You have a very bizarre idea of what "the only possible explanation" means.
Off the top of my head here's another possibility:
Smart kids get bumped forward a grade. Smart kids get bored to death by school, since there's too much revision of stuff they already understand, this looks like attention deficit so they get put on medication via misdiagnosis.
To my mind, being dosed because they're bored is as wrong as being dosed to make them succeed. But I doubt that's what happened. I think what happened is as I stated because this was the conclusion by the people who did the research.
They did the interviews, found evidence of this happening, couldn't believe it, altered their interview technique to include this specifically, and came out with the 67% figure. I'm convinced that the primary investigator was convinced of the result, because she cried when she presented it.
The school system in question (Virginia Beach) has an excellent reputation for catering to high achieving students. They are served by a local full academic year Governor's school, and their summer residential Governor's school is at NASA Langley. I attended several classes at Old Dominion University with Virginia Beach high school students participating. These are not recent. I had a girlfriend who'd been in similar programs there in the 70s.
Your assertion is contradicted by evidence. I really wanted to say how ridiculous it was, but the truth of the matter is even more so as well as disturbing.
A study done around 10+ years ago by Eastern Virginia Medical School looked at diagnosis and misdiagnosis of ADD in communities near them (Norfolk VA). They found the richer the community the more kids were diagnosed with ADD. they also found that while there is underdiagnosis equal to about 10% of the current number of those so diagnosed, there is about 20% overdiagnosed.
The most disturbing fact they uncovered, one that helps make sense of the overdiagnosis part, comes from looking at grade level and age. They classified kids as to grade, and then age within that grade. One group, kids who were more than 1 years younger than average for that grade (ie. had been bumped foward, skipping one or more grades at some time) were particularly troublesome. Kids more than a year young form their grade were prescribed meds for a diagnosis of ADD 67% of the time. These are the smart kids. No way they could that many have ADD and be set forward one opr more grades.
The only possible explanation for this is their parents were dosing them with speed in order to improve their scores, grades, abilities, etc. And doctors and schools were going along with it.
Poor people are more likely to have mental illness than average-income people.
Poor people are more likely to be diagnosed as such. The diagnosis is more likely to be more severe. The diagnosis is likely to persist longer and not be retracted or re-diagnosed properly.
These have nothing to do with actually having a mental illness.
Research consistently demonstrates that humans suck at multitasking. Worse, they suck at multitasking to a much greater degree than they think they do. If interpreting a poorly designed GPS UI while also driving counts as multitasking, it is probably a dangerous distraction. If the GPS UI is well designed, it could presumably function as just another subtle environmental cue, something that humans are very good at interpreting.
Speaking as someone who served as an experimental subject in testing GPS devices and GUIs over the road (Virginia Tech's traffic research folks carried this out), I whole heartedly endorse the 'distraction' observation. IN the experiment they kept turning up the amount of data presented and asking me to made decisions from it while driving. They repeatedly took it well past distracting, to outright dangerous. I finally made them shut it off altogether. People don;t suck at multitasking as long as they're in control over task switching. These things don;t let you.
As for the outcome, they obviously sent their results on to the GPS makers. The standard GPS device runs at the "annoying but not dangerous" level.
Objectively you can't remain anonymous. But what you can do is subjectively poison the collected data to make it at least questionable, or at the extreme, overtly and obviously so polluted with intentional misdirection that no authority, agency, employer or person would dare try to take any portion of it seriously for fear of choosing the wrong portion, thus making a serious error in judgement. Random BS won't work. Complete fabrication is too time consuming and prone to errors. Mixing every real action with more or less of a plausible false action with some but incomplete consistency is best, especially if some of your real action is hidden via encryption, proxy, back channel transmission and so forth. Outright misstatements aren't good enough. Being 'seen' doing other than what you want being seen doing is the key. Look into OPSEC (operational security).
They've done a bang up job investigating how bacteria adapt, and from the names and departments listed, I can see how they'd be quite able to do so as well as apply it to an expanded game theory scenario.
But applying it to human decision making, strategic or otherwise? Sorry, but they should have included someone on the team from behavioral science that could have pointed out the glaring differences.
They happen on one themselves in saying the bacteria don't lie. The level of stress they're talking about is equivalent to massive drought/starvation. Humans under such conditions do and say all kinds of things, most of it to some degree hiding real intentions.
To extend that, some of human behavior is rational under normal conditions, some isn't (emotionally driven isn't, for instance). With increased stress, less and less is rational. Their very nicely done description of possible decisions at various points based on DNA is entirely rational throughout. Not that the bacteria think, but that the decision is predetermined by being programmed in. There is no irrational result, no off-the-wall craziness drastic behavior resulting in novel solutions. Humans do this. In fact, novel results is a major difference between their work and pretty much any higher organism.
I don't find it particularly instructive that bacteria put off "decision making" until the last moment. As if people don't? It's human nature to constantly refine decisions according to the situation, including attempting top adapt to the situation after a decision has been implemented and the crucial point passed.
The final point they make, where one has to decide based on best guess of others' future behavior, is fairly telling of a major difference between bacteria and humans. Humans can coordinate their decisions so that none obtain an optimal result but all obtain a satisfactory result. That flies in the face of traditional game and economic theory. It also earned John Nash a Nobel. Bacteria can't discuss with predictive insight, they can only wait until the last moment to react.
Alcor is not one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper. It is a dim double with Mizar. We usually consider the dipper to have 7 stars: 4 in the 'pot' and three in the handle. Mizar is the center of the handle. Alcor is so close to Mizar and relatively dim that it's not even considered a point in the constellation.
Not incorrect but misleading, Castelli was the first to see it as a double 'with a telescope'. The names themselves being Arabic, should be a tip off. Would Alcor have an Arabic name if they didn't see it? They are a visual double, not requiring a telescope to see if one has good vision (as opposed to an optical double, being line of sight but not necessarily naked eye). Such as noted by the Arabic chroniclers of astronomy, as well as the Native Americans who saw the bowl of the dipper as the bear, and the three stars in the handle as three bear cubs or some as three hunters (or sever, per the Mikmac) following the bear. All knew of the two stars. Sir Patrick Moore suggests the early writings refer to Mizar A and B instead, and gives good logical thinking, though I know of pre-tlescope maps of Mizar and Alcor, but not Mizar A and B,
1. Goto Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log over at MSNBC. He asked and got answered the very same question.
2. My answer to him: Goto model rockets. A starter kit with a launcher and motors. A couple more kits of the same kind. One for the other kid, the other for you (getting you involved will be a recurring theme). Build them and fly them together. The small one in the starter kits can be flown from very small areas. If they enjoy it and want more, buy some more motors (mail order or local hobby shop), locate your closest NAR chapter http://www.nar.org/NARseclist.php find out when their organized launch is, and take the kids. Let them fly with the members and see some of the other rockets and higher powered motors. If they respond positively, join the chapter with them and make it a regular thing. Also, when you and they are ready to commit, you can get a family membership from NAR. BTW, there's not only a lot more manufacturers selling kits now, there are even some selling retro reproductions of some of the oldest kits, just in case you or someone you know was a rocketer back in the day and is feeling nostalgic.
NAR #28965
Re:Monkey syntax errors aren't so bad
on
Monkeys With Syntax
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
I normally never pick at someone's wording, especially a signature, but this article and this thread in particular simply begs me to bag this one:
by istartedi (132515): "For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares?"
"For all intent and purposes" is no longer a valid common phrase. It was first replaced by "for all intents and purposes", the plural of 'intent' being unnecessary to the phrase, but 'intent' being often replaecd by 'intentions' it seemed logical to pluralize the former as well as the latter. It has since been replaced by the homonymous "for all intensive purposes". The meaning is retained ("for all practical purposes") despite that fact that the presented form makes no sense: 'intensive' is an adjective, 'purposes' is a noun. Furthermore, to express "for all practical purposes" it seems adequate to express the superset "for all purposes", particularly since the opposite of intensive purposes (unintensive purposes) clearly makes no sense, and that makes the modifier on 'purposes' superfluous.
On the other hand, there may in fact be situations where the construction here applies, such as those purposes to which it could be put to use, but which require exceptional effort to do so. For example, a common purpose for posting om/. is to correct someone. A post that corrects someone but takes an inordinate amount of effort to follow, as compared to the usefulness of it being done, could be considered an "intensive purpose" for posting. Yet, despite this post being an example of this possible use, requiring intensive attention to follow it this far, nobody ever uses is that way. I know I certainly don't.
