That's a question only UCLA and the researchers can really answer, by providing us with the information about what the research was. They refuse to do so.
In all likelihood, it's because they don't want to give activists some convenient soundbite they can distort.
In any case dude, it's not like Ringach's research is some big secret. As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, all you need to do is a Google Scholar search. Ringach's experiments are pretty much standard visual electrophysiology, where you record from neurons in visual cortex while you present stimuli to an animal. It's the same basic technique which Hubel and Wiesel got the 1981 Nobel Prize.
What makes Ringach's research unique is (was?) the sorts of images he presented to the animals, and some clever data analysis.
What I don't get is what exactly the research was. UCLA is a public institution right? So if they aren't telling, chances are that it really is something pretty upsetting -or- it's being paid for by a drug company / the gov't, in which case you can be really sure it's not something respectable.
You can see Ringach's scholarly publications for yourself:
Each of his experimental papers includes a methodology section which describes the procedures he used. The papers also say who the funding sources were for the research.
Curiosity is not worth the inducement of suffering or death.
How about inducing suffering or death simply because something tastes good? Is eating certain foods somehow more noble than increasing our scientific knowledge?
The interesting thing is that ALF, etc have never actually hurt anybody (at least there are no police records indicating they have)
The thing is, the Animal Liberation Front isn't really a "proper" organization. Rather, just about anybody who engages in some sort of "direct action" that doesn't involve violence can claim that it was done by the ALF. Although the ALF has a system of covert cells which engages in illicit activity, you don't necessarily be part of such a cell to do something and claim it in the name of the ALF. On a similar note, the ALF tends to disclaim association with any activity which happens to be violent.
That said, some people have been physically hurt by extremists who at least tried to claim they were associated with the ALF. From Wikipedia:
In 1999, British documentary-filmmaker Graham Hall, himself an animal-rights activist, told the police and the Mail on Sunday [9] that he was kidnapped and branded with the letters "ALF" across his back after filming ALF activists, including Robin Webb, "boasting about bomb making and choosing sites for violent attacks." [10] His film was shown on Channel 4 in the UK during the 1998 hunger strike of Barry Horne. Hall said he was taken by several masked men, one of whose voices he said he recognized from a previous gathering of activists, to an unknown house, then was tied to a chair for several hours and branded.
No direct action that has involved violence may be claimed on behalf of the ALF, although ALF spokespersons won't condemn the use of violence by people who have previously acted in the name of the ALF. When David Blenkinsop and two others assaulted HLS director Brian Cass outside his home with pick-axe handles, ALF founder Ronnie Lee said: "He has got off lightly. I have no sympathy for him," [17] and Robin Webb said: "The Animal Liberation Front has always had a policy of not harming life, but while it would not condone what took place, it understands the anger and frustration that leads people to take this kind of action."
Why can't she just be called 'the second (or Nth) tourist'
I'd be pissed.
It's also worth noting that her official website doesn't make any mention of her being the 'first female space tourist.' Instead, she describes herself as 'the fourth private space explorer to visit space, and the first astronaut of Iranian descent.'
I'd argue that your odd use of the phrase "self-funded visitor" instead of "space tourist" had as much to do with your submissions being ignored as not emphasizing the "female" angle. It's like passive-agressive attack on the idea that this is just a rich person paying for a pleasure trip to space, which is in fact exactly the situation.
And I'd argue that the first "female space tourist" was actually Helen Sharman, who flew to Mir after winning a British lottery. After all, people who win a trip to Bermuda are still considered tourists. The fact that she paid for herself is really the only difference here, and that's why I emphasized it.
But you're right, the sexist spin of the article is both disgusting and archaic -- but easily explained. "Nth space tourist" doesn't get a headline; "First female space tourist" does.
Indeed. I actually tried submitting this story to slashdot a few days ago, but I didn't emphasize the "first female space tourist" angle. This was rejected, along with a later variant. For the curious, here's the text of my submissions. The submissions also include links to some better articles, and Anousheh Ansari's official site. For those of you who are curious, the links also contain photos of Ansari:
X Prize Donor to Visit ISS
The BBC reports that engineer-entrepreneur (and Iranian-American) Anousheh Ansari will be the next self-funded visitor to the International Space Station. Anousheh Ansari is known for her multi-million dollar donation to the Ansari X Prize and her company's funding of plans to build private spaceports in Singapore and the UAE. She will launch to the ISS on a Russian rocket next month.
