BS: Random Traces From All Over

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Mar 09 - 03:49 PM

BRUSSELS, March 5 (Reuters) - A Canadian filmmaker plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye to make documentaries and raise awareness about surveillance in society.

Rob Spence, 36, who lost an eye in an accident as a teenager, said his so-called Project Eyeborg is to have the camera, a battery and a wireless transmitter mounted on a tiny circuit board. www.eyeborgblog.com/

"Originally the whole idea was to do a documentary about surveillance. I thought I would become a sort of super hero ... fighting for justice against surveillance," Spence said.

"In Toronto there are 12,000 cameras. But the strange thing I discovered was that people don't care about the surveillance cameras, they were more concerned about me and my secret camera eye because they feel that is a worse invasion of their privacy."

Spence, in Brussels to appear at a media conference, said no part of the camera would be connected to his nerves or brain.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Mar 09 - 05:40 PM

"...For 19 days, ATIC circled the South Pole, studying cosmic rays coming from space. Then, nearly a year later, the ATIC team made a stunning announcement: they found that more high-energy electrons had left their mark on the experiment than expected. That might not sound like much, but the result is remarkable because it might be a telltale sign of dark matter, the invisible stuff thought to make up about 85 per cent of matter in the universe.

And it's not the only one. Just months before, an Italian-led collaboration reported that their satellite-based experiment, called PAMELA, had seen a similar excess of electrons, along with an excess of positrons. Add to this earlier results from gamma-ray satellites and experiments searching for dark matter here on Earth, and suddenly we have an abundance of new clues about dark matter. "It is a very exciting time to be doing dark-matter physics," says Dan Hooper, a physicist at the Fermi National Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

The bonanza of evidence suggests that dark matter might be far more complicated than we had ever imagined. For starters, the theoretician's favourite dark-matter candidate is falling out of favour, with the latest experiments making the case for new, exotic varieties of dark matter. If they are right, we could be living next to a "hidden sector", an unseen aspect of the cosmos that exists all around us and includes a new force of nature.

The bonanza of evidence suggests that dark matter might be more complicated than we ever imagined

Such hidden worlds might sound strange, but they emerge naturally from complex theories such as string theory, which attempts to mesh together the very small and the very large. Hidden worlds may, literally, be all around us. They could, in theory, be populated by a rich menagerie of particles and have their own forces. Yet we would be unaware of their existence because the particles interact extremely weakly with the familiar matter of our universe. Of late, physicists have been taking seriously the idea that particles from such hidden sectors could be dark matter.

We know precious little about dark matter, but we do know that its gravity is what keeps galaxies and clusters of galaxies from flying apart, despite the staggering speeds of the individual stars and galaxies within them. We also know that it must be made of particles that are massive and interact only very weakly with their surroundings. Anything that matches this description is known as a weakly interacting massive particle...." (New Scientist)

When I was in junior high the WIMPS were easy to find. They were the last ones out to recess and the first ones back in their seats...

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Mar 09 - 04:43 PM

"At the director David Cromer's shattering rendition of the play (Our Town) now running in Greenwich Village, it's impossible not to be moved by that Act III passage where the Stage Manager comes upon the graves of Civil War veterans in the town cemetery. "New Hampshire boys," he says, "had a notion that the Union ought to be kept together, though they'd never seen more than 50 miles of it themselves. All they knew was the name, friends — the United States of America. The United States of America. And they went and died about it."

Wilder was not a nostalgic, sentimental or jingoistic writer. Grover's Corners isn't populated by saints but by regular people, some frivolous and some ignorant and at least one suicidal. But when the narrator evokes a common national good and purpose — unfurling our country's full name in the rhetorical manner also favored by our current president — you feel the graveyard's chill wind. It's a trace memory of an American faith we soiled and buried with all our own nonsense in the first decade of our new century.

Retrieving that faith now requires extraordinary patience and optimism. "

---

Thornton Wilder has a knack for surprising you brightly with the commonest words. "..and they went and died about it." My God.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Mar 09 - 07:24 PM

"The Humble Approach Initiative (Templeton Foundation)

Artifacts discovered at Blombos Cave in South Africa by Christopher Henshilwood and his team of archaeologists: shell beads (top) and a red ochre rock engraved with geometric patterns.

In January, a dozen scholars gathered in Cape Town, South Africa for a four-day symposium entitled "Homo Symbolicus: The Dawn of Language, Imagination, and Spirituality." They were there to discuss the implications of a recent discovery that sent shock waves through the archaeological world: 75,000-year-old shell beads and engraved ochre found at the Blombos Cave, about 200 miles east of the meeting site. The beads and engravings provide fairly conclusive evidence of symbolic expression among human beings 40,000 years earlier than many researchers had thought possible.
"

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Mar 09 - 11:18 AM

The global sea level looks set to rise far higher than forecast because of changes in the polar ice-sheets, a team of researchers has suggested.

Scientists at a climate change summit in Copenhagen said earlier UN estimates were too low and that sea levels could rise by a metre or more by 2100.

The projections did not include the potential impact of polar melting and ice breaking off, they added.

The implications for millions of people would be "severe", they warned.

Ten per cent of the world's population - about 600 million people - live in low-lying areas.
        
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, had said that the maximum rise in sea level would be in the region of 59cm.

Professor Konrad Steffen from the University of Colorado, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, highlighted new studies into ice loss in Greenland, showing it has accelerated over the last decade.

Professor Steffen, who has studied the Arctic ice for the past 35 years, told me: "I would predict sea level rise by 2100 in the order of one metre; it could be 1.2m or 0.9m.

"But it is one metre or more seeing the current change, which is up to three times more than the average predicted by the IPCC." BBC News

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 02:16 PM

BLOOMINGDALE, Ill. -- Police in a Chicago suburb say a Wal-Mart employee has died after setting himself on fire outside the store where he worked.

Police watch commander Randy Sater says 58-year-old Larry Graziano of Carol Stream set himself ablaze late Thursday outside the store in Bloomingdale. It was not immediately clear how he caught on fire, but Sater says lighter fluid was involved.

The Cook County Medical Examiner's office says Graziano was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead early Friday.

Sater says Graziano told police he "couldn't take it anymore."

Police say bystanders tried to help, but Graziano fought them off.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 02:36 PM

Compact, high-capacity batteries are an essential part of portable electronics already, but improved batteries are likely to play a key role in the auto industry, and may eventually appear throughout the electric grid, smoothing over interruptions in renewable power sources. Unfortunately, battery technology often involves a series of tradeoffs among factors like capacity, charging time, and usable cycles. Today's issue of Nature reports on a new version of lithium battery technology that may just be a game-changer.

The new work involves well-understood technology, relying on lithium ions as charge carriers within the battery. But the lithium resides in a material that was designed specifically to allow it to move through the battery quickly, which means charges can be shifted in and out of storage much more rapidly than in traditional formulations of lithium batteries. The net result is a battery that, given the proper electrodes, can perform a complete discharge in under 10 seconds—the sort of performance previously confined to the realm of supercapacitors.   (Ars Technica)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 10:15 PM

The secret of long life? It's all down to how fast you react
  
  
  Mike Treder
  
  Ethical Technology
  
  Posted: Mar 11, 2009
  
  Are you planning (or hoping) to live for a very long time? One key factor, according to new research, may be your reaction time.
  