And just in case this needs to be turned back toward the subject at hand in order to stay on topic, much of animal expression is not considered language or anything like it because it is 'just animal sounds'. Yet the above, despite being full of syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and for all I know, semiotics, is just 'human sounds' with no more practical application that 'correcting' a phrase so common that everybody understands it and would probably recognize its meaning for readily than that of the 'correct' version, which is so dated and superceded that it probably sounds wrong now.
Now, thanks to the 'preview' function, I've seen all the errors in the post above. I'm leaving them. You understood anyway. So much for 'correct'.
Re:This is what linguists have been waiting for
on
Monkeys With Syntax
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Those scientists who have been studying animal language as a non-pseudoscience have been waiting for anyone to show SYNTAX in animal language.
Then linguists should have been paying closer attention, and/or been been more accepting of the definition of syntax that applies to sign language: simultaneous/parallel modifiers to sign displays that alter the meanings; taken together they can be considered the primary means of development of language -- compounding components into single components with specific meanings. The novel constructions that result can be instantly recognized and meaning determined by another user of the language despite not having encountered that specific combination before. If the latter, it would only fit the Skinnerian learning model; if the former, Chomsky's 'generative grammar'.
Either millions of sign users around the world are not using language because they're not using syntax, or Koko has been using language for quite some time because she has been using syntax in constructions to modify the meanings of combinations of signs.
Penny Patterson writes: Koko uses several aspects of ASL syntax in the utterance, "You sip?". She indicates a question by maintaining eye contact, holding the sign for an extended period of time, and raising her eyebrows. She adjusts the subject of the phrase from
"I sip" to "you sip" by moving the sign away from her lips and turning it toward me, thereby altering the direction of the sign. Her pursed lips and forward-leaning posture are additional grammatical inflections.
The sign "sip" is Koko's invention, a combination of the signs "eat" (fingers to mouth) and "drink" (thumb to mouth). "Sip" can be a noun or a verb; the distinction is marked in ASL by repetition of the contact motion if the sign acts as a noun, and by a single contact if it acts as a verb. Koko regularly uses this syntactic feature of sign.
Interested readers can see Koko's sign language in action in the 1999 PBS Nature documentary, "A Conversation with Koko."
(We now return to our/. post)
None of the linguists I've worked with ever had a problem considering the modifier components of sign as syntax, particularly if they were used generatively. And they had no problem recognizing Koko's signs as such. This was at the Nation Institute on Deafness and Communications Disorders at NIH, which means two things to my mind: (1) what would you expect from linguists working at NIDCD?, but then (2) NIDCD doesn't bother with linguists who can't manage to expand their thinking beyond the restrictive serial language syntax constructions. The latter adhere to a limited form of Chomky's theory, taking generative grammar to mean people in different cultures develop different syntax/grammars evidenced by different patterns of construction (especially noun/verb ordering) specific to those cultures. These are easily refuted by (1) presenting sentences with ordering uncommon to the language used, with comprehension in intact (says Yoda understand what I'm saying you can), (2) tonal languages which have a simultaneous modifier that, while is a vocal component, performs exactly like the modifiers that are considered syntax in sign.
I studied linguistics so that I could do my neuroscience magic tricks and figure out what the brain was doing during different phases of communication, both ordered and disordered. I also happened to have been an ASL interpreter with experience in sign languages from other countries (ie. not derived from Gallaudet's French version). Through these I came, by necessity, to recognize how much of human communication is non-verbal, that and includes most of ASL 'syntax' in that it's based in kinesics, proxemics and chronemics. Having been so equipped, I found that by simply taking the non-verbal as the primary rather than the semantic "word" unit, I could deconstruct much of animal behavior as display behavior with intentional meaning. So it was of no surprise that in reading Penny Patterson's di
Johnny Mnemonic (176043) writes: "My company has the opportunity to contribute to a children's museum in our area."
Well there Just Johnny, why Ask Slashdot when you've got experts at making kid-proof displays right there? They're the same people to ask just what kind of exhibit they'd like to have. What's the point of a computer/network oriented display? At the ages stated, there's not much to interest them. If it's not an outright concrete example, it's not going to do anything for them because it'll be an abstraction and kids that age don't cross levels of abstraction well if at all. They only reason to have a display based on what your company does is the PR for donating a display. The kids aren't the target for the PR so this is lost on them, and the parents or teachers could get the same PR input from a sign with your company's name. Go that way, and you can give the museum any sort of display they need. Might as well let the museum have the say. After all, at 3 to 8, how are you even going to get the instructions into their heads?
The terminology seems odd here. Isn't suspended animation pretty much the opposite of being a zombie? I mean zombies are the animated dead. Suspended animation makes you the unanimated living.
Oh horrors! You mean the International Journal Of The Society Of Wiredness For Scientificular Correctiviscousity And Technillogical Perfectitooty got it less than absolutely right? I can't imagine their crack research team making that kind of mistake. Must be a typo.
DARPA is actually funding both paths of research. Rapid metabolic reduction is being looked at for blood loss, and a dissociative/hypnotic without loss of motor control is being considered for far forward troops that, having been injured, may have to walk out; this would keep them docile and less likely to damage themselves further by struggling, as well as reduce the effect of cognitive traumatic shock and its contribution to peripheral hypovolemic shock when the body attempts to preserve itself by keeping as much blood as possible in the core. The thinking here is that if Sgt Rock can be made too stupid to connect that bloody stump to his sudden inability to scratch his nose, but stable enough to be self-mobilizing, they may not have to send a chopper in harms way to extract this troop.
One of the main mechanisms for brain damage after injury to the brain is due to the neurons releasing their packets of neurotransmitters upon their death. So you have a good neuron right next to a big blob of toxic neurotransmitters. Then that neuron dies, too. It's a chemical cascade of dying neurons. Slowing down metabolism slows down this damage, as oxidation plays a large part. Ever see those people that drown in icy water, only to be revived after hours without oxygen, somewhat intact? Same thing.
You're referring to apoptosis, "cellular suicide" caused by a signal from a nearby neuron dying. Parkinson's is one disorder that wouldn't occur except for this phenomenon.
But forced release of vesicles, toxic neurotransmitters and hypothermic preservation (or lack of, or lack of equivalent)? I can tell you remember learning about it, and probably know what you mean, but you've got some details bent. The toxicities involved in apoptosis aren't metabolic processes, but they are slowed by cooling. Cooling can be done to reduce oxidative stress due to hyperoxia (too much oxygen) as well as ischemic insult from hypoxia (too little). We're just more aware of the latter due to the many reported cases of recovery from near drowning due to rapid cooling.
Astronauts overwhelmingly have military backgrounds. The US Military has been using drugs well beyond the specifications allowed for "the rest of us" since forever. I guess what we need is a video game titled WWII Pilots: BENZEDRINE VS. METHEDRINE to really bring the point home to the pixels-and-keyboards crowd. The drug cocktail should surprise no one.
Regardless of background, astronauts work for NASA and it calls the shots.
In the military a few individuals in a few situations are given drugs that while increasing performance or some such, are not exotic but rather are common drugs with well know effects and side effects. You don't want the guy in the fox hole with you to decide his helmet is a saucepan, his claymore mine is a steak, and he's going to start a fire in the hole with you both and fix dinner. Of the few who are given such drugs, hardly any get the new, non-formulary stuff. Either way, these are handed out in very restricted matter, not as a part of a collection or "cocktail". That just doesn't happen.
Your comment is well placed and noted that TFA was intended to be light hearted. I contend it was still written poorly enough that this wasn't obvious, still isn't, and I'm not sure I agree, but I'll buy your version for a dollar.
Just to make sure my exchange currency was fixated at my labial-oral opening, I went immediately from my reply to volunteer as a science editor. They've made it so impossible to bother than at the/. desk, that I couldn't find a way to offer my services.
Just as the perennial question of 'nature or nurture' is a misstatement of how the world works (neither ever exist or act alone; results are due to the interactions of nature AND nurture) looking into this deeper will almost certainly delve into a wonderfully chaotic collection of interactions, interactions modified by others, interactions that change in strength nonlinearly as the variables change linearly, and more of the stuff that keeps us in income by preventing us on figuring anything out completely. The question won't be whether aminos or calories are more important, but under what conditions which aminos exert significant effects on calories (and vice versa), what second order/third variable interactions are significant, and so forth. I know this seems to fly in the face of parismony, what we call Occam's Razor, but that has to do with relative merits of answers, not questions. The questions are still hairy -- Willem of Ockham had no razor; he had a beard.