The BBC reports that engineer-entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari will be the next self-funded visitor to the International Space Station. Known for her multi-million dollar donation to the Ansari X Prize, she will launch to the ISS on a Russian rocket next month, fulfilling her lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut. Ansari recently discussed her hopes for Bigelow Aerospace -- which successfully launched their private space station prototype this summer -- to provide a better-suited destination for an increased number of commercial astronauts in the future.
This isn't about an adversarial approach to space exploration; China and Russia aren't competing with America. For there to be competition, the US would actually have to have a similar program in place.
Huh?
Number of space probes has the USA launched or operated at Mars in the 2000s: 5 (Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Spirit, Opportunity, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter)
If it's feasable that the US alone could go to mars, and that Russia and China together can go to mars - then could not all three work together to achieve this goal better?
The more countries the merrier, right? After all, that's done wonders for the on-budget, on-time, scientifically productive International Space Station.
One mirror rotating for horizontal refresh, one galvonmeter for vertical drawing (this is the part that gets really sticky on a big screen)...
This might be a silly question, but why couldn't you just have the light from the horizontally-rotating mirror bounce off a vertically-rotating mirror, instead of a galvonometer-controlled one?
Any bets on whether or not Bigelow Aerospace's private space station(s) will be completed before the ISS is finished? Granted, part of the reason Bigelow Aerospace has been able to get so much done so quickly is because they bootstrapped on the TransHab technology abandoned by NASA.
So Elon consumes 15 Merlins per 1 RD-180 on a payload basis. All of those Merlins must work or there is a mission failure.
This is actually false. Part of the point with going with going with so many rockets is to have engine-out capability, so the rocket can still make it to orbit if some engines fail. It'll supposedly be the "first American rocket with true engine out reliability in three decades." The engine-out tolerance is of course dependent on how close to max payload capacity the rocket is. It would also only protect in those circumstances in which the failure isn't catastrophic enough to punch through the kevlar inter-engine shielding.
I would really like to see universal coverage, and low bandwidth by throttling socket connections to keep people from abusing the system would be OK. There would still be a huge market for high speed wireless, cable, and fiber, but a backgound universal lower level of service system would be a good infrastructure investment.
I would much rather that such a network be created by the citizens than some government monopoly (presumably with eavesdropping and censorship built in). Hopefully what you describe will eventually created by things like the FON wifi community.
Think of what $500 million US could do for the shrinking portion devote to the NASA science budget; which, by the way, has helped to fund the current and next generations of astronomy and astrophysics researchers in the US.
You should really think in longer terms. Investing that money now in lowering transportation costs will allow us to perform much more space science with the same money in the future.
I actually agree with you. I think there's plenty of opportunity for mining for in-space use, such as mining deposits of water-ice in asteroids or comets for H2 or O2 fuel constituents.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave a rather fascinating talk at this year's Mars Society Conference, where he talked about his plans for the Dragon capsule, his long-term vision for private spaceflight, and his hopes of eventually helping to enable Mars colonization. An article at the Space Review, Dragon Uncloaked, gave a nice summary of the talk. Here's some interesting quotes from the article:
The large number of engines needed for the Falcon 9 will provide SpaceX with notable economies of scale, Musk believes. "Next year SpaceX will manufacture more rocket booster engines than the entire rest of the US industry combined," he claimed. He estimated they will manufacture 25-30 engines in 2007, when Falcon 9 tests are scheduled to begin, growing to 40-50 engines in 2008...
At the same time, Musk is dismissive of some of the proposed applications that could take advantage of such a powerful rocket. "I don't believe in the mining of stuff in space. The transportation costs are so horrendously high that I don't think there's anything... if there were packages of purified crack cocaine in orbit right now, I'm not sure it would be financially viable to go and retrieve them," he said, to gales of laughter from the audience.
He was similarly dismissive of another popular proposed application, space solar power. "I know a lot about solar power," he said, "and trust me, space solar power is not a good option."
So what might be the "killer app" for space? Musk has an unconventional answer. "I think there's some number of people in the US and other countries that would pay to move to Mars," he claimed. "They would sell everything that they've got, and they would move to Mars." If the cost of a one-way journey to Mars could be lowered to the "single-digit millions" of dollars, he said, "I think enough people would pay that to actually make the business plan quite viable. I think thousands of people a year would pay that." Needless to say, that got a loud round of applause from the Mars Society conference attendees.
That concept might seem way of out left field for an industry that is only now accepting space tourism as a realistic market, but it also fits into Musk's personal philosophy. Early in his presentation he spoke of the importance of becoming a multiplanet species, calling it "one of the most important things we could possibly aspire to". "I think it's really incumbent upon us to extend life beyond Earth," he said. "Basically, to help make that happen is why I started SpaceX."