      People's reaction times are a far better indicator of their chances of living a long life than their blood pressure, exercise levels or weight, researchers have discovered.
  
      Men and women with the most sluggish response times are more than twice as likely to die prematurely.
  
      Edinburgh University and the Medical Research Council in Glasgow tracked 7,414 people nationwide over 20 years in a study which appears to confirm the adage that a healthy mind means a healthy body.
  
  So, if this research turns out to be accurate, then taking good care of your mind is as important—or more important—than going to the gym. (But I guess a flabby body is still not healthy. Oh, well.)
  
      The study, published in the respected journal Intelligence this week, is the first to look at reaction times and mortality, comparing the results with known risk factors like smoking and drinking.
  
      The authors say there is growing evidence that people with higher IQs tend to live longer and healthier lives.
  
      While this can partly be put down to differences in lifestyles because more intelligent people are less likely to smoke and be overweight, much of the gap has previously been unexplained.
  
  Although it may not be possible, at least yet, to significantly raise the IQ of an adult, there are ways to optimize your given level of intelligence and maximize your reaction speed. It's well known, of course, that low doses of caffeine (a cup or two of coffee, or a cola drink) will temporarily improve alertness and enhance reaction times. In addition, many experts recommend regular exercise for the brain, such as video games and crossword puzzles.
  
  We can also look forward to the day, perhaps in the near future, when medical research will provide approved, tested drugs that will safely, effectively, and substantially boost our IQs and reaction times. Beyond that, of course, is the potential for nanomedicine to functionally restructure our brain organization, making us much smarter—but that's probably a decade or two away, at least.
  
  Now, back to the study, and how it was conducted:
  
      The 7,414 volunteers in the study have been followed since the mid-80's, when their reaction times were measured with an electrical device fitted with a small screen and five numbered buttons.
  
      The volunteers had to press the matching button when a number appeared on screen. The time they took to react was measured and averages worked out.
  
      Since then, 1,289 have died, 568 of them from heart disease.
  
      The researchers then compared the reaction times, smoking habits, weight and other factors of those who had died with those who had survived.
  
      The results showed that people with slow reactions were 2.6 times more likely to die prematurely from any cause. Smoking was the only factor linked to a larger risk of death – as it made it 3.03 times more likely.
  
      Physical exercise, blood pressure, heart rate, waist-hip ratio, alcohol consumption and body-mass index all had a lesser effect.
  
      In deaths caused specifically by heart disease, reaction time was the most important factor after blood pressure, this time having a greater effect than smoking.
  
      The researchers said: 'It has been hypothesised that reaction time, as a measure of speed of the brain's information-processing capacity, may be a marker for bodily system integrity.
  
      'This way, slower reaction times, or poorer information-processing ability, might be an indication of suboptimal physiological functioning, which may in turn be related to early death.'
  
  This is by far the most interesting research I've ever seen on the correlation between intelligence and longevity. So, start thinking, build your reaction speed, and live longer! 

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 04:54 PM

Atheist Bus Campaign Gets into Gear in Germany

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." The brightly colored ads were part of a provocative campaign on British buses. Spain reacted with its own string of atheist slogans, and now a German group is following suit.

Those waiting by at bus stops in Berlin, Munich or Cologne later this year may be in for a surprise. In place of ordinary commercial ads, commuters will be greeted by hard-hitting atheist slogans. That at least is the plan of a new German atheism campaign, the latest European group to use buses as a vehicle for its provocative views.

Organizers are taking a leaf out of the book of Spanish and English groups that have run similar campaigns. Right now the German organizers are trying to raise money to embellish seven buses with their ads.


Atheists pledging a euro or more to the campaign can vote on a selection of slogans, some loosely based on the British signs. Phillip Möller, one of the campaign organizers, says the German group has collected €3,500 in the first four days of fundraising. They need €16,000 euros more to fund the project.

Möller, one of the six founders, doesn't see himself as any sort of missionary. "We just want to inform people," he said. "In an enlightened society you should be able to say something like that without being punished."

And many Germans do not subscribe to any particular religion, or even believe in God. Around a third of the population, according to official data -- in a country where official church membership is tithed through the tax office -- claim no religion. A survey carried out in 2005 showed that 22 percent of all Germans say they believe in God. Self-proclaimed atheists and agnostics accounted for 23 percent of the population. "We want to finally give these people a voice," said Möller.

Debate in the United Kingdom flared with the start of the world's first atheist campaign earlier this year. Around 200 buses caused a furore with their unconventional ads. Journalist and comedy writer Ariane Sherine unwittingly started the campaign last year with a blog on the website of the British newspaper The Guardian. She described her outrage after seeing a red London bus carrying a Bible quote, and details of a Web site. Non-Christians, the Web site pronounced, would burn in hell for all eternity. (Der Spiegel)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Mar 09 - 09:49 PM

(PhysOrg.com) -- "Many groups have been working devices that make objects invisible," Che Ting Chan tells PhysOrg.com. "Most of these devices, however, encompass the object to be cloaked." Chan, a scientist at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, believes that it is possible to create a cloaking device that would be able to render an object invisible without encompassing it.
"With the devices that encompass the object," Chan continues, "the cloaked subject is 'blind'. It can't 'see' out through the cloak. We can't see the object, but the object can't see us, either. We wanted to create a conceptual design that would let the object 'see' out through the cloak while hiding it from sight." Along with Yun Lai, Huanyang Chen and Zhao-Qing Zhang, Chan believes that this could be accomplished. Their ideas are published in Physical Review Letters: "Complementary Media Invisibility Cloak that Cloaks Objects at a Distance Outside the Cloaking Shell."

Right now, such a device exists only theory. "We haven't built the device," Chan says, "but we have shown mathematically how it could work. It is a very specific description of the materials needed. If you have the time and resources, we think it could be done." He points out that it might have interesting possibilities in a number of fields where invisibility might be desirable.

Theoretically, a device such as Chan suggests, would work through complementary media. "Our strategy is to put the cloaking device and the object to be cloak next to each other. The cloaking device is a kind of anti-object. The way the light is gathered and scattered by the two objects - the cloaking device and the object it is making invisible - would cancel each other out." Chan continues by explaining that the cloaking device would become invisible as well. "Both must be invisible in order for this to be effective, and I think we have shown in theory how this could work."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Mar 09 - 11:38 PM

n the life of many successful networks, the connections between elements increase over time. As connections are added, there comes a critical moment when the network's overall connectivity rises rapidly with each new link.
Now a trio of mathematicians studying networks in which the formation of connections is governed by random processes, has provided new evidence that super-connectivity can be appreciably delayed. But the delay comes at a cost: when it finally happens, the transition is virtually instantaneous, like a film of water abruptly crystallizing into ice.
The team's findings — described in a paper with an accompanying commentary in the March 13 issue of the journal Science —could be useful in a number of fields: from efforts by epidemiologists to control the spread of disease, to communications experts developing new products.
"We have found that by making a small change in the rules governing the formation of a network, we can greatly manipulate the onset of large-scale connectivity," said Raissa D'Souza, an associate professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering at UC Davis.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 16 Mar 09 - 09:59 AM

"In the early days of the twentieth century, particle physics was in its infancy, with only two types of particles known: the proton and the electron. From the 1930s on, physicists were inundated by a deluge of new particles. In his 1955 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Willis Lamb quipped that "the finder of a new elementary particle used to be rewarded by a Nobel Prize, but such a discovery now ought to be punished by a $10,000 fine." As time went on, particle physicists discovered the eightfold way—particle physics' equivalent of the periodic table—which ultimately led to the "standard model" of particle physics. To date, every particle predicted by the standard model has been experimentally verified, with the exception of the elusive Higgs particle.