Take tryptophan. Precursor to dopamine. Itself precursor to norepinephrine and epinephrine. The last two are behaviorally activating, the former behaviorally inhibiting. One amino feeds two behavioral tendencies via three neurotransmitters and none of this can be pulled apart. More tryptophan would allow the body to make more of these if needed, but that's not often other than the low level continual need. But reduce tryptophan (but not calories, keeping things clean here) and below a crucial level the animal ceases to orient on salient stimuli (lack of dopamine; it can't stop to smell the roses, or Fruit Loops), including food, as well as slowing its spontaneous movement, meaning its random investigations will bring it in contact with less food, possibly including less variety. Also, lack of orienting means learning is inhibited, so later investigations will be more likely to go over ground already depleted. Further, with its activity slowed, food won't burn as fuel as much and go into fat storage more. It gets fat, so it gets slower, and all these conspire to create a downward spiral.
Now, that's just from understanding some of the products and giving one possible path. It's probably too simplistic too. Just because we can manipulate one variable and examine certain outcomes doesn't mean other things aren't involved as co-causal, co-result or co-operative.
Now throw individual differences into the mix. Some do well on low calorie diets. Some suffer. And vice is once again versa. Whatever the reasons, in this situation the organism will seek to reregulate. Also, some are better (more effective, effiecient, or both) at having enough neurotransmitter available for a given amount of precursor. Better creation, better conversion from one to another, less effective mechanisms for removing excess from use, more effective mechanisms for recycling transmitter components to produce more using less precursor, all of these are just a few of the many individual differences that might come into play. And then the array of those differences can change from changing the amount of food/precursor available.
Oh, and the recycling system for dopamine et al. also works on other transmitters like serotonin, so a neurotransmitter not affected directly by amino or calorie is affected by changing levels in those transmitters that are, and the availability or reregulation of the amount of recycling enzyme (MAO). You can't change one in vivo without affecting the whole system to some extent, while affecting some components more and others less.
No, it's going to take a lot deeper and wider inestigation to truly make sense of it. A simpler design may produce a result, but unless the design is inclusive, the results won't be generalizable.
Perhaps it's my limited understanding of the word "do" at fault. I can only think of it in the present tense, rather than the future conditionals attached to such as "might". This leads me to have all kinds of misunderstandings, like wondering why they're taking pills to counteract a dust (!) that nobody's been closer than 230,000 miles to in the last 40 years. Or why the articles blathers on about zombies and CIA truth serum when talking about a sleeping/motion sickness pill that's been OTC for longer than NASA has been chartered. Or why NASA is having them take a "cocktail" to "get the job done" which would, if the description is accurate, prevent the job from getting done if not kill them (alcohol + uppers + downers + tranqs? Anyone remember Karen Ann Quinlan?). Quoting details from the equally unqualified and/or wrong doesn't dilute the article's idiocy. The content could have made a perfectly good article. Too bad the writer felt unequal to the job of writing a real article as you'd expect in a science magazine.
This article should be in "Entertainment". Or, if we're to keep such trash under science, we should have some subclasses that apply, like 'bullshit', 'lies', and 'science? what's that?'. Or maybe we just need to change the "news for nerds, stuff that matters" to "stuff that might fit into the popular subjects here, and might be real, or not; we're not sure, we don't read it".
Is this the result of voting on suitability of submissions? If so, maybe we ought to look into having editors that actually know something about the area they cover and approve articles based on content rather than side effects. It appears that ironically 'games' is getting more serious treatment than 'science'. Part of the problem is the 'science' articles being written, such as TFA. But the fix for that is the same fix for including decent science articles.
Not "shows no link". That implies evidence shows that there is no link. Such a statement does not follow from the design and methodology. The study "fails to find" or "does not show" a link, in the technical language of science "fails to reject the null hypothesis".
It's not just due to this important distinction that many will attempt to use to claim support for their pet theories that will keep the issue from dying. There is more than ample evidence that RF of similar frequencies from other sources may result in increased morbidity of several cancers. All make the same sort of disclaimer, in that the magnitude of exposure noted in their study may not be representative of the amount necessary to trigger problems, and that although the studies lasted years, the development of problems from exposure may take much longer.
As noted above the 49% share for GE is a reduction, not a buy in. You can pretty sure this is the case if they take the time to state it's not. The whole family of companies that come and go over and under each others' names, and equally as often with one or more names or the action itself masked, do so for reasons often so obscure that one begins to think they conduct these "mergers" for misdirection. Frequently these activities are carried out to minimize predicted losses, to protect the others from association in the case of law suits, and for what appears to be which relationship between them will be most profitable in the near enough future to make it worth the trouble.
It's a long standing historical note that belies the relationship between NBC and GE. Specifically, 3 notes: G, E and C, the chimes that make up the NBC musical call sign. They've been in use for 80 years now. They stand for General Electric Company.
The refutation that's found its way into Wikipedia that this is false, essentially a business urban myth, is itself incorrect. The refutation states that "someone heard" the chimes being played over Atlanta's WSB during a football game and "asked to use" the signal, making them a trademark in 1931. Such is true, however the association between them was already close and tight. The football game in question was the 1929 Georgia Tech/Yale game. One would hope that NBC heard the chimes then, or even earlier if they'd been used. WSB was a charter affiliate of NBC, officially since Jan 9, 1927. That's all supported by data from the relevant Wikipedia sites as well as WSB and Ga. Tech histories. I'd heard about it from someone deep enough into early electronics business to know folks like Farnsworth, DuMont and Armstrong.
In those periods where one didn't "own" another, the relationship was a matter of business convenience. They have all been components in the largest body of business in the US if not the world.
Because it sure ain't no orchestra. That's be a collection of musical instruments. This is a collection of pseudo-random musical background sound generators. Music is replicable, hence "songs". This is self-similar. Any collection of sounds can be called music, but the brain decides if it sounds like 'real' music when a power curve representing the output of all notes/sounds fits a particular dimensionality; details are in Mandelbrot's first fractals picture book. If these can be tweaked to produce that, I'd agree it could play a piece of music. But I wouldn't cop to the more generic "music" unless they can be used in such a way that any number of unique pieces of music are created. If there's to be a debate, let's have it over the above details, not over the mistaken idea that it's the OS, rather than music apps, that make a machine music capable. Linux was music capable when the first audio CD driver allowed a CD to be played through a sound card and speakers. Other ways are possible but this one channel was sufficient for prerecorded song playback, so it was certainly good enough for a simulated instrument's output.
Many, many famous scientists are such skeptics, such as Richard Dawkins, Phil Plait, Carl Sagan...
I'm pretty sure you've got some agenda you haven't quite revealed to us.
Sagan was a scientific skeptic. He kept an open mind regarding both pro and con claims and evidence.
Dawkins is a scientist who misuses the term skeptic to justify his a priori confrontational stance. He also misuses it when he applies it to his anti-religious activities because science has nothing at all to say about religion except possibly in terms of social psychology, but then only in terms of group dynamics, compliance gaining, etc., not in terms of content. He may in fact be a scientific skeptic in his work. He's made himself famous misapplying that term to entirely different material and falsely stating that he's protecting science from attack by religion. The fact is a few people take the stance he does and a few take the opposing stance, but the vast majority of both sides take none because none need be taken. Science and religion coexist peacefully except around those like Dawkins and his opponents.
Plait is a scientist of the hard data sort and skepticism applies mostly to data collection methodology and conclusions drawn. I've no idea how good he is at this. He also misapplies the term by taking an automatically contrary position versus claims he finds easy targets. A skeptic is skeptical going both ways, Plait is not. His prejudiced stance and assumption of correctness have led him more than once to make claims in attacks against various targets that were shown to be incorrect. Minimal research would have prevented it, because that's what it took to show he had been making claims from opinion while claiming they were fact.
By 'agenda' I doubt you mean a series of actions which combined produce an outcome. By useage you seem to mean "hidden agenda". I have no such. I've put everything out there.
My intent should be pretty clear. I'm a skeptic. I doubt the content of the claims of Dawkins, Plait, the Ottawa group and Sagan. I also doubt the opposing claims. But I keep an open mind to both. As a skeptic I have a strong distaste for those who purposefully mislead the public by misusing the term for an activity which is most certainly not skepticism. They do not "consider but not accept". They start with a viewpoint they've accepted as the sole correct one and refuse to consider anything other than their own opinion and information that seems to justify it as well as justifying their confrontational stance.