From the submission: Both companies represent a departure from business as usual at NASA. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are the largest companies in the aerospace industry and win most NASA contracts.
This is true, but it isn't the reason that this is so different from the way NASA (and government agencies in general) typically do business. In fact, Lockheed Martin is one of the members of the Rocketplane-Kistler team. RLV News (a very good source of private spaceflight news, btw) describes nicely what makes this such a departure from typical government contracting:
NASA will select the COTS winners based on the viability of their proposals but the agency will not dictate the design of the hardware. Another unusual feature of the COTS approach as compared to the standard way NASA does business is that the COTS winners will not receive money in annual lump sums. Instead the companies will be paid incrementally as they meet milestones laid out in their contracts. If a company doesn't meet a milestone, it won't get paid.
Usually these contracts are cost-plus, meaning that the contractor is paid for whatever the project ends up costing, plus a reward. Cost-plus contracting is a sure-fire way to end up with a project that is over-schedule and over-cost, as the contractor has little incentive to do things quickly, and decreasing costs actually means they make less money.
With the COTS contracts, companies will only get a fixed amount of money for meeting pre-set development milestones. If they go overbudget, they'll have to eat the costs themselves, or they'll get nothing at all. This gives them a strong incentive to do things cost-effectively. Plus, both companies will also be responsible for supplying their own funding, and I suspect that with at least one of the companies the private funding will be more than what they'll be getting from NASA for meeting milestones.
Right now the Falcon 9 is slated to cost between $27 and $35 million per launch. However, Musk has stated that the Falcon 9 is to be reusable, so I suspect that figure assumes that plan works out.
Actually, Musk has stated the opposite -- the current price assumes that they would be unable to successfully reuse any of the components, and that the price would come down more if it turned out they were able to reuse components effectively.
Falcon 5 and Falcon 9 will be the world's first launch vehicles where all stages are designed for reuse. The Falcon 1 has a reusable first stage, but an expendable upper stage. Reuse is not factored into launch prices. When the economics of stage recovery and checkout are fully understood, SpaceX will make further reductions in launch prices.
Wow, thanks for the link. I guess the paper I found was one by the same author last month in the same journal. I was wondering why the stuff in the paper was so different from what was being described in the article...
Here's the abstract from what you linked:
The brain somehow merges visual information with the behavioral context in which it is being processed, a task that is often attributed to the cerebral cortex. We have identified a new role of the gaseous neurotransmitter, nitric oxide (NO), in the early selective enhancement of corticogeniculate communication that may participate in this process at the level of the thalamus. Visual information is dynamically gated through the thalamus by brainstem neurons that release acetylcholine and NO. Using in vitro electrophysiology, we characterized NO effects on excitatory postsynaptic potentials and currents (EPSCs) elicited from retinal and cortical pathways in the lateral geniculate nucleus of the ferret. NO selectively and reversibly increased cortically-evoked postsynaptic responses, and this effect was mimicked by cyclic guanosine 3',5'-monophosphate (cGMP). Conversely, NO inhibited retinally-evoked responses independently of cGMP. We demonstrated that these differential effects were specific to postsynaptic N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors by studying treatment effects on pharmacologically isolated EPSCs from each pathway. We propose that when brainstem activity is increased during behavioral arousal or rapid eye movement sleep, NO may increase the relative sensitivity of relay neurons to corticogeniculate feedback. The net effect of these changes in synaptic processing may be to selectively suppress peripheral information while unifying data carried by reentrant corticogeniculate loops with the behavioral context in which the visual information is processed.
Yes, a wiki-like system with authenticated users is exactly what I meant. I thought that point was obvious and didn't need to be mentioned.
The point may be obvious to us, but it certainly isn't obvious to the people who would be making the decisions, or the popular-press. Heck, I can already imagine the headlines: "FBI wants to let anybody edit criminal records", "Wikipedia method to be used for FBI database"
Slashdot Mirror
About Anousheh->Second Paragraph->First Sentence: "Anousheh is capturing headlines around the world as the first female private space explorer".
That's close enough to 'first female space tourist' for me.
Wow. I lose at speed-reading.
That's a question only UCLA and the researchers can really answer, by providing us with the information about what the research was. They refuse to do so.
In all likelihood, it's because they don't want to give activists some convenient soundbite they can distort.