The Higgs particle is theorized to be the reason why some particles, such as the W and Z bosons, have mass, while other force carriers, like the photon, are massless. Previous work has put lower and upper limits on the mass of this particle. CERN's Large Electron-Positron collider has been unable to find the Higgs particle at masses below 114 GeV, setting this as a lower bound for the mass. Studies of the electroweak force suggest that the Higgs particle must weigh less than 185 GeV. Now, work by a collaboration of the DZero and CDF particle discovery groups (each of those are collaborations in their own right) has narrowed this window even further". (Ars Technica)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 01:08 AM

Today the John Templeton Foundation announced the winner of the annual Templeton Prize of a colossal £1 million ($1.4 million), the largest annual prize in the world.

This year it goes to French physicist and philosopher of science Bernard d'Espagnat for his "studies into the concept of reality". D'Espagnat, 87, is a professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Paris-Sud, and is known for his work on quantum mechanics. The award will be presented to him by the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace on 5 May.

D'Espagnat boasts an impressive scientific pedigree, having worked with Nobel laureates Louis de Broglie, Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr. De Broglie was his thesis advisor; he served as a research assistant to Fermi; and he worked at CERN when it was still in Copenhagen under the direction of Bohr. He also served as a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin, at the invitation of the legendary physicist John Wheeler. But what has he done that's worth £1 million?

The thrust of d'Espagnat's work was on experimental tests of Bell's theorem. The theorem states that either quantum mechanics is a complete description of the world or that if there is some reality beneath quantum mechanics, it must be nonlocal – that is, things can influence one another instantaneously regardless of how much space stretches between them, violating Einstein's insistence that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

But what d'Espagnat was really interested in was what all of this meant for discerning the true nature of ultimate reality. Unlike most of his contemporaries, d'Espagnat was one of the brave ones unafraid to tackle the thorny and profound philosophical questions posed by quantum physics.

Third view

Unlike classical physics, d'Espagnat explained, quantum mechanics cannot describe the world as it really is, it can merely make predictions for the outcomes of our observations. If we want to believe, as Einstein did, that there is a reality independent of our observations, then this reality can either be knowable, unknowable or veiled. D'Espagnat subscribes to the third view. Through science, he says, we can glimpse some basic structures of the reality beneath the veil, but much of it remains an infinite, eternal mystery.

Looking back at d'Espagnat's work, I couldn't help but wonder what the Templeton Foundation – an organisation dedicated to reconciling science and religion – saw in it that they thought was worth a £1 million. Then, scanning the press release, I found it:

"There must exist, beyond mere appearances … a 'veiled reality' that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly. In turn, contrary to those who claim that matter is the only reality, the possibility that other means, including spirituality, may also provide a window on ultimate reality cannot be ruled out, even by cogent scientific arguments."... (New Scientist)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 01:12 AM

00:00 17 March 2009 by Anil Ananthaswamy

Electrodes implanted in the brains of people with epilepsy might have resolved an ancient question about consciousness.

Signals from the electrodes seem to show that consciousness arises from the coordinated activity of the entire brain. The signals also take us closer to finding an objective "consciousness signature" that could be used to probe the process in animals and people with brain damage without inserting electrodes.

Previously it wasn't clear whether a dedicated brain area, or "seat of consciousness", was responsible for guiding our subjective view of the world, or whether consciousness was the result of concerted activity across the whole brain. ... (New Scientist)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 02:43 PM

Latvian veterans of Hitler's Waffen SS marched through Riga on Monday, defying a ban by officials. The annual march divides the country. Latvians of Russian descent regard it as an insult, but many others honor the fighters for resisting Soviet occupation.


An honor guard leads the way as veterans of the Waffen SS marched through Riga on Monday.

Some 300 Latvian veterans of the Waffen SS and their supporters marched through Riga on Monday to commemorate their comrades who fought the Soviet Union in Adolf Hitler's fanatical combat unit during World War II.

Supporters regard the Latvians who fought in the Waffen SS as liberators from the Soviet occupation in the war. Russia and many ethnic Russians in Latvia regard the annual commemorative marches as a glorification of fascism.

The demonstration went ahead in defiance of a ban by the city. Dozens of protestors jeered at the veterans as they carried flowers to the base of the Freedom Monument in the Latvian capital.

...Police separated veterans from counter-demonstrators, who were mainly from Latvia's large ethnic Russian minority, as they shouted "Stalin kaputt" and "Hitler kaputt" at each other. A total of 13 people were detained but there was no violence reported....(Der Spiegel)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 03:56 PM

Boob-job biz sagging

Economic meltdown is causing many to delay cosmetic surgery, survey says

BY Bill Hutchinson
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, March 17th 2009, 9:02 AM


Breast augmentations fell from nearly 400,000 in 2007 to 355,671 last year.

Manhattan cosmetic surgeon Lawrence Milgrim doesn't need to read the latest analysis of his industry to know he's getting nipped and tucked by the economy.

"We've had a dropoff just because of the economic environment," said Milgrim. "Some of the larger procedures have dropped off more than some of the smaller procedures."

"I think today the gestalt is, 'Don't change me, just make me look better than I am now.'"

A study released Monday shows Milgrim isn't the only plastic surgeon hurting.

Cosmetic surgical procedures have plummeted 15% in the past year, and nonsurgical procedures are down 12%, according to the survey by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 05:23 PM

Galactic Mergers


PhysOrg.com) -- A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope offers a rare view of an imminent collision between the cores of two merging galaxies, each powered by a black hole with millions of times the mass of the sun.
The galactic cores are in a single, tangled galaxy called NGC 6240, located 400-million light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. Millions of years ago, each core was the dense center of its own galaxy before the two galaxies collided and ripped each other apart. Now, these cores are approaching each other at tremendous speeds and preparing for the final cataclysmic collision. They will crash into each other in a few million years, a relatively short period on a galactic timescale.
The spectacular image combines visible light from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and infrared light from Spitzer. It catches the two galaxies during a rare, short-lived phase of their evolution, when both cores of the interacting galaxies are still visible but closing in on each other fast.
"One of the most exciting things about the image is that this object is unique," said Stephanie Bush of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass., lead author of a new paper describing the observation in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal. "Merging is a quick process, especially when you get to the train wreck that is happening. There just aren't many galactic mergers at this stage in the nearby universe."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 05:28 PM

Salt water for Dejah

Liquid saltwater is likely present on Mars, new analysis shows
March 17th, 2009
Enlarge
Droplets on a leg of the Mars Phoenix lander are seen to darken and coalesce. Nilton Renno, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences says this is evidence that they are made of liquid water. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute
(PhysOrg.com) -- Salty, liquid water has been detected on a leg of the Mars Phoenix Lander and therefore could be present at other locations on the planet, according to analysis by a group of mission scientists led by a University of Michigan professor. This is the first time liquid water has been detected and photographed outside the Earth.
"A large number of independent physical and thermodynamical evidence shows that saline water may actually be common on Mars," said Nilton Renno, a professor in the U-M Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences and a co-investigator on the Phoenix mission.
"Liquid water is an essential ingredient for life. This discovery has important implications to many areas of planetary exploration, including the habitability of Mars."
Renno will present these findings March 23 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Mar 09 - 05:37 PM

The roads they are so muddy, we cannot gang about....