Now, your insistence that I have a 'hidden agenda', your rapid appeal to the masses (presenting the assumption to them that they are on your side, including speaking of me in the third person), your misstatements in the response below regarding ABO/personality/hormones/chemicals and my supposed attempt to fool people all being indicative of being too busy formulating your response to pay close attention to the information presented in my statements regarding those, your false claim that I have a pet pseudo-theory, religion and/or grudge hiding behind me, and most of all your claim that none of he results in the PubMed search had nothing to do with the subject, that I knew it, and that I used it to try to deliberately mislead people, is a cluster of behaviors that can only point to one thing. You're a fundie -- a skeptic. Further support? You made up the claim about the results being misdirection on my part. You lied. There's a very important result in there that shows that the blood drive people, the Ottawa group, TFA, Wikipedia, a thousand points of darkness on web sites, even a bunch of Japanese, and you, have been wasting your time all along by blindly repeating a mistake.
The original work that linked personality with blood used the term "typing by blood". It meant trying to determine personality type by examining a person's ethno-cultural background (ie. blood line). It had nothing to do with ABO or any other measure of blood components. Both adherents and
"Soldiers may go into battle better prepared... after an intellectual property licensing deal... will deepen the defense giant's access to visual simulation technology... The intellectual property agreement....."
is a damn sight different than "Microsoft Game Software Preps Soldiers For Battle"
With all the equivocation, inaccuracy and future tense in the text, it's pretty obvious that in this case at least Microsoft game software isn't doing squat for soldiers, and won't until MS preps themselves to help L-M get busy actually making some. Until and unless that happens phrasing the title as if it's happening at the moment is more than misleading, it's an outright lie. Apparently Network World needs readership so bad it has to resort to false titles to grab readers, besides resorting to covering things not at all network related.
Simulation in military training is far from new. 25 years ago recruits practiced firing M-16s on simulators that looked like a carnival firing range game built onto an coin-operated indoor bowling game. They learned here to squeeze, not pull; to stop breathing but not 'hold' their breath; and to fire from several positions, without using up ammunition or exposing the inexperienced recruits to the danger of a live fire range more than necessary.
Is it "Cormac McCarthy [link to article on author and his work] is auctioning the 45-year-old Olivetti manual typewriter, on which all his novels, screenplays, plays, short stories, and much of his correspondence were written; is there something... intrinsically interesting and valuable", based on the entirety or on a portion thereof?
Or is it "a guy is selling a thing he wrote stuff with; think it's worth something"?
I'd buy Isaac Asimov's word processor, typewriter or chalk board. I wouldn't buy kdawson's Beowulf cluster of Soviet Russian Overlords running 6 flavors of *nix, and a direct neural-to-keyboard port interface.
I think it's safe to assume the guy is selling his history, not the tech. And certainly not the brand, because (speaking as a past office equipment repairer) Vettis suck.
I've run across several things from Japan that are either science not supported elsewhere or pseudo-science, depending on -- well, on which you believe.
There's 10 times more schizophrenia in the US than Japan. Environment? Cultural? No, books. The diagnostic criteria used in Japan is far more stringent, with 90% of what we'd call schizophrenia being called something else by them. How do you tell who's right? Either by where you're standing, or by knowing a lot more about schizophrenia than anyone else on the planet, because both are based on correct but incomplete science, thus conflicting results.
In EEG research Japanese studies often include analysis of 'midline frontal theta', and hardly anyone other than them ever does. It's there, but western research only notes the existence. Japanese science claims it correlates to personality and clinical diagnoses. There are other constructs they include in studies that are otherwise complete and correct in western terms, most of them also relate to the same personality construct.
Here's where culture shoulders in. The clinical construct so often studied in Japanese science is that of 'extroversion'. In western science that's one end of a range, the other being introversion. In western culture the latter is more often a social problem, being related to shyness and to that ubiquitous fear, speaking in public. If anything, extroversion is preferred here. In Japan, where the culture of conformity can be described with the phrase "the nail that stands out gets pounded down", introversion is closer to successful cultural adaptation than its opposite.
Related, when researchers started looking at the perceptual crossover effect called synesthesia, they were amazed to find that it did not exist in Japan. When neurological evidence was found explaining its nature, they started to wonder why Japanese did not have this unusual wiring. When they went to study it experimentally, they included a test to check for non-conscious manifestations of synesthesia. Lo and behold, the Japanese have this just as often as everyone else. But they deny it and claim nothing unusual happens. Far be it from the Japanese to go around admitting to being different.
I personally have a beef with the construct 'personality' and how it's studied. But the research constantly shows something there, and biochemical testing does support some of it. In our tobacco and Parkinson's studies we examined monoamine oxidase activation in the mitochondria of platelets. That's the stuff that deactivates dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin and a few other neurotransmitters prior to recycling. Differenes in MAO activation mean differences in the amount of those chemicals, and so a difference in brain operation. Now this is nuts and bolts stuff I can wrap my pragmatic methodologist's head around. Hell yes there's scientific backing. NIH's National Library of Medicine database PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez shows about 150 if you simply search for "blood mao personality". With other search terms related to blood or its components, and personality one can probably get a good idea that personality is based in the physical body, and can sometimes be detected in blood.
But ABO typing related to personality? Preposterous. So don't go to PubMed, don't put the three words "blood type personality" into the search term bar, and don't look through over 1,000 results, 75 of which are reviews covering up to decades of research and 175 having free full text available should one want to not read any of the actual work done. That's what today's "skeptic" does. Rather than researching claims to see if there's support, they simply criticize, often using derogatory language. It is not skepticism to assume one is correct and someone else wrong. That's pre-judging, the latin term often used being a direct translation of that: prejudice. There's safety in ignorance -- it makes one correct, and skeptics seem to need to be correct
During the process of getting 3 degrees and a state state practice certification, I also go an MHA. That's a master's in healthcare administration, an MBA for health care industry (as opposed to providers) management. So I know whereof TFA speaks. I was also a charter member of the international professional group concerned with healthcare IT and associated things, the HIMMS http://www.himss.org/ASP/index.asp Take a peek for yourself and see whether you think they're relevant. TFA did beause they use HIMMS data collected with HIMMS analytics tools. In my over-educated opinion, they did pretty much all the right things for getting data and making use of it to answer their question. But.
I often admit to having signed up for a neuroscience program before even finishing the MHA because I knew I had a defect that prevented me from making use of it as a functioning member of the health care "industry" -- a conscience. And it's true. And that only came about because of what they taught me. Some of that stuff explains why things are as they are, and why TFA failed to note it.
The health are industry became a larger piece of our GNP than defense decades ago. It did so because it was wanted, so people offered it, and made a lot of money. They made more and better care available, and it got used, and they made lots more money. This continued until it got to the size it is now. There was never any intention of making it cheaper. It was a growth economy of its own no different in principle than the economy of an emerging nation. It would be irresponsible to build a tidal pool into the cash flow, and ridiculous to build a pocket of poverty into the model when one is not needed. What is needed is maximized growth. Right about now folks from all sorts of different viewpoints wave their arms like they're putting out a fire in their hair, and making a shape with their pie hole so it can make noises about, well whatever is their rant du jour. But they are not in possession of all the facts. Those come from geriatric and population epidemiology, and are related to the "boomer bulge" or 'greying' of the population.
The health care industry has grown around the population and its needs ever since it was allowed to privatize (as opposed to prior government and churches' subsidies). It would be ridiculous to expect otherwise. And it did so by people who already had their eye on the future. The conditions there were so skewed that the industry had to prepare itself or vanish. Losing money is no big deal. The big piles are already hidden under someone else's mattress. But to vanish from the users' grasp -- that could not be allowed.
Picture it. A cake chart. A horizontal line is made on the bottom row, centered, its width representing the people born that year. The next year the same happens, the first gets pushed up. Repeat every year. When there's no more people in an age bracket, that line disappears. The result, in a growing population, is a pyramid. There's more people born every year than the one before. In a stable population, it'd have parallel, vertical sides. Fine. So the US had this pyramid cake going until WW II. Afterwards, from around 1945 to 1965 there were far more babies born than fit the pyramid, and that year's line stuck out too far. After these 20 years was over and the birth rate was brought back down, there was a large bulge in the pyramid. Year by year this moved up. The bulge is now placed about where the people from within it are retiring (or of that age). And now comes the fun part.
As the boomers leave the work force, the income available for taxing or paying for health care drops. These people begin to pile into the already overburdened government subsidized programs for social security and medicare. There will be less income per yer due to more boomers going into the 'retired' bracket, more money required for more treatment for more people who are living longer than ever before, and fewer to draw on.