In any case dude, it's not like Ringach's research is some big secret. As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, all you need to do is a Google Scholar search. Ringach's experiments are pretty much standard visual electrophysiology, where you record from neurons in visual cortex while you present stimuli to an animal. It's the same basic technique which Hubel and Wiesel got the 1981 Nobel Prize.
What makes Ringach's research unique is (was?) the sorts of images he presented to the animals, and some clever data analysis.
What I don't get is what exactly the research was. UCLA is a public institution right? So if they aren't telling, chances are that it really is something pretty upsetting -or- it's being paid for by a drug company / the gov't, in which case you can be really sure it's not something respectable.
You can see Ringach's scholarly publications for yourself:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=ringach
Each of his experimental papers includes a methodology section which describes the procedures he used. The papers also say who the funding sources were for the research.
Curiosity is not worth the inducement of suffering or death.
How about inducing suffering or death simply because something tastes good? Is eating certain foods somehow more noble than increasing our scientific knowledge?
If you're walking down the street and see someone beating a cat or dog would you not stop them?
If you felt that abortion was wrong, would you shoot a doctor or bomb a clinic to save what you feel to be innocent lives?
The interesting thing is that ALF, etc have never actually hurt anybody (at least there are no police records indicating they have)
o nt
The thing is, the Animal Liberation Front isn't really a "proper" organization. Rather, just about anybody who engages in some sort of "direct action" that doesn't involve violence can claim that it was done by the ALF. Although the ALF has a system of covert cells which engages in illicit activity, you don't necessarily be part of such a cell to do something and claim it in the name of the ALF. On a similar note, the ALF tends to disclaim association with any activity which happens to be violent.
That said, some people have been physically hurt by extremists who at least tried to claim they were associated with the ALF. From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Liberation_Fr
In 1999, British documentary-filmmaker Graham Hall, himself an animal-rights activist, told the police and the Mail on Sunday [9] that he was kidnapped and branded with the letters "ALF" across his back after filming ALF activists, including Robin Webb, "boasting about bomb making and choosing sites for violent attacks." [10] His film was shown on Channel 4 in the UK during the 1998 hunger strike of Barry Horne. Hall said he was taken by several masked men, one of whose voices he said he recognized from a previous gathering of activists, to an unknown house, then was tied to a chair for several hours and branded.
No direct action that has involved violence may be claimed on behalf of the ALF, although ALF spokespersons won't condemn the use of violence by people who have previously acted in the name of the ALF. When David Blenkinsop and two others assaulted HLS director Brian Cass outside his home with pick-axe handles, ALF founder Ronnie Lee said: "He has got off lightly. I have no sympathy for him," [17] and Robin Webb said: "The Animal Liberation Front has always had a policy of not harming life, but while it would not condone what took place, it understands the anger and frustration that leads people to take this kind of action."
Would we tolerate, would the american economy survive, the lack of sweat shops?
On a similar note, would the Chinese economy survive the lack of sweat shops?
Why can't she just be called 'the second (or Nth) tourist'
I'd be pissed.
It's also worth noting that her official website doesn't make any mention of her being the 'first female space tourist.' Instead, she describes herself as 'the fourth private space explorer to visit space, and the first astronaut of Iranian descent.'
I'd argue that your odd use of the phrase "self-funded visitor" instead of "space tourist" had as much to do with your submissions being ignored as not emphasizing the "female" angle. It's like passive-agressive attack on the idea that this is just a rich person paying for a pleasure trip to space, which is in fact exactly the situation.
And I'd argue that the first "female space tourist" was actually Helen Sharman, who flew to Mir after winning a British lottery. After all, people who win a trip to Bermuda are still considered tourists. The fact that she paid for herself is really the only difference here, and that's why I emphasized it.
But you're right, the sexist spin of the article is both disgusting and archaic -- but easily explained. "Nth space tourist" doesn't get a headline; "First female space tourist" does.
Indeed. I actually tried submitting this story to slashdot a few days ago, but I didn't emphasize the "first female space tourist" angle. This was rejected, along with a later variant. For the curious, here's the text of my submissions. The submissions also include links to some better articles, and Anousheh Ansari's official site. For those of you who are curious, the links also contain photos of Ansari:
X Prize Donor to Visit ISS
The BBC reports that engineer-entrepreneur (and Iranian-American) Anousheh Ansari will be the next self-funded visitor to the International Space Station. Anousheh Ansari is known for her multi-million dollar donation to the Ansari X Prize and her company's funding of plans to build private spaceports in Singapore and the UAE. She will launch to the ISS on a Russian rocket next month.