"A herd of young birdlike dinosaurs met their death on the muddy margins of a lake some 90 million years ago, according to a team of Chinese and American paleontologists that excavated the site in the Gobi Desert in western Inner Mongolia.
The Sudden sudden death of the herd in a mud trap provides a rare snapshot of social behavior. Composed entirely of juveniles of a single species of ornithomimid dinosaur (Sinornithomimus dongi), the herd suggests that immature individuals were left to fend for themselves when adults were preoccupied with nesting or brooding.
"There were no adults or hatchlings," said Paul Sereno, professor at the University of Chicago and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. "These youngsters were roaming around on their own," remarked Tan Lin, from the Department of Land and Resources of Inner Mongolia."


Phys Org

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Mar 09 - 01:28 AM

Apr 9 2004, 01:00 AM




From MSNBC News: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4669114/

CANNETO DI CARONIA, Sicily - The gate at the entrance to this tiny Sicilian village has come off its hinges and swings in the wind as cats wander into homes abandoned after a series of mystery fires.

Spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia, in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again — even though electricity to the village was cut off.

An endless flow of scientists, engineers, police and even a few self-styled "ghostbusters" have descended on the town, searching for clues to the recent spontaneous combustion of everything from fuse boxes to microwave ovens to a car.

The blazes, originally blamed on the devil, have not hurt anyone.

"We're working in the dark. We don't have a single lead so far," said Pedro Spinnato, mayor of the trio of Caronia towns.

"Every time some new scientist comes to town, they arrive thinking the whole thing has been invented or that they're going to solve the mystery in two minutes. They've all been wrong."

Electricians and exorcists
The 39 inhabitants of the town halfway between Palermo and Messina were evacuated after the regional government declared a state of emergency in Canneto, which occupies a single street nestled between a railway line and the sea.

But after weeks of sleeping in a nearby hotel and houses rented for them by the government, they're getting desperate.

"I've seen an air conditioner burst into flames and burn down in 30 seconds. These are not normal events, but I think we're going to have to start looking for a different kind of help," said Antonio Pezzino, whose house was first hit.

From the start, Gabriele Amorth, one of the Catholic Church's exorcists, suspected the devil was at work.

"I've seen things like this before," he told the daily Il Messaggero. "Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods."

Amorth urged the parish priest to take action.

The local priest, Don Antonio Cipriani, decided together with residents to let scientists have a first go at the fires.

After a brief visit to Canneto di Caronia, the head of the Committee for the Control of Paranormal Claims has ruled out demons or poltergeists — at least for the time being.

"The fact that the phenomenon occurs only when there are people present makes it hard to believe that it is a natural, or even supernatural phenomenon," the committee's Massimo Polidoro said. "But we don't exclude further investigation if things aren't eventually explained."

Real-life 'X-Files'

Nobody can say the experts aren't trying. Canneto looks increasingly like a set for the TV hit "The X-Files."

Two fire trucks and a police jeep sit at the entrance of Canneto on alert for the next blaze, while a van with a large, rotating antennas on top measures the radio waves.

Three-legged instruments to monitor geomagnetic, meteorological, electromagnetic and electrostatic indicators sit in apartments and next to lemon trees in the gardens. Colored markings on the street indicate the presence of volcano experts.

Police ruled out a possible prankster or pyromaniac after they saw wires burst into flames.

The hypotheses now range from a buildup of electrical energy caused by grounding wires running off the railway to a rare "natural phenomenon" in which surges of electricity rise from the earth's core.

The fires have even consumed unplugged lamps and an entire apartment. Black scorch marks still scar the apartment walls.

Italy's big utility, Enel, cut off electricity to the town and hooked it up to a generator — but that caught fire as well.

More recently, cellular phones and cars have also been acting up, with lock and alarm systems being set off without any apparent reason.

Sacrificial goat?
The evacuated families of Canneto di Caronia who gather almost every night in the three-star hotel perched above their abandoned village are giving up hope.

"I just want to go home," said Rosi Cioffo, a shopkeeper and mother of two. "I don't know what's causing it and I don't care anymore — even if it's the devil."

Her 9-year-old daughter, who is frightened every time a TV or bathroom fan switches on, may not agree.

Spinnato, the mayor, sounds just as desperate.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Mar 09 - 12:42 PM

We propose a comprehensive theory of dark matter that explains the recent proliferation of unexpected observations in high-energy astrophysics.

Cosmic ray spectra from ATIC and PAMELA require a WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle). with mass Mchi~500–800 GeV that annihilates into leptons at a level well above that expected from a thermal relic. Signals from WMAP and EGRET reinforce this interpretation. Limits on [overline p] and pi0-gamma's constrain the hadronic channels allowed for dark matter. Taken together, we argue these facts imply the presence of a new force in the dark sector, with a Compton wavelength mphi-1>~1 GeV-1.

The long range allows a Sommerfeld enhancement to boost the annihilation cross section as required, without altering the weak-scale annihilation cross section during dark matter freeze-out in the early universe. If the dark matter annihilates into the new force carrier phi, its low mass can make hadronic modes kinematically inaccessible, forcing decays dominantly into leptons. If the force carrier is a non-Abelian gauge boson, the dark matter is part of a multiplet of states, and splittings between these states are naturally generated with size alphamphi~ MeV, leading to the eXciting dark matter (XDM) scenario previously proposed to explain the positron annihilation in the galactic center observed by the INTEGRAL satellite; the light boson invoked by XDM to mediate a large inelastic scattering cross section is identified with the phi here.

Somewhat smaller splittings would also be expected, providing a natural source for the parameters of the inelastic dark matter (iDM) explanation for the DAMA annual modulation signal. Since the Sommerfeld enhancement is most significant at low velocities, early dark matter halos at redshift ~10 potentially produce observable effects on the ionization history of the universe.

Because of the enhanced cross section, detection of substructure is more probable than with a conventional WIMP. Moreover, the low velocity dispersion of dwarf galaxies and Milky Way subhalos can increase the substructure annihilation signal by an additional order of magnitude or more.