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You have a very bizarre idea of what "the only possible explanation" means.
Off the top of my head here's another possibility:
Smart kids get bumped forward a grade. Smart kids get bored to death by school, since there's too much revision of stuff they already understand, this looks like attention deficit so they get put on medication via misdiagnosis.
To my mind, being dosed because they're bored is as wrong as being dosed to make them succeed. But I doubt that's what happened. I think what happened is as I stated because this was the conclusion by the people who did the research.
They did the interviews, found evidence of this happening, couldn't believe it, altered their interview technique to include this specifically, and came out with the 67% figure. I'm convinced that the primary investigator was convinced of the result, because she cried when she presented it.
The school system in question (Virginia Beach) has an excellent reputation for catering to high achieving students. They are served by a local full academic year Governor's school, and their summer residential Governor's school is at NASA Langley. I attended several classes at Old Dominion University with Virginia Beach high school students participating. These are not recent. I had a girlfriend who'd been in similar programs there in the 70s.
Your assertion is contradicted by evidence. I really wanted to say how ridiculous it was, but the truth of the matter is even more so as well as disturbing.
A study done around 10+ years ago by Eastern Virginia Medical School looked at diagnosis and misdiagnosis of ADD in communities near them (Norfolk VA). They found the richer the community the more kids were diagnosed with ADD. they also found that while there is underdiagnosis equal to about 10% of the current number of those so diagnosed, there is about 20% overdiagnosed.
The most disturbing fact they uncovered, one that helps make sense of the overdiagnosis part, comes from looking at grade level and age. They classified kids as to grade, and then age within that grade. One group, kids who were more than 1 years younger than average for that grade (ie. had been bumped foward, skipping one or more grades at some time) were particularly troublesome. Kids more than a year young form their grade were prescribed meds for a diagnosis of ADD 67% of the time. These are the smart kids. No way they could that many have ADD and be set forward one opr more grades.
The only possible explanation for this is their parents were dosing them with speed in order to improve their scores, grades, abilities, etc. And doctors and schools were going along with it.
Poor people are more likely to have mental illness than average-income people.
Poor people are more likely to be diagnosed as such.
The diagnosis is more likely to be more severe.
The diagnosis is likely to persist longer and not be retracted or re-diagnosed properly.
These have nothing to do with actually having a mental illness.
Research consistently demonstrates that humans suck at multitasking. Worse, they suck at multitasking to a much greater degree than they think they do. If interpreting a poorly designed GPS UI while also driving counts as multitasking, it is probably a dangerous distraction. If the GPS UI is well designed, it could presumably function as just another subtle environmental cue, something that humans are very good at interpreting.
Speaking as someone who served as an experimental subject in testing GPS devices and GUIs over the road (Virginia Tech's traffic research folks carried this out), I whole heartedly endorse the 'distraction' observation. IN the experiment they kept turning up the amount of data presented and asking me to made decisions from it while driving. They repeatedly took it well past distracting, to outright dangerous. I finally made them shut it off altogether. People don;t suck at multitasking as long as they're in control over task switching. These things don;t let you.
As for the outcome, they obviously sent their results on to the GPS makers. The standard GPS device runs at the "annoying but not dangerous" level.
Objectively you can't remain anonymous. But what you can do is subjectively poison the collected data to make it at least questionable, or at the extreme, overtly and obviously so polluted with intentional misdirection that no authority, agency, employer or person would dare try to take any portion of it seriously for fear of choosing the wrong portion, thus making a serious error in judgement. Random BS won't work. Complete fabrication is too time consuming and prone to errors. Mixing every real action with more or less of a plausible false action with some but incomplete consistency is best, especially if some of your real action is hidden via encryption, proxy, back channel transmission and so forth. Outright misstatements aren't good enough. Being 'seen' doing other than what you want being seen doing is the key. Look into OPSEC (operational security).
They've done a bang up job investigating how bacteria adapt, and from the names and departments listed, I can see how they'd be quite able to do so as well as apply it to an expanded game theory scenario.
But applying it to human decision making, strategic or otherwise? Sorry, but they should have included someone on the team from behavioral science that could have pointed out the glaring differences.
They happen on one themselves in saying the bacteria don't lie. The level of stress they're talking about is equivalent to massive drought/starvation. Humans under such conditions do and say all kinds of things, most of it to some degree hiding real intentions.
To extend that, some of human behavior is rational under normal conditions, some isn't (emotionally driven isn't, for instance). With increased stress, less and less is rational. Their very nicely done description of possible decisions at various points based on DNA is entirely rational throughout. Not that the bacteria think, but that the decision is predetermined by being programmed in. There is no irrational result, no off-the-wall craziness drastic behavior resulting in novel solutions. Humans do this. In fact, novel results is a major difference between their work and pretty much any higher organism.
I don't find it particularly instructive that bacteria put off "decision making" until the last moment. As if people don't? It's human nature to constantly refine decisions according to the situation, including attempting top adapt to the situation after a decision has been implemented and the crucial point passed.
The final point they make, where one has to decide based on best guess of others' future behavior, is fairly telling of a major difference between bacteria and humans. Humans can coordinate their decisions so that none obtain an optimal result but all obtain a satisfactory result. That flies in the face of traditional game and economic theory. It also earned John Nash a Nobel. Bacteria can't discuss with predictive insight, they can only wait until the last moment to react.
Alcor is not one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper. It is a dim double with Mizar. We usually consider the dipper to have 7 stars: 4 in the 'pot' and three in the handle. Mizar is the center of the handle. Alcor is so close to Mizar and relatively dim that it's not even considered a point in the constellation.
Not incorrect but misleading, Castelli was the first to see it as a double 'with a telescope'. The names themselves being Arabic, should be a tip off. Would Alcor have an Arabic name if they didn't see it? They are a visual double, not requiring a telescope to see if one has good vision (as opposed to an optical double, being line of sight but not necessarily naked eye). Such as noted by the Arabic chroniclers of astronomy, as well as the Native Americans who saw the bowl of the dipper as the bear, and the three stars in the handle as three bear cubs or some as three hunters (or sever, per the Mikmac) following the bear. All knew of the two stars. Sir Patrick Moore suggests the early writings refer to Mizar A and B instead, and gives good logical thinking, though I know of pre-tlescope maps of Mizar and Alcor, but not Mizar A and B,
1. Goto Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log over at MSNBC. He asked and got answered the very same question.
2. My answer to him: Goto model rockets. A starter kit with a launcher and motors. A couple more kits of the same kind. One for the other kid, the other for you (getting you involved will be a recurring theme). Build them and fly them together. The small one in the starter kits can be flown from very small areas. If they enjoy it and want more, buy some more motors (mail order or local hobby shop), locate your closest NAR chapter http://www.nar.org/NARseclist.php find out when their organized launch is, and take the kids. Let them fly with the members and see some of the other rockets and higher powered motors. If they respond positively, join the chapter with them and make it a regular thing. Also, when you and they are ready to commit, you can get a family membership from NAR. BTW, there's not only a lot more manufacturers selling kits now, there are even some selling retro reproductions of some of the oldest kits, just in case you or someone you know was a rocketer back in the day and is feeling nostalgic.
NAR #28965
I normally never pick at someone's wording, especially a signature, but this article and this thread in particular simply begs me to bag this one:
by istartedi (132515): "For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares?"
"For all intent and purposes" is no longer a valid common phrase. It was first replaced by "for all intents and purposes", the plural of 'intent' being unnecessary to the phrase, but 'intent' being often replaecd by 'intentions' it seemed logical to pluralize the former as well as the latter. It has since been replaced by the homonymous "for all intensive purposes". The meaning is retained ("for all practical purposes") despite that fact that the presented form makes no sense: 'intensive' is an adjective, 'purposes' is a noun. Furthermore, to express "for all practical purposes" it seems adequate to express the superset "for all purposes", particularly since the opposite of intensive purposes (unintensive purposes) clearly makes no sense, and that makes the modifier on 'purposes' superfluous.
On the other hand, there may in fact be situations where the construction here applies, such as those purposes to which it could be put to use, but which require exceptional effort to do so. For example, a common purpose for posting om /. is to correct someone. A post that corrects someone but takes an inordinate amount of effort to follow, as compared to the usefulness of it being done, could be considered an "intensive purpose" for posting. Yet, despite this post being an example of this possible use, requiring intensive attention to follow it this far, nobody ever uses is that way. I know I certainly don't.