The BBC reports that engineer-entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari will be the next self-funded visitor to the International Space Station. Known for her multi-million dollar donation to the Ansari X Prize, she will launch to the ISS on a Russian rocket next month, fulfilling her lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut. Ansari recently discussed her hopes for Bigelow Aerospace -- which successfully launched their private space station prototype this summer -- to provide a better-suited destination for an increased number of commercial astronauts in the future.
Of course, would we even have a space station if it were not for the international cooperation?
Sure, the Russians managed to have a space station for several years without international cooperation.
This isn't about an adversarial approach to space exploration; China and Russia aren't competing with America. For there to be competition, the US would actually have to have a similar program in place.
Huh?
Number of space probes has the USA launched or operated at Mars in the 2000s: 5 (Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Spirit, Opportunity, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter)
Number for Russia: 0
Number for China: 0
If it's feasable that the US alone could go to mars, and that Russia and China together can go to mars - then could not all three work together to achieve this goal better?
The more countries the merrier, right? After all, that's done wonders for the on-budget, on-time, scientifically productive International Space Station.
(And yes, I am being sarcastic)
One mirror rotating for horizontal refresh, one galvonmeter for vertical drawing (this is the part that gets really sticky on a big screen)...
This might be a silly question, but why couldn't you just have the light from the horizontally-rotating mirror bounce off a vertically-rotating mirror, instead of a galvonometer-controlled one?
Any bets on whether or not Bigelow Aerospace's private space station(s) will be completed before the ISS is finished? Granted, part of the reason Bigelow Aerospace has been able to get so much done so quickly is because they bootstrapped on the TransHab technology abandoned by NASA.
So Elon consumes 15 Merlins per 1 RD-180 on a payload basis. All of those Merlins must work or there is a mission failure.
This is actually false. Part of the point with going with going with so many rockets is to have engine-out capability, so the rocket can still make it to orbit if some engines fail. It'll supposedly be the "first American rocket with true engine out reliability in three decades." The engine-out tolerance is of course dependent on how close to max payload capacity the rocket is. It would also only protect in those circumstances in which the failure isn't catastrophic enough to punch through the kevlar inter-engine shielding.
I would really like to see universal coverage, and low bandwidth by throttling socket connections to keep people from abusing the system would be OK. There would still be a huge market for high speed wireless, cable, and fiber, but a backgound universal lower level of service system would be a good infrastructure investment.
I would much rather that such a network be created by the citizens than some government monopoly (presumably with eavesdropping and censorship built in). Hopefully what you describe will eventually created by things like the FON wifi community.
Whether histerical or not, whether dangerous or not, I am for TRUTH in labelling.
Should all products which use yeast include the label "Contains fungus"?
Think of what $500 million US could do for the shrinking portion devote to the NASA science budget; which, by the way, has helped to fund the current and next generations of astronomy and astrophysics researchers in the US.
You should really think in longer terms. Investing that money now in lowering transportation costs will allow us to perform much more space science with the same money in the future.
I actually agree with you. I think there's plenty of opportunity for mining for in-space use, such as mining deposits of water-ice in asteroids or comets for H2 or O2 fuel constituents.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave a rather fascinating talk at this year's Mars Society Conference, where he talked about his plans for the Dragon capsule, his long-term vision for private spaceflight, and his hopes of eventually helping to enable Mars colonization. An article at the Space Review, Dragon Uncloaked, gave a nice summary of the talk. Here's some interesting quotes from the article:
..
The large number of engines needed for the Falcon 9 will provide SpaceX with notable economies of scale, Musk believes. "Next year SpaceX will manufacture more rocket booster engines than the entire rest of the US industry combined," he claimed. He estimated they will manufacture 25-30 engines in 2007, when Falcon 9 tests are scheduled to begin, growing to 40-50 engines in 2008.
At the same time, Musk is dismissive of some of the proposed applications that could take advantage of such a powerful rocket. "I don't believe in the mining of stuff in space. The transportation costs are so horrendously high that I don't think there's anything... if there were packages of purified crack cocaine in orbit right now, I'm not sure it would be financially viable to go and retrieve them," he said, to gales of laughter from the audience.
He was similarly dismissive of another popular proposed application, space solar power. "I know a lot about solar power," he said, "and trust me, space solar power is not a good option."