©2009 The American Physical Society

---

My relationship with papers like this is sort of "Don't ask, don't tell". I don't even know what to ask, and they don't tell me much. In spite of which I find them tantalizing.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 20 Mar 09 - 02:46 PM

Researchers at UALR report they have developed a process involving nanostructure that shows great promise in boosting the efficiency of titania photoanodes used to convert solar energy into hydrogen in fuel cells.

Hydrogen, the third most abundant element on earths surface, has long been recognized as the ultimate alternative to fossil fuels as an energy carrier.

Automobiles using hydrogen directly or in fuel cells have already been developed, but the biggest challenge has been how to produce hydrogen using renewable sources of energy.

Scientists in Japan discovered in 1970 that semiconductor oxide photoanodes can harness the photons from solar radiation and used them to split a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen, but process was too inefficient to be viable.

The UALR team, working with researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority (ASTA), has reported an 80-percent increase in efficiency with a new process.

...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29761848/

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 20 Mar 09 - 05:59 PM

At 7:40 a.m. on March 5, the winged car taxied down a runway in Plattsburgh, N.Y., took off, flew for 37 seconds and landed further down the runway -- a maneuver it would repeat about a half dozen times over the next two days. In the coming months the company, a Woburn-based startup called Terrafugia, will test the plane in a series of ever-longer flights and a variety of maneuvers to learn about its handling characteristics.
Aviation enthusiasts have spent nearly a century pursuing the dream of a flying car, but the broader public has tended to view the idea as something of a novelty. Still, such a vehicle could have more practical appeal now that the Federal Aviation Administration has created a new class of plane -- Light Sport Aircraft -- and a new license category just for pilots of such craft, including Terrafugia's two-seater Transition. The "sport pilot" license required to fly the Transition takes only about 20 hours of training time, about half that required to earn a regular pilot's license. ...

Details at http://www.physorg.com/news156699617.html.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 21 Mar 09 - 01:56 AM

Evolutionary theorist Alastair Clarke has today published details of eight patterns he claims to be the basis of all the humour that has ever been imagined or expressed, regardless of civilization, culture or personal taste.

Clarke has stated before that humour is based on the surprise recognition of patterns but this is the first time he has identified the precise nature of the patterns involved, addressing the deceptively simple unit and context relationships at their foundation. His research goes on to demonstrate the universality of the theory by showing how these few basic patterns are recognized in more than a hundred different types of humour.

Clarke explains: "One of the most beautiful things about the theory is that, while denying all previous theories, it also unites them for the first time. For decades researchers have concentrated on limited areas of humour and have each argued for causality based on their specific interest. Now that we have pattern recognition theory, all previous explanations are accommodated by a single over-arching concept present in all of them. (PhysOrg.com).

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 22 Mar 09 - 01:28 AM

Magnetic waves theorized to transfer heat from the surface of the sun to its atmosphere have been directly observed for the first time, researchers report in the March 20 Science.

Astrophysicists have long puzzled over why the sun's atmosphere is millions of degrees hotter than the surface of the sun itself. "It's counterintuitive — when you hold your hands in front of a fire, it's hottest closest to the flames," says David Jess, an astrophysicist at Queen's University Belfast, in Northern Ireland, and a study coauthor.

The magnetic waves, called Alfvén waves, are considered the most plausible explanation for the transfer of so much energy from the sun's surface to its atmosphere. First theorized by Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén in 1942, the waves could carry energy several hundred thousand kilometers from the sun's surface to the corona.

The new observation "is quite interesting," says astrophysicist Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "It means that we can get to the root of what's heating the corona."

Alfvén waves move along the sun's magnetic fields like "waves traveling along a string," Jess explains. The waves are created by magnetic reconnections, disturbances in the sun's magnetic field when magnetic lines twist, break apart and then snap back together again.
(Science NEws)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 22 Mar 09 - 04:43 PM

"...A spectacular example of false courage is the decision by most of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives to vote down the first economic bailout bill proposed by the Treasury Department in October 2008. On first inspection, this opposition to a mammoth taxpayer-funded bailout seems oddly gutsy, suggesting that the balky congressmen were sticking to their guns and adhering to their principles come hell or high water. But on closer inspection, given the level of hatred directed toward Wall Street at the time of the proposed bailout, their decision to vote no required no courage whatsoever. They were merely channeling the attitudes of their constituencies. They were nothing more than ventriloquists.

False courage comes in many styles, all of them odious. Real courage stands out because it is rare, precious, and beautiful. Here are a few examples:

Defending Israel when your name is Abdul.

Defending Bush's tax cuts when you are a Goth, a professor at Bard, or the lead singer in a Clash tribute band.

Attacking the coal industry when you live in West Virginia.

Defending the coal industry when you live in West Hollywood.

Sporting a Bush-Cheney decal on the bumper of your car when you live in Baghdad.

Dissing Vladimir Putin in the Russian press.

Being a conservative columnist for the New York Times.

Wearing a Che Guevara shirt in certain parts of Miami.

Questioning the negotiating tactics of the Irish Republican Army while quaffing a pint or two in a Belfast pub.

Wearing a Confederate flag headband on Saturday night in a Detroit nightclub.

Wearing a "Red Sox Suck" T-shirt at Fenway Park.

Attending a NASCAR event in drag.

Shorting Wal-Mart anytime, anywhere.

The most wonderful story about false courage I have ever heard centers around the great Spanish painter Joan Miró. At the height of the surrealist movement in the 1920s, the leading lights were ordered to go out into the streets and make outlandish, inflammatory comments that might land them in the hoosegow. One surrealist went out and said "Bonjour, madame" to a priest. A second insulted a policeman, which got him arrested. A third went into a public park and exclaimed, "Down with France! Down with the government!" until he too landed in jail. At which point Miró, who never really had his heart in this thing, but who was determined to be one of the surrealistic boys, marched into the Jardins du Luxembourg and ceaselessly repeated the phrase, "Down with the Mediterranean!" This disgusted and infuriated his fellow surrealists, who chastised him for uttering an execration so general and vague it ultimately meant nothing whatsoever. Sound familiar?"

.....From Joe Queenan's essay on False Courage.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 22 Mar 09 - 05:00 PM

Gobekli Tepe: The World's First Temple?

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 12:16 AM

Human embryos will be used to make an unlimited supply for infection-free transfusions

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Monday, 23 March 2009

Scientists in Britain plan to become the first in the world to produce unlimited amounts of synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells for emergency infection-free transfusions.

A major research project is to be announced this week that will culminate in three years with the first transfusions into human volunteers of "synthetic" blood made from the stem cells of spare IVF embryos. It could help to save the lives of anyone from victims of traffic accidents to soldiers on a battlefield by revolutionising the vital blood transfusion services, which have to rely on a network of human donors to provide a constant supply of fresh blood.

The multimillion-pound deal involving NHS Blood and Transplant, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and the Wellcome Trust, the world's biggest medical research charity, means Britain will take centre stage in the global race to develop blood made from embryonic stem cells. The researchers will test human embryos left over from IVF treatment to find those that are genetically programmed to develop into the "O-negative" blood group, which is the universal donor group whose blood can be transfused into anyone without fear of tissue rejection.