And just in case this needs to be turned back toward the subject at hand in order to stay on topic, much of animal expression is not considered language or anything like it because it is 'just animal sounds'. Yet the above, despite being full of syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and for all I know, semiotics, is just 'human sounds' with no more practical application that 'correcting' a phrase so common that everybody understands it and would probably recognize its meaning for readily than that of the 'correct' version, which is so dated and superceded that it probably sounds wrong now.
Now, thanks to the 'preview' function, I've seen all the errors in the post above. I'm leaving them. You understood anyway. So much for 'correct'.
Those scientists who have been studying animal language as a non-pseudoscience have been waiting for anyone to show SYNTAX in animal language.
Then linguists should have been paying closer attention, and/or been been more accepting of the definition of syntax that applies to sign language: simultaneous/parallel modifiers to sign displays that alter the meanings; taken together they can be considered the primary means of development of language -- compounding components into single components with specific meanings. The novel constructions that result can be instantly recognized and meaning determined by another user of the language despite not having encountered that specific combination before. If the latter, it would only fit the Skinnerian learning model; if the former, Chomsky's 'generative grammar'.
Either millions of sign users around the world are not using language because they're not using syntax, or Koko has been using language for quite some time because she has been using syntax in constructions to modify the meanings of combinations of signs.
Penny Patterson writes: Koko uses several aspects of ASL syntax in the utterance, "You sip?". She indicates a question by maintaining eye contact, holding the sign for an extended period of time, and raising her eyebrows. She adjusts the subject of the phrase from
"I sip" to "you sip" by moving the sign away from her lips and turning it toward me, thereby altering the direction of the sign. Her pursed lips and forward-leaning posture are additional grammatical inflections.
The sign "sip" is Koko's invention, a combination of the signs "eat" (fingers to mouth) and "drink" (thumb to mouth). "Sip" can be a noun or a verb; the distinction is marked in ASL by repetition of the contact motion if the sign acts as a noun, and by a single contact if it acts as a verb. Koko regularly uses this syntactic feature of sign.
Interested readers can see Koko's sign language in action in the 1999 PBS Nature documentary, "A Conversation with Koko."
(We now return to our /. post)
None of the linguists I've worked with ever had a problem considering the modifier components of sign as syntax, particularly if they were used generatively. And they had no problem recognizing Koko's signs as such. This was at the Nation Institute on Deafness and Communications Disorders at NIH, which means two things to my mind: (1) what would you expect from linguists working at NIDCD?, but then (2) NIDCD doesn't bother with linguists who can't manage to expand their thinking beyond the restrictive serial language syntax constructions. The latter adhere to a limited form of Chomky's theory, taking generative grammar to mean people in different cultures develop different syntax/grammars evidenced by different patterns of construction (especially noun/verb ordering) specific to those cultures. These are easily refuted by (1) presenting sentences with ordering uncommon to the language used, with comprehension in intact (says Yoda understand what I'm saying you can), (2) tonal languages which have a simultaneous modifier that, while is a vocal component, performs exactly like the modifiers that are considered syntax in sign.
I studied linguistics so that I could do my neuroscience magic tricks and figure out what the brain was doing during different phases of communication, both ordered and disordered. I also happened to have been an ASL interpreter with experience in sign languages from other countries (ie. not derived from Gallaudet's French version). Through these I came, by necessity, to recognize how much of human communication is non-verbal, that and includes most of ASL 'syntax' in that it's based in kinesics, proxemics and chronemics. Having been so equipped, I found that by simply taking the non-verbal as the primary rather than the semantic "word" unit, I could deconstruct much of animal behavior as display behavior with intentional meaning. So it was of no surprise that in reading Penny Patterson's di
Johnny Mnemonic (176043) writes: "My company has the opportunity to contribute to a children's museum in our area."
Well there Just Johnny, why Ask Slashdot when you've got experts at making kid-proof displays right there? They're the same people to ask just what kind of exhibit they'd like to have. What's the point of a computer/network oriented display? At the ages stated, there's not much to interest them. If it's not an outright concrete example, it's not going to do anything for them because it'll be an abstraction and kids that age don't cross levels of abstraction well if at all. They only reason to have a display based on what your company does is the PR for donating a display. The kids aren't the target for the PR so this is lost on them, and the parents or teachers could get the same PR input from a sign with your company's name. Go that way, and you can give the museum any sort of display they need. Might as well let the museum have the say. After all, at 3 to 8, how are you even going to get the instructions into their heads?
The terminology seems odd here. Isn't suspended animation pretty much the opposite of being a zombie? I mean zombies are the animated dead. Suspended animation makes you the unanimated living.
Oh horrors! You mean the International Journal Of The Society Of Wiredness For Scientificular Correctiviscousity And Technillogical Perfectitooty got it less than absolutely right? I can't imagine their crack research team making that kind of mistake. Must be a typo.
DARPA is actually funding both paths of research. Rapid metabolic reduction is being looked at for blood loss, and a dissociative/hypnotic without loss of motor control is being considered for far forward troops that, having been injured, may have to walk out; this would keep them docile and less likely to damage themselves further by struggling, as well as reduce the effect of cognitive traumatic shock and its contribution to peripheral hypovolemic shock when the body attempts to preserve itself by keeping as much blood as possible in the core. The thinking here is that if Sgt Rock can be made too stupid to connect that bloody stump to his sudden inability to scratch his nose, but stable enough to be self-mobilizing, they may not have to send a chopper in harms way to extract this troop.
One of the main mechanisms for brain damage after injury to the brain is due to the neurons releasing their packets of neurotransmitters upon their death. So you have a good neuron right next to a big blob of toxic neurotransmitters. Then that neuron dies, too. It's a chemical cascade of dying neurons. Slowing down metabolism slows down this damage, as oxidation plays a large part. Ever see those people that drown in icy water, only to be revived after hours without oxygen, somewhat intact? Same thing.
You're referring to apoptosis, "cellular suicide" caused by a signal from a nearby neuron dying. Parkinson's is one disorder that wouldn't occur except for this phenomenon.
But forced release of vesicles, toxic neurotransmitters and hypothermic preservation (or lack of, or lack of equivalent)? I can tell you remember learning about it, and probably know what you mean, but you've got some details bent. The toxicities involved in apoptosis aren't metabolic processes, but they are slowed by cooling. Cooling can be done to reduce oxidative stress due to hyperoxia (too much oxygen) as well as ischemic insult from hypoxia (too little). We're just more aware of the latter due to the many reported cases of recovery from near drowning due to rapid cooling.
Astronauts overwhelmingly have military backgrounds. The US Military has been using drugs well beyond the specifications allowed for "the rest of us" since forever. I guess what we need is a video game titled WWII Pilots: BENZEDRINE VS. METHEDRINE to really bring the point home to the pixels-and-keyboards crowd. The drug cocktail should surprise no one.
Regardless of background, astronauts work for NASA and it calls the shots.
In the military a few individuals in a few situations are given drugs that while increasing performance or some such, are not exotic but rather are common drugs with well know effects and side effects. You don't want the guy in the fox hole with you to decide his helmet is a saucepan, his claymore mine is a steak, and he's going to start a fire in the hole with you both and fix dinner. Of the few who are given such drugs, hardly any get the new, non-formulary stuff. Either way, these are handed out in very restricted matter, not as a part of a collection or "cocktail". That just doesn't happen.
Your comment is well placed and noted that TFA was intended to be light hearted. I contend it was still written poorly enough that this wasn't obvious, still isn't, and I'm not sure I agree, but I'll buy your version for a dollar.
Just to make sure my exchange currency was fixated at my labial-oral opening, I went immediately from my reply to volunteer as a science editor. They've made it so impossible to bother than at the /. desk, that I couldn't find a way to offer my services.
Just as the perennial question of 'nature or nurture' is a misstatement of how the world works (neither ever exist or act alone; results are due to the interactions of nature AND nurture) looking into this deeper will almost certainly delve into a wonderfully chaotic collection of interactions, interactions modified by others, interactions that change in strength nonlinearly as the variables change linearly, and more of the stuff that keeps us in income by preventing us on figuring anything out completely. The question won't be whether aminos or calories are more important, but under what conditions which aminos exert significant effects on calories (and vice versa), what second order/third variable interactions are significant, and so forth. I know this seems to fly in the face of parismony, what we call Occam's Razor, but that has to do with relative merits of answers, not questions. The questions are still hairy -- Willem of Ockham had no razor; he had a beard.