So what might be the "killer app" for space? Musk has an unconventional answer. "I think there's some number of people in the US and other countries that would pay to move to Mars," he claimed. "They would sell everything that they've got, and they would move to Mars." If the cost of a one-way journey to Mars could be lowered to the "single-digit millions" of dollars, he said, "I think enough people would pay that to actually make the business plan quite viable. I think thousands of people a year would pay that." Needless to say, that got a loud round of applause from the Mars Society conference attendees.
That concept might seem way of out left field for an industry that is only now accepting space tourism as a realistic market, but it also fits into Musk's personal philosophy. Early in his presentation he spoke of the importance of becoming a multiplanet species, calling it "one of the most important things we could possibly aspire to". "I think it's really incumbent upon us to extend life beyond Earth," he said. "Basically, to help make that happen is why I started SpaceX."
From the submission: Both companies represent a departure from business as usual at NASA. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are the largest companies in the aerospace industry and win most NASA contracts.
This is true, but it isn't the reason that this is so different from the way NASA (and government agencies in general) typically do business. In fact, Lockheed Martin is one of the members of the Rocketplane-Kistler team. RLV News (a very good source of private spaceflight news, btw) describes nicely what makes this such a departure from typical government contracting:
NASA will select the COTS winners based on the viability of their proposals but the agency will not dictate the design of the hardware. Another unusual feature of the COTS approach as compared to the standard way NASA does business is that the COTS winners will not receive money in annual lump sums. Instead the companies will be paid incrementally as they meet milestones laid out in their contracts. If a company doesn't meet a milestone, it won't get paid.
Usually these contracts are cost-plus, meaning that the contractor is paid for whatever the project ends up costing, plus a reward. Cost-plus contracting is a sure-fire way to end up with a project that is over-schedule and over-cost, as the contractor has little incentive to do things quickly, and decreasing costs actually means they make less money.
With the COTS contracts, companies will only get a fixed amount of money for meeting pre-set development milestones. If they go overbudget, they'll have to eat the costs themselves, or they'll get nothing at all. This gives them a strong incentive to do things cost-effectively. Plus, both companies will also be responsible for supplying their own funding, and I suspect that with at least one of the companies the private funding will be more than what they'll be getting from NASA for meeting milestones.
Right now the Falcon 9 is slated to cost between $27 and $35 million per launch. However, Musk has stated that the Falcon 9 is to be reusable, so I suspect that figure assumes that plan works out.
Actually, Musk has stated the opposite -- the current price assumes that they would be unable to successfully reuse any of the components, and that the price would come down more if it turned out they were able to reuse components effectively.
From here:
Falcon 5 and Falcon 9 will be the world's first launch vehicles where all stages are designed for reuse. The Falcon 1 has a reusable first stage, but an expendable upper stage. Reuse is not factored into launch prices. When the economics of stage recovery and checkout are fully understood, SpaceX will make further reductions in launch prices.
Wow, thanks for the link. I guess the paper I found was one by the same author last month in the same journal. I was wondering why the stuff in the paper was so different from what was being described in the article...
Here's the abstract from what you linked:
The brain somehow merges visual information with the behavioral context in which it is being processed, a task that is often attributed to the cerebral cortex. We have identified a new role of the gaseous neurotransmitter, nitric oxide (NO), in the early selective enhancement of corticogeniculate communication that may participate in this process at the level of the thalamus. Visual information is dynamically gated through the thalamus by brainstem neurons that release acetylcholine and NO. Using in vitro electrophysiology, we characterized NO effects on excitatory postsynaptic potentials and currents (EPSCs) elicited from retinal and cortical pathways in the lateral geniculate nucleus of the ferret. NO selectively and reversibly increased cortically-evoked postsynaptic responses, and this effect was mimicked by cyclic guanosine 3',5'-monophosphate (cGMP). Conversely, NO inhibited retinally-evoked responses independently of cGMP. We demonstrated that these differential effects were specific to postsynaptic N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors by studying treatment effects on pharmacologically isolated EPSCs from each pathway. We propose that when brainstem activity is increased during behavioral arousal or rapid eye movement sleep, NO may increase the relative sensitivity of relay neurons to corticogeniculate feedback. The net effect of these changes in synaptic processing may be to selectively suppress peripheral information while unifying data carried by reentrant corticogeniculate loops with the behavioral context in which the visual information is processed.
Yes, a wiki-like system with authenticated users is exactly what I meant. I thought that point was obvious and didn't need to be mentioned.
The point may be obvious to us, but it certainly isn't obvious to the people who would be making the decisions, or the popular-press. Heck, I can already imagine the headlines: "FBI wants to let anybody edit criminal records", "Wikipedia method to be used for FBI database"