This blood group is relatively rare, applicable to about 7 per cent of the population, but it could be produced in unlimited quantities from embryonic stem cells because of their ability to multiply indefinitely in the laboratory.

The aim is to stimulate embryonic stem cells to develop into mature, oxygen-carrying red blood cells for emergency transfusions. Such blood would have the benefit of not being at risk of being infected with viruses such as HIV and hepatitis, or the human form of "mad cow" disease. The military in particular needs a constant supply of fresh, universal donor blood for battlefield situations when normal supplies from donors can quickly run out. ... (Independent)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 09:12 AM

Eastern Anatolia contains the oldest monumental structures in the world. For example, the monumental structures at Göbekli Tepe were built by hunters and gatherers, a thousand years before the development of agriculture. Eastern Anatolia is also a hearth region for the Neolithic revolution, one of the earliest areas in which humans domesticated plants and animals. Neolithic sites such as Çatalhöyük, Çayönü, Nevali Cori, and Hacilar represent the world's oldest known agricultural villages.

The earliest historical records of Anatolia are from the Akkadian Empire under Sargon in the 24th century BC. The region was famous for exporting various raw materials.[12] The Assyrian Empire claimed the resources, notably silver. One of the numerous Assyrian cuneiform records found in Anatolia at Kanesh uses an advanced system of trading computations and credit lines.[12]

Unlike the Akkadians and the Assyrians, whose Anatolian possessions were peripheral to their core lands in Mesopotamia, the Hittites were centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia. Speakers of an Indo-European language,[citation needed] they established a kingdom in the 18th century BC, and built an empire which reached its height in the 14th century BC. The empire included a large part of Anatolia, north-western Syria, and upper Mesopotamia. After 1180 BC, the empire disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some surviving until as late as the 8th century BC...

(Wikipaedia: "Anatolia"

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 11:23 PM

Now, as new research has shown, a fifth force could also be connected to dark matter. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, physicists Jo Bovy and Glennys Farrar were surprised to discover that a fifth force in the dark sector could place constraints on dark matter that essentially exclude its direct detection through spin-independent interactions. Conversely, if future experiments do detect a spin-independent interaction of dark matter, then any fifth force in the dark sector must be so weak as to be astrophysically irrelevant.

"Our study shows that we can strongly constrain some properties of dark matter, i.e., the combination of its interaction with the visible sector and the strength of a long-range fifth force between dark matter particles, through experiments with ordinary matter," Bovy, a Ph.D. student at New York University, told PhysOrg.com. As for which scenario appears to be more likely - a fifth force excluding direct detection of dark matter, or direct detection of dark matter excluding a relevant fifth force - Bovy and Farrar said that it's impossible to say in advance. "Both would be very interesting both theoretically as well as observationally," Bovy said.

Previous research has suggested the possibility that a new long-range, attractive fifth force might exist, which arises in several extensions of the standard model. Although most dark matter models predict that the force between dark matter particles is a short-range force, other models such as supersymmetry and string theory allow for the existence of a very light boson which could carry a long-range force in the dark sector.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Mar 09 - 11:26 PM

Large size and a fast bite spelled doom for bony fishes during the last mass extinction 65 million years ago, according to a new study to be published March 31, 2009, in the P

Today, those same features characterize large predatory bony fishes, such as tuna and billfishes, that are currently in decline and at risk of extinction themselves, said Matt Friedman, author of the study and a graduate student in evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago.

"The same thing is happening today to ecologically similar fishes," he said. "The hardest hit species are consistently big predators."

Studies of modern fishes demonstrate that large body size is linked to large prey size and low rates of population growth, while fast-closing jaws appear to be adaptations for capturing agile, evasive prey—in other words, other fishes. The fossil record provides some remarkable evidence supporting these estimates of function: fossil fishes with preserved stomach contents that record their last meals.

When an asteroid struck the earth at the end of the Cretaceous about 65 million years ago, the resultant impact clouded the earth in soot and smoke. This blocked photosynthesis on land and in the sea, undermined food chains at a rudimentary level, and led to the extinction of thousands of species of flora and fauna, including dinosaurs. (PhysOrg)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Mar 09 - 01:38 PM

HEresy o fthe Day:

"ot that it's anything we think the New York Times Company should do, but we thought it was worth pointing out that it costs the Times about twice as much money to print and deliver the newspaper over a year as it would cost to send each of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead.

Here's how we did the math:

According to the Times's Q308 10-Q, the company spends $63 million per quarter on raw materials and $148 million on wages and benefits. We've heard the wages and benefits for just the newsroom are about $200 million per year.

After multiplying the quarterly costs by four and subtracting that $200 million out, a rough estimate for the Times's delivery costs would be $644 million per year.

The Kindle retails for $359. In a recent open letter, Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis wrote: "We have 830,000 loyal readers who have subscribed to The New York Times for more than two years." Multiply those numbers together and you get $297 million -- a little less than half as much as $644 million.

And here's the thing: a source with knowledge of the real numbers tells us we're so low in our estimate of the Times's printing costs that we're not even in the ballpark.

Are we trying to say the the New York Times should force all its print subscribers onto the Kindle or else? No. That would kill ad revenues and also, not everyone loves the Kindle.

What we're trying to say is that as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn't just expensive and inefficient; it's laughably so."

Silicon Valley Insider

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Mar 09 - 08:38 PM

PhysOrg.com) -- "The concept of matter waves is at the heart of quantum mechanics," Oliver Morsch tells PhysOrg.com. "At the beginning of the last century, scientists discovered that solid particles could exhibit properties of waves, such as interference and diffraction. Until then, it was assumed that only light behaved as a wave. But in the quantum world everything is basically a wave."


Morsch is part of a group of scientists, including Alessandro Zenesini, Hans Lignier, Donatella Ciampini and Ennio Arimondo, at the University of Pisa in Italy. The group has discovered a way to more efficiently control matter waves in a setup that simulates a solid state system. "Once you have control over a quantum system," Morsch explains, "you can learn any number of things, especially from a fundamental point of view. Additionally, it is worth noting that almost all of our modern technology is related in some way to quantum mechanical principles." The group's technique is described in Physical Review Letters: "Coherent Control of Dressed Matter Waves."

In order to control the matter waves, Morsch and his colleagues created an optical lattice. "We, in effect, create a light crystal," Morsch says. "It's not a true solid, but it mimics the crystal lattice of a solid. It provides us with a sort of model system for solid state applications, allowing us to perform experiments without being bound by the naturally given physical properties of a solid." Once the lattice is created, using lasers and mirrors, the Pisa University group shook the mirrors - and hence the optical lattice - to create a phenomenon known as dynamic localization.

"It's very counter-intuitive," Morsch says of dynamic localization. "Before we shake the lattice, atoms move freely throughout by quantum tunneling. However, once we apply the shaking, they stop moving. For certain values, we can make sure that atoms stay put in one lattice site. We can also create a quantum phase transition so that the system changes its bulk properties when you change a parameter. In our experiment, we create a phase transition by shaking. That is our control over the matter waves."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Mar 09 - 12:23 AM

The US administration Friday announced updated automobile fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles starting with the 2011 model year that aim to reduce gasoline consumption and emissions.
   