Take tryptophan. Precursor to dopamine. Itself precursor to norepinephrine and epinephrine. The last two are behaviorally activating, the former behaviorally inhibiting. One amino feeds two behavioral tendencies via three neurotransmitters and none of this can be pulled apart. More tryptophan would allow the body to make more of these if needed, but that's not often other than the low level continual need. But reduce tryptophan (but not calories, keeping things clean here) and below a crucial level the animal ceases to orient on salient stimuli (lack of dopamine; it can't stop to smell the roses, or Fruit Loops), including food, as well as slowing its spontaneous movement, meaning its random investigations will bring it in contact with less food, possibly including less variety. Also, lack of orienting means learning is inhibited, so later investigations will be more likely to go over ground already depleted. Further, with its activity slowed, food won't burn as fuel as much and go into fat storage more. It gets fat, so it gets slower, and all these conspire to create a downward spiral.
Now, that's just from understanding some of the products and giving one possible path. It's probably too simplistic too. Just because we can manipulate one variable and examine certain outcomes doesn't mean other things aren't involved as co-causal, co-result or co-operative.
Now throw individual differences into the mix. Some do well on low calorie diets. Some suffer. And vice is once again versa. Whatever the reasons, in this situation the organism will seek to reregulate. Also, some are better (more effective, effiecient, or both) at having enough neurotransmitter available for a given amount of precursor. Better creation, better conversion from one to another, less effective mechanisms for removing excess from use, more effective mechanisms for recycling transmitter components to produce more using less precursor, all of these are just a few of the many individual differences that might come into play. And then the array of those differences can change from changing the amount of food/precursor available.
Oh, and the recycling system for dopamine et al. also works on other transmitters like serotonin, so a neurotransmitter not affected directly by amino or calorie is affected by changing levels in those transmitters that are, and the availability or reregulation of the amount of recycling enzyme (MAO). You can't change one in vivo without affecting the whole system to some extent, while affecting some components more and others less.
No, it's going to take a lot deeper and wider inestigation to truly make sense of it. A simpler design may produce a result, but unless the design is inclusive, the results won't be generalizable.
Perhaps it's my limited understanding of the word "do" at fault. I can only think of it in the present tense, rather than the future conditionals attached to such as "might". This leads me to have all kinds of misunderstandings, like wondering why they're taking pills to counteract a dust (!) that nobody's been closer than 230,000 miles to in the last 40 years. Or why the articles blathers on about zombies and CIA truth serum when talking about a sleeping/motion sickness pill that's been OTC for longer than NASA has been chartered. Or why NASA is having them take a "cocktail" to "get the job done" which would, if the description is accurate, prevent the job from getting done if not kill them (alcohol + uppers + downers + tranqs? Anyone remember Karen Ann Quinlan?). Quoting details from the equally unqualified and/or wrong doesn't dilute the article's idiocy. The content could have made a perfectly good article. Too bad the writer felt unequal to the job of writing a real article as you'd expect in a science magazine.
This article should be in "Entertainment". Or, if we're to keep such trash under science, we should have some subclasses that apply, like 'bullshit', 'lies', and 'science? what's that?'. Or maybe we just need to change the "news for nerds, stuff that matters" to "stuff that might fit into the popular subjects here, and might be real, or not; we're not sure, we don't read it".
Is this the result of voting on suitability of submissions? If so, maybe we ought to look into having editors that actually know something about the area they cover and approve articles based on content rather than side effects. It appears that ironically 'games' is getting more serious treatment than 'science'. Part of the problem is the 'science' articles being written, such as TFA. But the fix for that is the same fix for including decent science articles.
Not "shows no link". That implies evidence shows that there is no link. Such a statement does not follow from the design and methodology. The study "fails to find" or "does not show" a link, in the technical language of science "fails to reject the null hypothesis".
It's not just due to this important distinction that many will attempt to use to claim support for their pet theories that will keep the issue from dying. There is more than ample evidence that RF of similar frequencies from other sources may result in increased morbidity of several cancers. All make the same sort of disclaimer, in that the magnitude of exposure noted in their study may not be representative of the amount necessary to trigger problems, and that although the studies lasted years, the development of problems from exposure may take much longer.
As noted above the 49% share for GE is a reduction, not a buy in. You can pretty sure this is the case if they take the time to state it's not. The whole family of companies that come and go over and under each others' names, and equally as often with one or more names or the action itself masked, do so for reasons often so obscure that one begins to think they conduct these "mergers" for misdirection. Frequently these activities are carried out to minimize predicted losses, to protect the others from association in the case of law suits, and for what appears to be which relationship between them will be most profitable in the near enough future to make it worth the trouble.
It's a long standing historical note that belies the relationship between NBC and GE. Specifically, 3 notes: G, E and C, the chimes that make up the NBC musical call sign. They've been in use for 80 years now. They stand for General Electric Company.
The refutation that's found its way into Wikipedia that this is false, essentially a business urban myth, is itself incorrect. The refutation states that "someone heard" the chimes being played over Atlanta's WSB during a football game and "asked to use" the signal, making them a trademark in 1931. Such is true, however the association between them was already close and tight. The football game in question was the 1929 Georgia Tech/Yale game. One would hope that NBC heard the chimes then, or even earlier if they'd been used. WSB was a charter affiliate of NBC, officially since Jan 9, 1927. That's all supported by data from the relevant Wikipedia sites as well as WSB and Ga. Tech histories. I'd heard about it from someone deep enough into early electronics business to know folks like Farnsworth, DuMont and Armstrong.
In those periods where one didn't "own" another, the relationship was a matter of business convenience. They have all been components in the largest body of business in the US if not the world.
Because it sure ain't no orchestra. That's be a collection of musical instruments. This is a collection of pseudo-random musical background sound generators. Music is replicable, hence "songs". This is self-similar. Any collection of sounds can be called music, but the brain decides if it sounds like 'real' music when a power curve representing the output of all notes/sounds fits a particular dimensionality; details are in Mandelbrot's first fractals picture book. If these can be tweaked to produce that, I'd agree it could play a piece of music. But I wouldn't cop to the more generic "music" unless they can be used in such a way that any number of unique pieces of music are created. If there's to be a debate, let's have it over the above details, not over the mistaken idea that it's the OS, rather than music apps, that make a machine music capable. Linux was music capable when the first audio CD driver allowed a CD to be played through a sound card and speakers. Other ways are possible but this one channel was sufficient for prerecorded song playback, so it was certainly good enough for a simulated instrument's output.
Many, many famous scientists are such skeptics, such as Richard Dawkins, Phil Plait, Carl Sagan...
I'm pretty sure you've got some agenda you haven't quite revealed to us.
Sagan was a scientific skeptic. He kept an open mind regarding both pro and con claims and evidence.
Dawkins is a scientist who misuses the term skeptic to justify his a priori confrontational stance. He also misuses it when he applies it to his anti-religious activities because science has nothing at all to say about religion except possibly in terms of social psychology, but then only in terms of group dynamics, compliance gaining, etc., not in terms of content. He may in fact be a scientific skeptic in his work. He's made himself famous misapplying that term to entirely different material and falsely stating that he's protecting science from attack by religion. The fact is a few people take the stance he does and a few take the opposing stance, but the vast majority of both sides take none because none need be taken. Science and religion coexist peacefully except around those like Dawkins and his opponents.
Plait is a scientist of the hard data sort and skepticism applies mostly to data collection methodology and conclusions drawn. I've no idea how good he is at this. He also misapplies the term by taking an automatically contrary position versus claims he finds easy targets. A skeptic is skeptical going both ways, Plait is not. His prejudiced stance and assumption of correctness have led him more than once to make claims in attacks against various targets that were shown to be incorrect. Minimal research would have prevented it, because that's what it took to show he had been making claims from opinion while claiming they were fact.
By 'agenda' I doubt you mean a series of actions which combined produce an outcome. By useage you seem to mean "hidden agenda". I have no such. I've put everything out there.
My intent should be pretty clear. I'm a skeptic. I doubt the content of the claims of Dawkins, Plait, the Ottawa group and Sagan. I also doubt the opposing claims. But I keep an open mind to both. As a skeptic I have a strong distaste for those who purposefully mislead the public by misusing the term for an activity which is most certainly not skepticism. They do not "consider but not accept". They start with a viewpoint they've accepted as the sole correct one and refuse to consider anything other than their own opinion and information that seems to justify it as well as justifying their confrontational stance.
