Wikipedia's Science 2.0 Article - I Call Poe


This article was inspired by Hontas Farmer's recent article and the subsequent comments: Science 2.0 - Darwinian Selection Of The Best Paper.

You are an idea-monger. Science, art, technology – it doesn’t matter which. What matters is that you’re all about the idea. You live for it. You’re the one who wakes your spouse at 3 AM to describe your new inspiration. You’re the person who suddenly veers the car to the shoulder to scribble some thoughts on the back of an unpaid parking ticket. You’re the one who, during your wedding speech, interrupts yourself to say, “Hey, I just thought of something neat.” You’re not merely interested in science, art or technology – you want to be part of the story of these broad communities.

Sexsomnia may be more common than previously believed and is more common in men than women, according to new research presented today at SLEEP 2010.   Their results indicate that 7.6 percent of patients (63 of 832) at a sleep disorders center reported that they had initiated or engaged in sexual activity with a bed partner while still asleep.

The prevalence of reported sexsomnia was nearly three times higher in men (11 percent) than in women (four percent).

Are you a bold personality?  High self-esteem, action-oriented, eager, tenacious?  If so, you are more likely to be a religious extremist when anxiety occurs, according to findings by York University researchers in this month's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In a series of studies, over 600 participants were placed in anxiety-provoking or neutral situations and then asked to describe their personal goals and rate their degree of conviction for their religious ideals. This included asking participants whether they would give their lives for their faith or support a war in its defense.

Using an implicit task, scholars used two experiments, how people automatically responded to words, to predict break-ups. They showed it was easier to link words referring to their partner to words with pleasant or unpleasant meanings, a harbinger of couples about to split up.

Most of the time happiness determination in relationships involves asking people but surveys have little value there. Finland always tops 'happiest country' charts even though they aren't happy at all, they just have cultural sisu and claim they are happy when asked.

A tornado is a rotating column of air extending from a thunderstorm to the ground.  Tornadoes are capable of 250 MPH wind speeds, cutting a swath of destruction in excess of one mile width and dozens of miles in length.

If you see a dark, greenish sky or a wall cloud and hail, you might be getting a tornado.  If you have something that sounds like a freight train, you definitely are.

Written two years after the catastrophic destruction of World War II ended with the initiation of the nuclear age, Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence is a graphically violent, sexually explicit, and surrealistic expression of Huxley’s bitter disappointment in humanity.

Iceberg Alley And Global Warming

In 1912 there were 1,019 icebergs reported in the North Atlantic shipping lane throughout the iceberg season.  Many of those icebergs were reported in April 1912.

This year, as of June 06 2010, no icebergs have been reported in that same shipping lane.

Is this evidence of global warming?

It is so intuitive to assume that, if  Arctic ice retreat is due to global warming, then a lack of Atlantic icebergs must also be due to global warming.

It doesn't work that way: there is only an indirect link between sea ice loss and iceberg melt mechanisms.


R.M.S. titanic

The Sun is the biggest external source of energy which affects Earth’s climate. Long-term variations of the Earth’s orbit lead to long-term (~20-400,000 year) variations in the total energy received from the Sun (Milankovich cycles) and respectively in the terrestrial temperature. For shorter time-scales, decades to centuries, the reason for solar-induced changes in the Earth’s climate are changes in the Sun itself.

We're not joking; a sense of humor helps to keep people healthy and increases their chances of at least reaching retirement age, though after the age of 70 the health benefits of humor decrease, say researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

The study has just been published in the International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine and was composed of an examination of records from 53,500 individuals after after seven years. The study was based on a comprehensive database from the second Nor-Trøndelag Health Study, called HUNT 2, which is comprised of health histories and blood samples collected in 1995-1997 from more than 70,000 residents of a county in mid-Norway.

A positive effect