The new rules aim at implementing a 2007 law mandating better fuel efficiency.
The new standards will raise the industry-wide combined average to 27.3 miles (43.9 kilometers) per gallon (3.8 liters), a increase of 2.0 miles per gallon over the 2010 model year average, the Transportation Department said in a statement.
The change "will save about 887 million gallons of fuel and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 8.3 million metric tonnes," the agency said.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that work on the multi-year fuel economy plan for model years after 2011 is already well underway.

The administration of president George W. Bush had proposed new standards but in January scrapped the effort, leaving the update until after the presidential transition.
On January 26, President Barack Obama directed the Transportation Department to finalize the 2011 model year standard by the end of March.

(c) 2009 AFP

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Mar 09 - 12:59 AM

THE EMPATHY GAP: BUILDING BRIDGES TO THE GOOD LIFE AND THE GOOD SOCIETY
By J.D. Trout April 11th, 2009; Vol.175 #8 (p. 30)    Text Size
Buy this book


The Empathy Gap: Building Bridges to the Good Life and the Good Society by J.D. Trout
This book argues that empathy and rationality are key to good personal and political decisions.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Mar 09 - 01:43 PM

"New cognitive research shows that 3-year-olds neither plan for the future nor live completely in the present, but instead call up the past as they need it. 'There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they're just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different,' says professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Munakata's team used a computer game and a setup that measures the diameter of the pupil of the eye to determine mental effort to study the cognitive abilities of 3-and-a-half-year-olds and 8-year-olds. The research concluded that while everything you tell toddlers seems to go in one ear and out the other, the study found that toddlers listen, but then store the information for later use. 'For example, let's say it's cold outside and you tell your 3-year-old to go get his jacket out of his bedroom and get ready to go outside,' says doctoral student Christopher Chatham. 'You might expect the child to plan for the future, think "OK it's cold outside so the jacket will keep me warm." But what we suggest is that this isn't what goes on in a 3-year-old's brain. Rather, they run outside, discover that it is cold, and then retrieve the memory of where their jacket is, and then they go get it.'"

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 30 Mar 09 - 04:49 AM

IT must rate as the literary snub of the 20th century. T S Eliot, one of Britain's greatest poets, rejected George Orwell's Animal Farm for publication on the grounds of its unconvincing Trotskyite politics.

Eliot, a former director of Faber and Faber, the publisher, wrote his rejection in a highly critical letter in 1944, one of many private papers made available for the first time by his widow Valerie for a BBC documentary.

When Orwell submitted his novel, an allegory on Stalin's dictatorship, Eliot praised its "good writing" and "fundamental integrity".

However, the book's politics, at a time when Britain was allied with the Soviet Union against Hitler, were another matter.


"We have no conviction that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the current time," wrote Eliot, adding that he thought its "view, which I take to be generally Trotskyite, is not convincing".

Eliot wrote: "After all, your pigs are far more intelligent than the other animals, and therefore the best qualified to run the farm – in fact there couldn't have been an Animal Farm at all without them: so that what was needed (someone might argue) was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs."

"It's a fascinating, yet very odd letter," said Anthony Wall, series editor of Arena, the BBC arts documentary, which will explore the papers. "What exactly does Eliot mean?"...(TImesOnline (UK))

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 30 Mar 09 - 05:01 AM

"Anybody who was catapulted back in time to Ice Age Europe would stand a good chance of being intelligible to the locals by using words such as "I", "who" and "thou" and the numbers "two", "three" and "five", the work suggests.

More nuanced conversation would be more of a challenge. The analysis of language evolution suggests that none of the adjectives, verbs and nouns used in modern languages would have much in common with those used then.


Mark Pagel, of the University of Reading, who leads the research, said that it was nonetheless becoming possible to create a rudimentary Stone Age phrasebook made up of the oldest known words.

"If a time traveller wanted to go back in time to a specific date, we could probably draw up a little phrasebook of the modern words that are likely to have sounded similar back then," he told The Times. "You wouldn't be able to discuss anything very complicated, but it might be enough to get you out of a tight spot."

Dr Pagel's research also predicts which parts of modern vocabulary are likely to survive into English as it will be spoken 1,000 years in the future, and which will die out...."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5805522.ece

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 11:32 AM

"Nevertheless, I am convinced that the decades-old dream of a useful, general-purpose autonomous robot will be realized in the not too distant future. By 2010 we will see mobile robots as big as people but with cognitive abilities similar in many respects to those of a lizard. The machines will be capable of carrying out simple chores, such as vacuuming, dusting, delivering packages and taking out the garbage. By 2040, I believe, we will finally achieve the original goal of robotics and a thematic mainstay of science fiction: a freely moving machine with the intellectual capabilities of a human being."

Future of Artificial Intelligence, Scientific American

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 01 Apr 09 - 01:40 PM

Oh, those Scandinavians.... (from a Danish newspaper):

"A survey of the sexual habits of 15-16 year-olds in Viborg shows that up to 20 percent of young people shun the use of condoms, despite education of the dangers of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

The survey, in which the sexual habits of school pupils are analysed over 21 years, shows that the use of condoms has fallen.

"Knowledge of and use of condoms is widespread among adolescents already at sexual debut," the report says but adds: "A considerable amount of adolescents (10-20 percent) still do not protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies at debut or later coitus".

Researchers say that while the use of condoms was widespread following the major AIDS campaigns of the 1980s, the focus on the role of condoms in safe sex has dropped and may explain the reduction.

P-pills
The survey, which is published today in the Danish medical journal Ugeskrift for Læger shows, however, that the knowledge and use of contraceptive pills is widespread among young girls already at the time of their sexual debut.

Nonetheless there is a marked change from the use of condoms in connection with first-time intercourse to the use of contraceptive pills in later sexual activity.

"A shift from of the use of condoms to more frequent use of the pill occurs from debut to later coitus," the report says.

Venereal diseases
The report found that knowledge of venereal disease such as HIV/AIDS, chlamydia and herpes simplex was high, with over 80 percent of respondents aware of the diseases.

"A total of 58 percent of boys and 76 percent of girls identified chlamydia as the most common venereal disease," the report said adding that 26 percent of the boys and 27 percent of the girls answered AIDS/HIV while 13 percent of boys and six percent of girls wrote 'don't know'.

Debut unchanged
The view that young people have their first sexual experiences increasingly earlier in life appears to be incorrect. The survey shows that the age of sexual debut has remained unchanged for many years.

The number of young people who had intercourse for the first time before the age of 15 was at 18 percent, unchanged from previous surveys.

Young people are, however, more sexually active than previously according to the researchers. "

---

There was a time when a debut was a social event...

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Apr 09 - 08:16 PM

Scientists have created a Robot Scientist which the researchers believe is the first machine to have independently discovered new scientific knowledge. The robot, called Adam, is a computer system that fully automates the scientific process. The work will be published tomorrow (03 April 2009) in the journal Science.