Now, your insistence that I have a 'hidden agenda', your rapid appeal to the masses (presenting the assumption to them that they are on your side, including speaking of me in the third person), your misstatements in the response below regarding ABO/personality/hormones/chemicals and my supposed attempt to fool people all being indicative of being too busy formulating your response to pay close attention to the information presented in my statements regarding those, your false claim that I have a pet pseudo-theory, religion and/or grudge hiding behind me, and most of all your claim that none of he results in the PubMed search had nothing to do with the subject, that I knew it, and that I used it to try to deliberately mislead people, is a cluster of behaviors that can only point to one thing. You're a fundie -- a skeptic. Further support? You made up the claim about the results being misdirection on my part. You lied. There's a very important result in there that shows that the blood drive people, the Ottawa group, TFA, Wikipedia, a thousand points of darkness on web sites, even a bunch of Japanese, and you, have been wasting your time all along by blindly repeating a mistake.
The original work that linked personality with blood used the term "typing by blood". It meant trying to determine personality type by examining a person's ethno-cultural background (ie. blood line). It had nothing to do with ABO or any other measure of blood components. Both adherents and
"Soldiers may go into battle better prepared...
after an intellectual property licensing deal...
will deepen the defense giant's access to visual simulation technology...
The intellectual property agreement....."
is a damn sight different than "Microsoft Game Software Preps Soldiers For Battle"
With all the equivocation, inaccuracy and future tense in the text, it's pretty obvious that in this case at least Microsoft game software isn't doing squat for soldiers, and won't until MS preps themselves to help L-M get busy actually making some. Until and unless that happens phrasing the title as if it's happening at the moment is more than misleading, it's an outright lie. Apparently Network World needs readership so bad it has to resort to false titles to grab readers, besides resorting to covering things not at all network related.
Simulation in military training is far from new. 25 years ago recruits practiced firing M-16s on simulators that looked like a carnival firing range game built onto an coin-operated indoor bowling game. They learned here to squeeze, not pull; to stop breathing but not 'hold' their breath; and to fire from several positions, without using up ammunition or exposing the inexperienced recruits to the danger of a live fire range more than necessary.
Is it "Cormac McCarthy [link to article on author and his work] is auctioning the 45-year-old Olivetti manual typewriter, on which all his novels, screenplays, plays, short stories, and much of his correspondence were written; is there something ... intrinsically interesting and valuable", based on the entirety or on a portion thereof?
Or is it "a guy is selling a thing he wrote stuff with; think it's worth something"?
I'd buy Isaac Asimov's word processor, typewriter or chalk board. I wouldn't buy kdawson's Beowulf cluster of Soviet Russian Overlords running 6 flavors of *nix, and a direct neural-to-keyboard port interface.
I think it's safe to assume the guy is selling his history, not the tech. And certainly not the brand, because (speaking as a past office equipment repairer) Vettis suck.
I've run across several things from Japan that are either science not supported elsewhere or pseudo-science, depending on -- well, on which you believe.
There's 10 times more schizophrenia in the US than Japan. Environment? Cultural? No, books. The diagnostic criteria used in Japan is far more stringent, with 90% of what we'd call schizophrenia being called something else by them. How do you tell who's right? Either by where you're standing, or by knowing a lot more about schizophrenia than anyone else on the planet, because both are based on correct but incomplete science, thus conflicting results.
In EEG research Japanese studies often include analysis of 'midline frontal theta', and hardly anyone other than them ever does. It's there, but western research only notes the existence. Japanese science claims it correlates to personality and clinical diagnoses. There are other constructs they include in studies that are otherwise complete and correct in western terms, most of them also relate to the same personality construct.
Here's where culture shoulders in. The clinical construct so often studied in Japanese science is that of 'extroversion'. In western science that's one end of a range, the other being introversion. In western culture the latter is more often a social problem, being related to shyness and to that ubiquitous fear, speaking in public. If anything, extroversion is preferred here. In Japan, where the culture of conformity can be described with the phrase "the nail that stands out gets pounded down", introversion is closer to successful cultural adaptation than its opposite.
Related, when researchers started looking at the perceptual crossover effect called synesthesia, they were amazed to find that it did not exist in Japan. When neurological evidence was found explaining its nature, they started to wonder why Japanese did not have this unusual wiring. When they went to study it experimentally, they included a test to check for non-conscious manifestations of synesthesia. Lo and behold, the Japanese have this just as often as everyone else. But they deny it and claim nothing unusual happens. Far be it from the Japanese to go around admitting to being different.
I personally have a beef with the construct 'personality' and how it's studied. But the research constantly shows something there, and biochemical testing does support some of it. In our tobacco and Parkinson's studies we examined monoamine oxidase activation in the mitochondria of platelets. That's the stuff that deactivates dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin and a few other neurotransmitters prior to recycling. Differenes in MAO activation mean differences in the amount of those chemicals, and so a difference in brain operation. Now this is nuts and bolts stuff I can wrap my pragmatic methodologist's head around. Hell yes there's scientific backing. NIH's National Library of Medicine database PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez shows about 150 if you simply search for "blood mao personality". With other search terms related to blood or its components, and personality one can probably get a good idea that personality is based in the physical body, and can sometimes be detected in blood.
But ABO typing related to personality? Preposterous. So don't go to PubMed, don't put the three words "blood type personality" into the search term bar, and don't look through over 1,000 results, 75 of which are reviews covering up to decades of research and 175 having free full text available should one want to not read any of the actual work done. That's what today's "skeptic" does. Rather than researching claims to see if there's support, they simply criticize, often using derogatory language. It is not skepticism to assume one is correct and someone else wrong. That's pre-judging, the latin term often used being a direct translation of that: prejudice. There's safety in ignorance -- it makes one correct, and skeptics seem to need to be correct
During the process of getting 3 degrees and a state state practice certification, I also go an MHA. That's a master's in healthcare administration, an MBA for health care industry (as opposed to providers) management. So I know whereof TFA speaks. I was also a charter member of the international professional group concerned with healthcare IT and associated things, the HIMMS http://www.himss.org/ASP/index.asp Take a peek for yourself and see whether you think they're relevant. TFA did beause they use HIMMS data collected with HIMMS analytics tools. In my over-educated opinion, they did pretty much all the right things for getting data and making use of it to answer their question. But.
I often admit to having signed up for a neuroscience program before even finishing the MHA because I knew I had a defect that prevented me from making use of it as a functioning member of the health care "industry" -- a conscience. And it's true. And that only came about because of what they taught me. Some of that stuff explains why things are as they are, and why TFA failed to note it.
The health are industry became a larger piece of our GNP than defense decades ago. It did so because it was wanted, so people offered it, and made a lot of money. They made more and better care available, and it got used, and they made lots more money. This continued until it got to the size it is now. There was never any intention of making it cheaper. It was a growth economy of its own no different in principle than the economy of an emerging nation. It would be irresponsible to build a tidal pool into the cash flow, and ridiculous to build a pocket of poverty into the model when one is not needed. What is needed is maximized growth. Right about now folks from all sorts of different viewpoints wave their arms like they're putting out a fire in their hair, and making a shape with their pie hole so it can make noises about, well whatever is their rant du jour. But they are not in possession of all the facts. Those come from geriatric and population epidemiology, and are related to the "boomer bulge" or 'greying' of the population.
The health care industry has grown around the population and its needs ever since it was allowed to privatize (as opposed to prior government and churches' subsidies). It would be ridiculous to expect otherwise. And it did so by people who already had their eye on the future. The conditions there were so skewed that the industry had to prepare itself or vanish. Losing money is no big deal. The big piles are already hidden under someone else's mattress. But to vanish from the users' grasp -- that could not be allowed.
Picture it. A cake chart. A horizontal line is made on the bottom row, centered, its width representing the people born that year. The next year the same happens, the first gets pushed up. Repeat every year. When there's no more people in an age bracket, that line disappears. The result, in a growing population, is a pyramid. There's more people born every year than the one before. In a stable population, it'd have parallel, vertical sides. Fine. So the US had this pyramid cake going until WW II. Afterwards, from around 1945 to 1965 there were far more babies born than fit the pyramid, and that year's line stuck out too far. After these 20 years was over and the birth rate was brought back down, there was a large bulge in the pyramid. Year by year this moved up. The bulge is now placed about where the people from within it are retiring (or of that age). And now comes the fun part.
As the boomers leave the work force, the income available for taxing or paying for health care drops. These people begin to pile into the already overburdened government subsidized programs for social security and medicare. There will be less income per yer due to more boomers going into the 'retired' bracket, more money required for more treatment for more people who are living longer than ever before, and fewer to draw on.
From 2030 to 2050 there will