulses used in this study, the explosion of micrometre-sized objects is hydrodynamic and the sample burns from the outside inwards, rarefying and destroying outer contours first. Trapped electrons move inwards to neutralize an increasingly positive core, and leave behind a positively charged outer layer, which then peels off over some picoseconds.
Sounds painful.
First of all, the picture of the mimivirus, this huge honking virus, is a black dot surrounded by a psychedelic laser field herngh gnarly. But that's the best picture they can get of the largest virus known to mankind? A Grateful Dead poster?
That's the diffraction pattern. The paper has more meaningful images after "iterative phase retrieval with the Hawk software package". Hawk is open source, apparently:
Link to Hawk software abstract in J. App Cryst
also, they used some algorithm known as RAAR (Relaxed averaged alternating reflections). Heh, good name :)
All that proves is that idiots can get degrees too. Even PhDs. Also, homeopathy is definitely the bathwater, not the baby. Luckily, the baby pissed in the bathwater, and the diluted baby piss can be had on these sugar pills for only $100 - guaranteed to cure!
Crap...publish how to do it...and I will spend some time scratching numbers for an extra $600 a day or so....
RTFA. He did. Of course, the lottey company pulled their cards immediately.
Read more (and more - it's a long article). Srivastava's insight is not just a single 'hack' for one lottery ticket scheme, but that potentially all such schemes must suffer from similar flaws.
The idea is that you can't just put completely random numbers on the ticket without risking either huge payouts or no wins at all. As the article puts it:
"In reality, everything about the game has been carefully designed to control payouts and entice the consumer." Of course, these elaborate design elements mean that the ticket can be undesigned, that the algorithm can be reverse-engineered. The veneer of chance can be peeled away.
So there may always be a hack.
All scams are essentially the same, regardless of how they are delivered. Filtering them is a life skill.
True, but the scammers on gumtree (at least) that target flat adverts seem more sophisticated than the usual "DEAR BLESSED SIR..." 419 email scams.
I've now learned some simple - possibly obvious - indicators:
Of course, the clincher was when they replied to my query with a request for a £500 ($810) a deposit by Western Union before seeing the flat. The excuse was "people waste my time by arranging viewings without the money to pay the rent" which is absolute bullshit - there's no way I would ask someone for a deposit without providing something (like house keys) in exchange. A quick google found the same MO in other people's warnings on forums
Less sophisticated, however, was the pair of posts that used the same image for the flat, but in different places in the city. Not suspicious at all, oh no.
I have futures in all kinds of elements, from molybdenum to iridium....I don't think you're even close enough to having the relevant experience to be able to talk, sir. Come back when you're actually fabricating semiconductors, okay?
Because buying futures in metals is exactly the same as being a chip manufacturer....
Although unfair comment, you are the guy that claimed to need a more precise quadratic equation in order to make your LED lights for growing pot, so I'm not particularly sorry.
Oh man! (Or should I say "Oh, Jesus?") - even better is : http://www.conservapedia.com/Evolution_syndrome "Sufferers of evolution syndrome tend to be college students or graduates who wanted to excel in math or physics, but lacked the ability or work ethic to do so." Are some of these articles written by trolls?
At least one "educator" has a beef with relativity, citing that Jesus acted faster than the speed of light in performing miracles.
Wow! A place better even than "Talk" page on wikipedia! Eg: "Theories [like relativity] that don't produce anything useful are often a waste of time, or simply false. I realize that liberals tend to downplay accountability -- a conservative insight, but theories should be accountable by what value they yield, particularly when taxpayer dollars are spent (wasted) on the theory." What a class-A moron!