Prof Ross King, who led the research at Aberystwyth University, said: "Ultimately we hope to have teams of human and robot scientists working together in laboratories".
The scientists at Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge designed Adam to carry out each stage of the scientific process automatically without the need for further human intervention. The robot has discovered simple but new scientific knowledge about the genomics of the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, an organism that scientists use to model more complex life systems.

The researchers have used separate manual experiments to confirm that Adam's hypotheses were both novel and correct.

"Because biological organisms are so complex it is important that the details of biological experiments are recorded in great detail. This is difficult and irksome for human scientists, but easy for Robot Scientists."

Using artificial intelligence, Adam hypothesised that certain genes in baker's yeast code for specific enzymes which catalyse biochemical reactions in yeast. The robot then devised experiments to test these predictions, ran the experiments using laboratory robotics, interpreted the results and repeated the cycle.

Adam is a still a prototype, but Prof King's team believe that their next robot, Eve, holds great promise for scientists searching for new drugs to combat diseases such as malaria and schistosomiasis, an infection caused by a type of parasitic worm in the tropics.
Prof King continued: "If science was more efficient it would be better placed to help solve society's problems. One way to make science more efficient is through automation. Automation was the driving force behind much of the 19th and 20th century progress, and this is likely to continue."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 03 Apr 09 - 01:06 PM

As a matter of curiousity, does anyone read this thread?


Thanks,



A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Apr 09 - 01:57 PM

"David H. Newman, M.D. has an interesting article in the NY Times where he discusses common medical treatments that aren't supported by the best available evidence. For example, doctors have administered 'beta-blockers' for decades to heart attack victims, although studies show that the early administration of beta-blockers does not save lives; patients with ear infections are more likely to be harmed by antibiotics than helped — the infections typically recede within days regardless of treatment and the same is true for bronchitis, sinusitis, and sore throats; no cough remedies have ever been proven better than a placebo. Back surgeries to relieve pain are, in the majority of cases, no better than nonsurgical treatment, and knee surgery is no better than sham knee surgery where surgeons 'pretend' to do surgery while the patient is under light anesthesia. Newman says that treatment based on ideology is alluring, 'but the uncomfortable truth is that many expensive, invasive interventions are of little or no benefit and cause potentially uncomfortable, costly, and dangerous side effects and complications.' The Obama administration's plan for reform includes identifying health care measures that work and those that don't, and there are signs of hope for evidence-based medicine: earlier this year hospital administrators were informed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that beta-blocker treatment will be retired as a government indicator of quality care, beginning April 1, 2009. 'After years of advocacy that cemented immediate beta-blockers in the treatment protocols of virtually every hospital in the country,' writes Newman, 'the agency has demonstrated that minds can be changed.'"

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 05 Apr 09 - 10:30 PM

"The Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica is in the final stages of collapse and scientists are concerned the event shows climate change is happening faster than previously thought.

An ice bridge, up to 40 kilometres long but at its narrowest just 500 metres wide, was thought to be holding the giant shelf to the Antarctic continent but it recently snapped.

From above, parts of the Wilkins Ice Shelf now look like giant panes of shattered glass.

British Antarctic Survey glaciologist Professor David Vaughan has been monitoring the Wilkins Ice Shelf for some time with the help of satellite imagery.

"The ice shelf has almost exploded into a large number, hundreds of small icebergs," he said.

"The images on the European Space Agency website show that the ice bridge was relatively stable for the past month or two.

"In fact we visited the ice bridge - we landed on it with an aircraft and put a GPS, a satellite positioning system, onto the ice shelf. And that's another way we've been monitoring its movements over the last few weeks."

Researchers believe the ice bridge was an important barrier, keeping the rest of the ice shelf in place.

Dr Ted Scambos, the lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre at the University of Colorado, told ABC Radio National he was concerned.

"The follow on is that large chunks of ice break away from the area that's become unstable because it's no longer braced," he said.

"And we see a retreat to a smaller ice shelf, or perhaps no ice shelf at all. It's in the last stages. Right now I think about half the Wilkins will remain after this is done.",,,"

(ABC News)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie
Date: 06 Apr 09 - 05:19 AM

As a matter of curiousity, does anyone read this thread?

I do, every time I visit Mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 07 Apr 09 - 12:41 AM

Thanks very much, Eddie.

Bob Dylan, the mad poet of my generation, was talking about the Civil War in a London times interview. I was struck by this part.

BF: When you think back to the Civil War, one thing you forget is that no battles, except Gettysburg, were fought in the North.

BD: Yeah. That's what probably makes the Southern part of the country so different.

BF: There is a certain sensibility, but I'm not sure how that connects?

BD: It must be the Southern air. It's filled with rambling ghosts and disturbed spirits. They're all screaming and forlorning. It's like they are caught in some weird web - some purgatory between heaven and hell and they can't rest. They can't live, and they can't die. It's like they were cut off in their prime, wanting to tell somebody something. It's all over the place. There are war fields everywhere … a lot of times even in people's backyards.

BF: Have you felt them?

BD: Oh sure. You'd be surprised. I was in Elvis's hometown – Tupelo. And I was trying to feel what Elvis would have felt back when he was growing up.

BF: Did you feel all the music Elvis must have heard?

BD:No, but I'll tell you what I did feel. I felt the ghosts from the bloody battle that Sherman fought against Forrest and drove him out. There's an eeriness to the town. A sadness that lingers. Elvis must have felt it too.

BF: Are you a mystical person?

BD: Absolutely.

BF: Any thoughts about why?

BD: I think it's the land. The streams, the forests, the vast emptiness. The land created me. I'm wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I'm more at home in the vacant lots. But I have a love for humankind, a love of truth, and a love of justice. I think I have a dualistic nature. I'm more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

BF: But the album is all about love – love found, love lost, love remembered, love denied.

BD: Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

Bob Dylan's new album Together Through Life is out April 27 on Columbia Records

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Apr 09 - 09:38 AM

The year in which mankind will have a handle on relative immortality through the use of turning on or off certain genes as well as having nanobots handle disease and a complete internal interface with internet knowledge is 2045,   is called the time of 'singularity'.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 07 Apr 09 - 09:41 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 07 Apr 09 - 09:43 AM

SOrry foir the blank post.

Donuel, these bald statements jar resoundingly, because you provide no context, source, or justification, so your choice of a future date seems arbitrary and random. PRithee, have pity on your readers, and take their views into account, and make of your communication a bridge to better understanding!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Apr 09 - 02:49 PM

The inventor and futurist Kurzweil points to an accelerating advance of converging technologies that he has pinned 2040 as the year of singularity when astounding human capabilities will will add depth and bredth to the enlarged lives of AI enhanced people.

http://accelerating.org/ac2005/downloads/AC2005_PressRelease(SingNear).pdf



here is some more singularity speculation by some guy named Kevin Kelly. If its the Kevin Kelly I grew up with, he was always pretty wierd.
http://www.veneermagazine.com/01-18/01/the_group/singularity.html






PS

you have 7 more days to hide your assets offshore and or move your Swill, I mean Swiss bank account before the new transpareancy rules take effect.